This book (1) has recently received quite a bit of
attention in the world of management, and rightly so! It provides a much-needed and long-awaited
description of the evolution that is taking place in the field of
organizational design. We can be brief about the necessity of this evolution:
absolutely! I can also be brief about the common thread; totally agree! I can effortlessly support 90% of this
vision. The book inspires and therefore deserves the status of
a milestone. But let's face it, it is not a recipe book, but at
most a new vision on 'nutrition theory'. There is indeed a big danger in blindly
following a number of proposals and descriptions. Based on my own practical experience, I
would like to mention a few that do deserve attention in working further on the
realization of this historical evolution.
The book seems to be written by several people,
because there are quite a few conflicting visions. It is of course also possible that during
the writing of this book the 'advancing insight' has left a strong mark. Anyway,
there are quite a few inconsistencies to note. For example, the ‘sociocratic
decision-making method’ is mentioned at the start, but no further use is made
of it. Instead, the "advice method" is promoted as
a core piece in the self-managing organization. And this seems a questionable method to
me. Half of the rule is OK: mandatory advice from all
involved before a decision is made. The other half seems problematic to me:
everyone can keep themselves busy and decide on anything. The disappearance of mandates and roles
seems to me to have a chaotic effect on organizations. Here Laloux seems to be counting on the "invisible hand" (cited explicitly!) That also drives our market-economic system of free
competition. Let's face it, recent economic history has proven that this
concept fails. Convincing literature supports this; among others confirmed and demonstrated by Amitai Etzioni in his book "The moral dimension”. It should be is clear by now that this is an illusion. At the system level, an unlimited freedom
for the individual leads to power derailments that must be urgently restricted
by rules of the game. Similarly and even more urgent within an organization. There is not only competition between
ideas, but also between people, and that does not seem to me to be the
intention, nor the most productive principle within an organization. The introduction of the ‘advice method’ as
proposed here, leads to the destruction of teams and the entire cohesion within
an organization. This is therefore a straightforward fallacy.
At the beginning of the book, the Transactional Analysis (E. Berne ) is also mentioned as a relevant way to interpret
relationships in organizations; good! But nothing else is done with it. However, there is a fundamental reason why
the introduction of the "cyan" organization will often fail. To promote a more mature behavior It is
not enough to shift the power of the management to power for the employees. And that naive illusion is a little too
often present in this book. There is a lot of attention given to
values and even to the translation into 'assumptions' (' principles would be
better here, see S. Covey's work on Principle centered leadership (3)). But the role of the leadership in
'supporting' the organizational culture is heavily underexposed. This also applies to the entire role of
management. According to Laloux there is sufficient literature about this. But this is precisely the essence! What kind of leadership creates the
necessary space for autonomy and the talents of employees, without this
degenerating into chaos, internal competition and a power struggle? Laloux refers to the unproductive elements
in human behavior (draws on our personal history), but seems to assume that these failures are
automatically corrected by the team. If a team starts working with the here advized
method for self-management, this will certainly not work! Examples of external coaching and training
for employees in non-violent communication are rightly cited. But it seems to me that there is a role
for leadership here, certainly in a transition phase to the very self-managing
teams.
The term 'self-management' is really badly chosen. Partly through his failure to discuss the
role of leadership (only here and there very implicitly), he suggests to the naive reader that leadership is no longer needed, and that creates
a misunderstanding. The self-management at issue here is clearly
'operational self-management'. That is why the examples quoted in the
book usually include organizations where the operational assignment is fairly
stable. If we look at organizations with more strategic policy
challenges, it will certainly become a lot harder to achieve successful 'self-management'. A frank statement in the book is: "there is no strategic plan in a cyan organization." Of course a strategic plan is not the
traditional document that was developed centrally, separated from the
employees. But this is way too much 'idealistic exaggeration',
which can mislead many practitioners. When I see how difficult it is to engage
in good strategic thinking even in the current management, I think it is really
unfair to place this responsibility and authority in a team of people who have been selected for their job because of their operational competences.
Here is another fundamental objection: the idealistic view of humans. In the vision of this book, employees seem
to be all-round super competent people who can not only grasp all
dimensions of an organization, but also have the necessary skills to use them
professionally. This means that for setting up self-managing teams
(even if we fill it in as 'operationally autonomous'), a thorough selection
will have to be made of people who not only want to work in a cyan organization, but who CAN. As we know from experience, all people
sometimes tend to overestimate their ability to handle freedom. As long as they themselves are the only
one paying the bill, that is not a problem. But in the context of
organizational assignments, this approach seems to have even ethical limits. In the vision of Laloux this deficiency is compensated by the team; but this is certainly not going to happen
with the advice method! Human maturity will definitely also play a role here. People with limited maturity have difficulty functioning in a complementary mode with
other people. They do not tolerate criticism, always want to be
right, do not accept their own limits and limitations, ... If human cooperation
can only be made productive through more autonomy and powers, then why are so
many people divorcing their partners because they are having trouble adjusting
their lives to their partners’? They are often even willing to pay the bill for
poor cooperation!
Conclusion; it is an inspiring book, but beware of dynamic generalization and copying recipes. The practice of human cooperation in organizations is slightly more complex than is suggested
here. Good leadership will be needed to make informed autonomy possible and productive. The management will have to carefully
assess how great the autonomy of people and teams can be and become, based on realistic substantive, social and
behavioral competencies, while maintaining coherence with the mission of the
organization. Focusing on a coaching that has human development as
it’s main dimension will be needed, and certainly not just substantive
coaching. To summarize, I see five fundamental shortcomings in the vision of
this book (the way in which a good and relevant idea is worked out): the
destructive effect of the advice method, the lack of the role of the (coaching) leadership, the unrealistic vision on strategic policy, a rather naive view of mankind and a naive view of the world. Because of these shortcomings, this book
probably invites for experiments that will take quite some energy to make the
organizations productive again. The rest are details.
These concerns are primarily focused on applying the cyan principles to an entire organization. There are many more possibilities to
realize the concept on a smaller scale, for example a team. The condition is that the team already has
a very close cooperation (shared objective; trust, complementarity, team
culture). As scaling up occurs, it becomes increasingly
difficult to meet these conditions with sufficient strength. According to Laloux, scaling up is no problem, but I fear that the effects of the five aforementioned
shortcomings will end up taking a toll. On a small scale you can still find enough mature people who can integrate their functioning
into a spontaneous dynamic whole, but as the scale increases it will become a
lot more difficult.
The book regularly refers to the ego of the existing
leadership as a fundamental obstacle to the realization of a cyan organization. That might be true. But why should all managers have an ego problem? Are the employees from whom you expect
optimal self-management not burdened with the same problem? Probably yes. But that seems to be ignored. This sometimes gives this book an
idealistic touch of 'utopian socialism'.
For completeness, it should also be mentioned here that Patrick Vermeren's criticism (article on the internet: Book Review by Frederik
Laloux, Reinventing organizations) does not apply. That he is critical is justified. But the arguments that are quoted are more
an evidence of a lack of insight in this matter. The argument that many things are not scientific is irrelevant. Firstly, there is such a thing as human
sciences. The methodology is different from the exact sciences (related to the ‘system’s hierarchy’ developed by Kenneth Boulding ). Second, if we are only allowed to stick to
proven insights, we are doomed to repeat the past.
Hugo Der Kinderen
(1) Frederik Laloux, Reinventing
Organizations, Lannoo Campus, Tielt, 2015
(2) Amitai Etzioni, The moral dimension,
Mc Millan, New York, 1990
(3) Stephen Covey, Principle Centered
Leadership, Simon & Shuster, London, 1992
No comments:
Post a Comment