Part of the time I was off the grid the first week of August was while I attended the Leadership Summit of the Willow Creek Association. This was a gathering of Christian church leaders, but ideas are where you look. One of the speakers was noted author (Leading the Revolution, The Future of Management), Gary Hamel. The point of Gary Hamel's presentation at the Willow Creek
Leadership Summit was overcoming organizational entropy. Entropy, you
may recall from your high school physics (or maybe not), is the Second
Law of Thermodynamics and may be stated "in any natural process there
exists an inherent tendency towards the dissipation of useful energy."
Hamel borrows another analogy from physics saying, "The problem is
inertia." In a turbulent world, is your organization
non-responding by doing the same old stuff and losing its energy?
Organizational entropy happens when visions become policies, which
become procedures, which become rules, which become habits. He asks an
interesting question--why is it in our organizations we must obtain
change and new energy through "decapitation"--that is, cutting off the
head (person)? It's similar to the only way change comes in a political
dictatorship.
Analysis is of no use with a prescription. Hamel challenges us to become "enemies of entropy." He gives us ideas.
You can become an enemy of entropy in these ways:
1. Overcome temptation to take refuge in denial. You see this when
people dismiss, rationalize, mitigate current reality. Face the facts.
Treat every belief about how to "do" the church as a hypothesis--that
is an explanation of reality to be tested to assure that it's still
valid. Humility is a survival strategy, so listen to others. Especially
listen to renegades and dissidents. They often see new ways, and if
they aren't successful in trying new things in their organizations,
they go off and start new, competing, organizations.
2. Generate more strategic options. Make change more exciting than
standing pat. Innovation always follows power law, that is the sum of
the "little" ideas turns out to be as great if not greater than the
"big hits" at the beginning. People are so anxious to find the one big
idea that we don't generate enough ideas to find the one that works.
3. Deconstruct what you already believe about how you do church. Ask
what hasn't changed in the last 4-5 years. Compare yourself to others
in community. What are we all doing? Identify that and look at how to
do it differently.
4. This is not feasible in top-down, autocratic structures. Is there
a small group at the top who has a monopoly on ideas? The mental model
of a leadership team is dangerous to those people. That's why it's so
hard for ideas to come from the bottom. That's why the dissidents leave
and start their own, often competing, organizations. An alternative
model, for example, is the WL Gore Co., inventor of GoreTex fabric. The
creed is "I want people who innovate all the time and fight bureaucracy
none of the time."
Leaders today need to mobilize, connect and support people in the
organization. Look for types of people who dynamic, malleable and
experimental.
5:50:03 AM
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