I feel like I’ve stum­bled out of the for­est to find an incred­i­ble new meet­ing ground filled with many won­der­ful peo­ple and defined by so many excep­tion­al per­son­al reflections.

Recent­ly, the begin­nings of new con­ver­sa­tion hap­pened here, start­ing from my post on feed­back. Nan­cy White sum­ma­rizes the thread, includ­ing the great com­ments offered by Rosan­na Tar­siero in Italy and Bev­er­ly
Trayn­er in Por­tu­gal. These per­spec­tives, includ­ing Nan­cy’s own words at the end of her post about the impor­tance of the ques­tions being asked, are such valu­able mir­rors. Read­ing these com­ments, I had to ask myself: Is my writ­ing so local? Am I writ­ing only for Amer­i­cans (and real­ly only a sub­set of major­i­ty cul­ture Amer­i­cans at that!) How can I bridge to a dif­fer­ent van­tage point? How can I bet­ter see my own assump­tion sets? For a few moments, try­ing to drink from this fire hose, I felt over­whelmed — and then very grate­ful for the water.

I know I will do a lot more think­ing about the com­ments by Rosan­na and Bev, and I see it is very true that I write from the per­spec­tive of an Amer­i­can and from the per­spec­tive of “self,” so let me say a lit­tle more about each of these points. And to do that, of course, I have to share a lit­tle more of my story.

My per­spec­tive work­ing with orga­ni­za­tions orig­i­nates from many aspects of expe­ri­ence, but in the begin­ning a great deal came from work I did with my col­leagues Kath­leen Ryan and George Orr. Our books, par­tic­u­lar­ly Dri­ving Fear Out of the Work­place (see the side­bar), were explic­it attempts to under­stand the dynam­ics of Amer­i­can orga­ni­za­tions around speak­ing up behav­ior. We talked to many Amer­i­can work­ers in many orga­ni­za­tions to learn more about these pat­terns. Although this work was pri­mar­i­ly done in the late eight­ies and ear­ly nineties, I do not see that these pat­terns have changed very much — some, but cer­tain­ly not the kind of evo­lu­tion I had once hoped for. The books came at the height of what was known as the “qual­i­ty move­ment” in Amer­i­ca, led pre-emi­nent­ly by W. Edwards Dem­ing. In fact the title line about dri­ving out fear comes from his advice for the trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can man­age­ment. That was an ide­al­is­tic time when many peo­ple ardent­ly hoped for work­places that were more open and appre­cia­tive of peo­ple, where blame would be stopped, and where we could all get on with solv­ing the real prob­lems of the work — which had to do with bad process, lack of knowl­edge, and insen­si­tiv­i­ty to cus­tomers, both exter­nal and inter­nal to orga­ni­za­tions. What I learned both through the research that went into the books and my con­sult­ing work was that there are very con­sis­tent cul­tur­al habits of silence about sen­si­tive top­ics in Amer­i­can orga­ni­za­tions. For exam­ple, I could go into vir­tu­al­ly any kind of orga­ni­za­tion — from hos­pi­tals to fac­to­ries, uni­ver­si­ties to account­ing firms — and find syn­dromes of “undis­cuss­abil­i­ty,” mean­ing the ret­i­cence of peo­ple to share cer­tain ideas, ques­tions, dreams, or feed­back for fear it would either affect their future or would not do any good. I learned about how fear of reper­cus­sions, espe­cial­ly the loss of rep­u­ta­tion and cred­i­bil­i­ty, might sub­tly affect feel­ings about the orga­ni­za­tion, per­son­al lev­els of com­mit­ment, and the capac­i­ty of the orga­ni­za­tion to improve. When orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­tures include back­ground sys­tems of emo­tion­al con­trol and mis­trust around words like “trou­ble-mak­er” or “whin­er” (or oth­ers), good peo­ple with great ideas can begin to wor­ry about what will hap­pen if they point out prob­lems — whether these prob­lems are per­ceived or real. I learned about the dual aspect of Amer­i­can orga­ni­za­tions — the offi­cial world of what is said dur­ing the meet­ing in the con­fer­ence room and the unof­fi­cial world of what is said in the hall or park­ing lot lat­er. Does one of these worlds hold all the answers? No, not in my opin­ion, but where there is ten­sion between the two we may have work to do with our rela­tion­ships and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Not because it feels bet­ter — it often does not — but because as human com­mu­ni­ties and enter­pris­es we are capa­ble of so much more in terms of serv­ing and con­tribut­ing to the world — and we ought to be tak­ing a look at any­thing that gets in the way of that. Are these dynam­ics true of all peo­ple in all Amer­i­can orga­ni­za­tions? Of course not. There are many work­places where there is a fine free­dom to speak up, where peo­ple are not cat­e­go­rized. And is open­ness always the answer? No, that’s not true for me either. By there’s an irony that in Amer­i­ca, a democ­ra­cy with pret­ty clear­ly stat­ed norms expressed in the Bill of Rights, the under­ly­ing val­ues and free­doms don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late once you go to work.

It is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent ques­tion, of course, whether these dynam­ics apply to oth­er coun­tries and cul­tures. I sup­pose some aspects may and oth­ers do not. That’s the beau­ty to me of a tru­ly glob­al com­mu­ni­ty — explor­ing and engag­ing around these dif­fer­ences. I have heard through anec­dotes that Amer­i­can work­places feel more dan­ger­ous than work­places in oth­er parts of the world — mean­ing there is more implic­it threat around loss of one’s job. I have no idea if that is actu­al­ly the case. What is clear is that there can be enor­mous dif­fer­ences of expec­ta­tion and expe­ri­ence across cul­tur­al divides. Edward T. Hal­l’s dis­tinc­tion between high and low con­text cul­tur­al styles, may be one place to open a door. I would love to get more feed­back around any of the dynam­ics men­tioned here, so please share your points of view!

So much of what I’ve seen and read late­ly on the net, such as Jed Miller and Rob Stu­ar­t’s ele­gant dis­ser­ta­tion, Net­work-Cen­tric Think­ing: The Inter­net’s Chal­lenge to Ego-Cen­tric Insti­tu­tions, (that I found on Rosan­na’s site) sug­gest that the ener­gy is build­ing in brand new ways to cre­ate pos­i­tive change. But even there I see some old pat­terns per­sist­ing in the lan­guage itself, still a vir­tu­ous “us” who “gets it” and a dinosaur-like, ego-dri­ven “them” who are on the way out — cre­at­ing one more bat­tle­ground. In my expe­ri­ence, the neg­a­tive stereo­typ­ing just leads to mis­trust and resis­tance, and so we inad­ver­tent­ly col­lude in cre­at­ing the world we say we don’t want.

Years ago (in 1960), Dou­glas McGre­gor drew a dis­tinc­tion in The Human Side of Enter­prise between two types of man­agers: The­o­ry X, which makes neg­a­tive assump­tions about the capac­i­ties of peo­ple — lead­ing to auto­crat­ic, pow­er-based lead­er­ship styles and The­o­ry Y, which makes pos­i­tive assump­tions about peo­ple, and leads to more pos­i­tive and open meth­ods. To me this dis­tinc­tion is less impor­tant than an insight offered by Mar­vin Weis­bord, writ­ing about his own con­sult­ing work:

After 100 projects in every kind of work­place the only thing I know for sure that I have changed is my own mind about The­o­ries X and Y. They do not describe peo­ple with oppos­ing man­age­ment styles. They describe an inner dia­logue with­in me — and with­in you. This X/Y dia­logue ener­gizes our dark­er as well as our more enlight­ened selves, mak­ing the search for pro­duc­tive work­places a risky voy­age into the hid­den reach­es of our own psy­ches. Chang­ing the work­place is inevitably bound up with chang­ing ourselves.

I have long ago giv­en up wor­ry­ing very much about how “pro­duc­tive” work­places are. I now focus almost entire­ly on the nature of the con­tri­bu­tion. But Weis­bord and many oth­er sources had begun to con­vince me that the most mean­ing­ful oppor­tu­ni­ties for change are with­in the self — the self of any­one who wants to use their poten­tials to make a con­tri­bu­tion to a bet­ter world. And this may be a pure­ly Amer­i­can motif, but for me it also res­onat­ed with big­ger themes, and I heard the motif in oth­er voic­es, such as that of J. Krish­na­mur­ti, the famous teacher born in India, in a life-chang­ing col­lec­tion of con­ver­sa­tions called Free­dom from the Known.

In one of these con­ver­sa­tions, Krish­na­mur­ti said this:

We human beings are what we have been for mil­lions of years–colossally greedy, envi­ous, aggres­sive, jeal­ous, anx­ious and despair­ing, with occa­sion­al flash­es of joy and affec­tion. We are a strange mix­ture of hate, fear, and gen­tle­ness; we are both vio­lence and peace. There has been out­ward progress from the bul­lock cart to the jet plane but psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly the indi­vid­ual has not changed at all, and the struc­ture of soci­ety through­out the world has been cre­at­ed by indi­vid­u­als. The out­ward social struc­ture is the result of the inward psy­cho­log­i­cal struc­ture of our human relationships.…The whole his­to­ry of man[kind] is writ­ten in ourselves.

Krish­na­mur­ti’s com­ments might well move us to despair. It is a tough start­ing point for reflec­tion. Over time I have found incred­i­ble light and beau­ty in his work and it has become one of the sources that most inspires my own. And so my ques­tions have most nat­u­ral­ly become: How can any of us lead toward that con­scious, pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion with­out a “them” and an “us”? How can I bet­ter use myself as an instru­ment of pos­i­tive change? How can I heal the pain in me so that I don’t project it onto oth­ers, trig­ger­ing old cul­tur­al pat­terns? You notice in this view that I am not dis­card­ing self. I am sug­gest­ing instead that we deal with self-devel­op­ment and trans­for­ma­tion on the way to mak­ing that con­tri­bu­tion. Not every­one would prob­a­bly agree with this approach. I cer­tain­ly have received feed­back from time to time that I am sim­ply advo­cat­ing anoth­er ver­sion of Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­is­tic tra­di­tions around “pulling one­self up by his/her own boot­straps.” Noth­ing, from my per­spec­tive, could be fur­ther from the truth. The social real­i­ties of oppres­sion must be dealt with — but they must be dealt with with­in as well as with­out, with our own con­di­tion­ing, our own uncon­scious par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pain of the world. I have one goal only, to inter­rupt the flow of blame, divi­sion, and mis­un­der­stand­ing. And I believe that requires a will­ing­ness to explore the very self that is afraid of this work, that is cyn­i­cal, that despairs, that “numbs out” its own inter­nal wounds, and that projects its uncon­scious dilem­mas out­ward onto oth­ers. The only real “them” in this equa­tion is us.

What hap­pens then to the process­es of social change? Do we just ignore them? And again my answer is “of course not.” But I also believe change can come from a form of influ­ence that needs no ene­mies in order to hold ten­sion around the pos­si­bil­i­ties for a bet­ter future. The call for con­ver­sa­tion that is so clear­ly man­i­fest right here right now on the net is a won­der­ful exam­ple. My mod­el these days for this type of extra­or­di­nary change work — and under most chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances — is Aung San Suu Kyi in Myan­mar (what used to be known as Bur­ma). This is NOT about hon­or­ing her lead­er­ship from the stand­point of some cult of per­son­al­i­ty. In fact, her work defines what it tru­ly means to leave that behind. But I will save fur­ther com­ments about her for anoth­er post (this one has already grown too long).

In the mean­time, here is my phi­los­o­phy in a nutshell:

What is the prob­lem? self.
What is the answer? Self.