Underneath it all
It feels like we’re having all the wrong conversations in our organizations.
We yammer away about optimizing for efficiency or streamlining processes or getting the best ROI and yet, when it comes down to it, all organizations (or entities of any type, really) are simply collections of people and the relationships between those people.
That’s it.
I was at a conference for organization design last week and it was FANTASTIC. I realized that I’ve been working in org design without ever calling it that or knowing that’s what it was. Because org design is simply the art and science of helping people get back to themselves and their relationships with one another.
You sell a product? Cool…how does it get made? By people. You have processes? Awesome…how do those processes work? Through people. You have a vision? Excellent. How do you bring that vision to fruition? With people.
You see where this is going.
Our organizations so often seem to forget that any – in fact, EVERY – part of the business is made up or run by or influenced by people. Usually, we have one little department to “handle” our people (bless you, HR folks, for having kept these ships afloat all this time…), and we think that’s good enough to manage those humans while we get to work making a business run.
I think until we really take seriously that everything we are and everything we have is only people, and the relationships between them, we will go round and round and round, having conversations about “business things” until we’re dead. Or just wish we were.
Until our conversations turn first – and entirely – to “What can we do to help our people be the best version of themselves?”, the conversation will forever be stuck at “What can we make our people do?” And that is no way to live or work.
