We started the fires

It's time to fix our organizations.

Every part of the system is connected. If your organization is built on resource extraction, it's part of the business of resource extraction.

A quick "resource extraction" test:

• People are given fixed roles, and expected to contribute their time and creativity to performing actions dictated to them by "a superior".
• Managers are focused on controlling those below, rather than managing themselves
• Employees are expected to leave their emotional and personal life at home
• Leaders are expected to provide answers, rather than listen and ask questions.

Yeah, I don't think I know of any business that is not about extracting resources. So, it's little wonder we are where we are.

Luckily, despite what you see on the news, the business of resource extraction, in all it's forms, is on it's way out. Unfortunately, it's trying to take all of us with it.

The successful organizations of the coming decade will leave behind the structures and processes of the assembly line. In an industrial world a business would design a product or process and then execute it - making sure that the humans hired to do the work stuck to the job that was designed for them. There was no real need to encourage the creativity of the "workers", and change was too expensive anyway, so there was not much incentive to encourage things like "feedback" and "collaboration". Things are a little different now.

In the 20's it's all about change and creativity. Organizations no longer have the luxury of creating a fixed solution to a set of problems. Now, we have to keep listening, keep adapting, keep changing - and we need as much creativity as we can get. In this environment, organizations can no longer rely on control. Now we have to learn to cultivate, to create ecosystems that thrive and grow. In fact, we've got to give up the idea of control, and step into something new.

If you are a business leader, and you seek to play your part in making a future where the planet is not burning, you need to look at yourself and how you lead your organization.

Here are some questions from Carl Rogers, asked in the 1950's, that are especially relevant for leaders today:

1. Do I trust the capacities of the group, and of the individuals in the group, to meet the problems with which we are faced, or do I basically trust only myself?
2. Do I free the group for creative discussion by being willing to understand, accept, and respect all attitudes, or do I find myself trying subtle to manipulate group discussion so that it comes out my way?
3. Do I, as leader, participate by honest expression of my own attitudes but without trying to control the attitudes of others?
4. Do I rely upon the basic attitudes for motivation, or do I think surface procedures motivate behaviour?
5. Am I willing to be responsible for those aspects of action which my group has delegated to me?
6. Do I trust the individual to do his job?
7. When tensions occur, do I try to make it possible for them to be brought out into the open?

It is our organizations and institutions that play the biggest role in defining the future of our planet. To find a better way, we have to change the underlying nature of the organization and the nature of work itself.

There are a multitude of practical steps every organization can take to build a better world, but the change needs to be lead by those brave enough to change themselves.