Backbone: When an Organization Has It (Part 2)

Organisms and organizations both fascinate me. Many parts must work together for both the organism and the organization to be healthy. If one of those parts goes out of whack, there's a displacement effect, reducing the health and effectiveness of the entire organism. The same goes for the organization. When something gets out of whack in an organization, not only the localized part of that organization goes into an "ill" state, but it affects the entire organization.

Edwin H. Friedman, a psychologist who pioneered the application of family theory to organizations, noted that  the organism, the family and the organization all share similar dynamics. As David W. Cox writes,

A fundamental premise is that each person in a family plays a role in the functioning of the other persons in the family, the system. Likewise in an organization, the functioning of any member, including the leader, plays a significant role in the functioning of the other members of the organization.

Friedman, in his book A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, describes how a living system resists change. When the brain of an organism or the leader of an organization tries to change it, resistance to change immediately crops up. For example, if you are a trying to start exercising your body, you will meet internal resistance. Your bones and muscles don't want to start an exercise program, especially if they feel it creates some pain. If you try to change the processes or habits of an organization, you will meet internal resistance. The people in your organization become uncomfortable and will react with all kinds of resistance to change, particularly if they see it as painful to them personally.

And yet as the body needs to exercise, the organization needs to change in order to be healthy.

Friedman suggests that in this situation the leader must stay calm and non-anxious, be non-reactive, and persist in the face of sabotage from within. Friedman draws analogies between pathogens in the body, and the "pathogens" in an organization. Just as cancer can threaten the life of an entire organism, spreading in the body and poisoning the system, there are people in an organization who create toxicity. They operate on the same principles that pathogens do, being invasive by nature, lacking self-regulation, not learning from experience, and yet showing a great deal of stamina in their ability to continue destroying or interrupting healthy processes.

What does this look like? These are the people, Friedman says, who yell the loudest, whine the most, and are "organizational terrorists." They also can manifest by being constantly angry, sullen or negative. They also can be the people who gripe the loudest about things like lack of trust, consensus, or empathy. Their intended effect is to get the world revolving around them, catering to their personal goals or needs.

As I read Friedman's book, I could assign familiar names to the people he describes, both those who are well-differentiated and those who are not. I know leaders who are calm, non-reactive and take care of the organization's best good while refusing to be triangled into the dramas of the "pathogens" of the organization. And I know some of those pathogens, who despite being worthwhile people in their own right, act on the organization like viruses, slowing down the organizational wheels of progress and growth.

Sometimes, I think, you need to allow people such as these to marinate in their own pain and misery, let them mature through their own difficulties until they learn to relate to their organization in more differentiated ways, ways in which they cease sending out ripples of their own dysfunctions. However, some people don't see the big picture of the organization in which they function. If something in their organization causes them pain, even if it's putting the organization in a healthier place for long-term survival, these people will set up a mighty howl, wear a dastardly pout, spin off constant sniping comments, or carry a thick cloud of grudge. They never understand. And perhaps they should start again elsewhere.

My description here may be somewhat simplistic, but the "organism" paradigm outlined by Friedman makes sense to me. It also makes me stop and think about what function I fulfill in my work. Do I function primarily as a pathogen--negative or critical or behaving like an "organizational terrorist" in some way? If so, it's time to go.  If not, I may be a crucial working "part" of a body that needs me, and I should continue to stay and contribute to the organization's work to reach its goals.

This post has taken an organizational view.  But I've only told half of that story.  In my next post I want to argue the other side of the story, the one that says the "stay or leave" rationale isn't quite as cut-and-dried as I've laid it out to be.  Stay tuned.