The need to control

One of the patterns of the 20th century way of doing things that still lingers in places is the need to control and the need to know everything.  In the old world, knowledge and experience meant power.  Now, when half of all you know is obsolete within 18-24 months, it has far less impact.  Flexibility, sharing information and letting go of power actually give you more power.

Image by petaj via Flickr

In my work I use social technologies that are based on systems thinking, chaos theory and even quantum physics to host meaningful conversations.  Instead of having 20 or 50 people carry on one conversation in a room, as was often considered appropriate in the past (translation: 2-5 people speak, 10 people drift in and out of conversation, the rest are blackberry-ing below the table), we allow people to self-organize and cluster into smaller, more intimate conversations using processes such as world cafe, open space and circle. 

In these environments, they have phenomenal conversations that engage everyone (it's hard to hide or blackberry in a group of 4 people), great insights and come up with breakthroughs and alignment as a group that they never could have with traditional methods from the old world (ie: more dictatorial or autocratic or bureaucratic solutions).

Despite the results, which are astounding, I still hear people saying they wish they could have shared what they gained in a cafe conversation with everyone else, not realizing that they now carry that knowledge and they have the responsibility to carry it forward.  It's not up to the person who they gained the wisdom from alone any more. 

Or, the other reaction I sometimes encounter is the discomfort with the uncertainty and the lack of precision of these processes.  Because they are self-organizing, you can't say exactly when each element will start.  And because the process is an emergent process, you can't predict exactly what will come up, and some people are uncomfortable with not having that level of control (as much as that control was mostly perception - they never really had it).  In one breath, these participants will say they got phenomenal insights, acknowledge the great strides that came out of the meeting (things that could never have been achieved in the old, controlling way), and then with the next breath say they didn't think the process was good because they were confused or didn't know what was coming.

This is part of the letting go that we are transitioning through - letting go of the need to control everything to ensure that we actually accomplish things.  The paradox is that the more you try to control, the less you and your organization can actually do.  The reality is that organizations that controlled tightly from the top may have been profitable in the old world, but they also threw away half their profits, half their profit growth, half their sales growth and more.  There's hard data that shows that.

In today's complex, uncertain world, I question whether those organizations can continue to remain profitable at all.  The rules have changed and leaders have to change as well, or they will be crushed by the competition that does. 

This is simply a time of transition.  Yes, there are still some who react in the way described above.  But there are more and more every day who are stepping out to discover the new rules of the game.  And that's what makes this so much fun to do!

That's my 2 cents. What do you think?