Want to be more productive at work Think like nature.

[Music]

there’s an old zen saying

sitting quietly doing nothing

spring comes and grass grows by itself

nature depends on self-organization

trees grow

animals find food and they cooperate

with

each other and all of this activity is

done

without human direction we don’t need an

act of congress

or even an executive order for monarch

butterflies

to change their migration patterns

or for ants to find food and the same is

true for our bodies

all of our internal systems

are like our nervous system our

circulation system

our immune system they all self-organize

we don’t need to think or direct any of

it

and our bodies just figure out

figures out what it needs to do and then

it makes it so

so if our bodies can self-organize why

can’t we self-organize

in our work why is it so difficult to

believe

that human beings can direct their own

learning or their own work

why do we structure our organizations in

such a way

that reinforces command and control

and why instead couldn’t we design our

organizations

to unleash this initiative and our staff

so when i was an early first-time

supervisor

my staff used to line up outside my

office door

and they would um come in and ask

questions and

ask me to make decisions for them and

solve

problems and then they’d go off and do

their work

and when um i and because i was a new

supervisor i thought this was what i was

supposed to do

this was what a supervisor was supposed

to do

but then that later that year my older

sister

died of cancer and i knew the connection

between stress and cancer and so i

decided that

i would shift some things in my

lifestyle and i started exercising

in the morning before i came into work

so instead of getting to work at 7 30

i got to work at 8 30 and an amazing

thing happened

my staff got impatient

they decided they didn’t want to wait

for me to show up

and they went off to their workplaces

and their offices

and started solving the problems that

they had been asking me to solve

so i realized that

something had changed and their shift in

their behavior made me wonder

how i had been contributing to their

seeming inability

to organize their own work and since

that time

over the last 40 years i’ve been working

with people

and coaching people to figure out how to

unleash

self-organization in their own

workplaces

and in their classrooms so what do i

mean by self-organization

self-organization is when

uh we expect that um

people can initiate and organize their

own work so basically

self-organization involves people taking

initiative

and getting their work done on their own

that they know the purpose

and mission of the organization they’re

working in and they align that with that

organization

and they can

they’re self-aware in the sense that

they

know when they have to change their

behavior

in order to get better at their job and

when we do this

we get a big benefit because we have

more time to do our own work

and the rest of the work gets done on

its own

just like nature and this isn’t just for

managers this is

also for teachers and for parents

so there are three keys to unlocking

self-organization

one the first one is to stop

thinking your employees need your

direction in order to be productive

instead start expecting

self-organization as a basic

norm so when i had went to my second job

i was part of a team

and one of the team members basically

didn’t

do anything she kind of sat at her desk

and waited to be told and asked what to

do

and i thought that

she might not have the ability to

self-organize

and i had almost given up on her

and then one day she came up to me and

said would you

uh be a fourth for our bridge game at

lunchtime

uh because their fourth had called in

sick and i

said sure and as i was watching her play

bridge

i realized i had vastly

underestimated her ability and her

intelligence

she was totally self-organized at the

bridge table

she was strategic she was uh

won all of her hands and i just thought

to myself

okay this is where she’s been keeping

the self-organization it’s been hanging

out at noon

at the bridge table so i decided that i

would

start shifting my my relationship with

her

so the next time she came up to me and

asked what she should do

i paused i sat back and i said i don’t

know what do you think

and when i changed the way i

asked questions and answered questions

and directed her

she also changed her behavior and she

started initiating and she started

bringing solutions

with the problems that she saw and this

made us a much stronger team

it was great and this is basically how

it should work

this is how it works in nature for

example when bees

they like to hive at a certain

temperature and when bees

when the temperature rises above a

certain amount

the worker bees start flapping their

wings faster

in order to increase the circulation and

then

the beehive cools down nobody is

directing this

this is just an expected response to

an to a situation that makes the beehive

uncomfortable

so if we want to unleash

self-organization in our work

what we want to do is change our

expectations and expect it as a norm

so the second strategy key for unlocking

self-organization

is to get your ego out of your

supervision

and instead focus on outcomes and

results

so going back to my first supervisory

story in my office staff

lining up outside my door when they did

that i used to feel kind of flattered

and needed and that was my ego talking

and i also when they asked me questions

i thought my ego wanted to answer it so

they could see

my own ability

and experience and expertise and

knowledge

and so when uh so when i did that

the problem was that it created a

dependency on me

so instead of thinking for themselves

they started asking my ego

what i thought so i needed to shift that

and i had to

and i learned this great lesson from

nature so nature

unleashes self-organization it depends

on self-organization

but it bookends that with a very clear

purpose so nature’s purpose

is to create life the life

of future generations to support the

life of future generations

and it is designed as a system to

have every species and plant life

support that

so when bees go out and seek nectar

and pollinate fruits and vegetables

they’re contributing to that larger

purpose

now in our human organization sometimes

we don’t connect make that connection

very strong and when that happens

what we get is a version of

self-organization but without the

purpose

helping to shape it and direct it and i

call that

empowerment gone wrong so anybody who’s

been in a

staff meeting or a budget conversation

where people are trying to get as many

dollars as possible

to their individual budgets

without regard to the impact on the

larger organization

you would have seen this empowerment

gone wrong

so where do we find good lessons on how

to get clear on purpose

our military is known worldwide for

its ability to continue to achieve

mission when they get cut off from

command and control

and that’s because they’re very clear

about their mission objectives

and they’re very clear about their

purpose if you want to know whether

you’re clear

about your purpose in your organization

you could ask yourself this question

if i was cut off or

if i was absent from working with my

team for a week

or for a month would my team still be

productive and would my team still

be contributing to the purpose of the

organization

and if your answer is no they can’t they

wouldn’t

then you know that you have to get

better at figuring out

how do we talk about what we’re trying

to achieve together

what is our overall purpose of what

we’re trying to do

the third strategy is

to stop micromanaging and start

reinforcing self-organization

so bees this is another great

honeybee example so when bees know that

they’re getting too crowded in their

hive

the queen bee doesn’t show up and start

directing how to find a new hive the

queen bee

actually is totally out of it the scouts

the scouting bees anticipate the need

for another move and when they

anticipate these scouts start going out

and looking for alternative spots to

hang out and

when they come back if they go out and

they find a really great home

what they do is they come back and then

they do this kind of

wiggle bee dance i call it

so they move their bodies they orient

their bodies specifically

in the hive in a certain way and when

they

and that communicates to all the other

bees in the hive

how many what the direction they should

fly out of the hive and how

what the distance is to the new place

and then those

other honeybees go off and explore

see where the scouts are thinking is a

good new home

and when they come back if they agree

with the location they come back and

join that dance

and then over time there’s this kind of

decision that emerges with wide

exploration and lots of vetting

and when they’re ready they swarm and

they move

so uh what would happen if we started

expecting our staff to anticipate

problems

and solve them without any managerial

intervention

what would that look like however

organizations partly because we’re human

we kind of generate these micro managers

at work

so what do micro managers do they like

to control

and they like to tell people exactly

what to do to accomplish

and micromanagement doesn’t reward

self-organization

it rewards compliance and when you have

a whole lot of compliance going on in an

organization the micromanager is really

busy telling everybody what to do but

there’s no self-organization

the tricky thing about micromanagement

is that sometimes

it can come up from the bottom not just

down from the top

so when i was uh taught classes

and was a faculty member oftentimes my

students

wanted me to micromanage their learning

they would ask things like is this going

to be on the test

or how many pages should this paper be

or they might say what should i write my

paper on

and basically subtly what they were

asking me to do

was to micromanage their learning so

they didn’t have to put any stake in it

i wanted to create a classroom

environment that worked more like the

bees

than like our traditional relationship

between

faculty and students so i decided what

would i reward

and i decided to give them 25 of their

grade

based on their ability to organize

and direct their own learning and be

willing to share

and expand the learning of others in the

class i was basically trying to use the

reward system

to change the culture and environment of

my classroom

and when i did that they changed their

behavior and their motivation for their

behavior

students started to talk in class

not to please me but to demonstrate

their own learning their own

observations

their own insights they wrote papers

again

not to please me but to demonstrate how

they were integrating

their learning and this created a great

environment for learning in our

classroom so if we

the third key to unlocking

self-organization is to reward

and recognize uh self-organization when

it happens

so just in summary all we need to do

three simple things is we need to expect

self-organization is normal and can

happen

and everybody can do it we need to be

able to articulate our

core purpose and help people connect

their day-to-day work to that larger

purpose

and then we need to recognize

and reward self-organization and

when we do that when we make these

shifts

in our leadership we create

organizations

and classrooms that work much more like

nature does

so now i have a new zen saying sitting

quietly

self-organizing spreads learning flows

work gets done we all thrive

thank you

you