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