The Myth

A few days ago I saw a post on social media that said: “I believe in a world where organizations can deliver an integrated quality of life to its workers. Work and enjoy, shouldn’t be something impossible. For a México where more business take care of their people.”

It called my attention because it seems like a message that looks forward to something nice, that has a good intention, that carries a good wish, and form the perspective of how we build social systems, with a great risk of staying as that, only good wishes.

The reason? There’s a great myth implicit in what we believe and because of that, I take it as a reference for this article. A myth that has grown stronger with the arrival of the so called “happiness at work” and the myth is that the organization is capable of causing happiness, care, life quality, enjoyment and a long etcetera on its employees.

The word organization, from its etymological meaning, it is only “cause and effect of transforming anything, in something useful”.

So when we talk about “conscious organizations”, “happy organizations”, or “careful organizations”, we are assigning a capacity to the organization that it doesn’t have and that it can’t create, because the organization in itself it’s not an entity with decision power.

The Social Construction

From the alive systems perspective, the organization or business, is how we call the social construction which purpose is to reach the purpose that caused its creation.

The ones who can achieve this, is us, the personas that from an organization, the ones that contribute with our actions, and decisions to achieve the purposes that joins us.

Therefore, more than conscious organizations there’s conscious people. More than happy organizations, there’s happy people. Instead of caring organizations there’s “caring people”:

And what does conscious, happy, people mean? That depends on each person and the group of behaviors which he/she identifies as it. And it depends on the group of people and the actions and decisions that relate this meanings.

When people agree on a group of actions and we behave according to that, then we co create a social system, for example a business, which has certain characteristics guided by our behaviours.

In this way, it’s not the organization that takes care of us, it’s us who make a caring organization. It’s not the organization that is happy or causes happiness, it’s us who are happy and “color” that tone. It’s not the organization the one that’s conscious, it’s us who develop consciousness (once again, whatever that means for each organization) and then we built together an organization that we can call “conscious”, because our behaviours are the ones that define the consciousness.

The Risk

If we start from the premise that the model that we call “myth” and the one that we offer as “construction” in the end are ffroms that help us to make life easier, then, why should we choose one or another? It has to do with the risk that each of them contributes to.

Recently I asked a person about a decision made by a collaborator in his/her area, and the answer was “the organization is like that”.

This answer belongs to the first model and when “the organization is like that” we don’t have a chance to act, contribute in a different manner, because we “belong” to that culture and that culture is “a bigger system” that has its own decision power.

I know I once taught something similar, and offer my honest apologies. Back then it made sense, and I considered it was valuable until I realized what this caused in organizations, and nothing change because “the system decided it that way”. I’ve heard it from directors, leaders, general secretaries and in this way they don’t assume their responsibility in the construction that exists and the decisions that have take them there.

The second perspective is totally different, challenging and invites us to take a clear place of self responsibility. It’s maybe because of that, that for lots of us it’s less attractive. What would happen facing the question “How was the decision with this collaborator made?”? The boss would answer something like “I allowed it, because HR said it was the right choice to make and I choose to align myself to the business policy that I received from HR to take care of my job.” In front of this answer it is clear that “the organization is not like that”, there’s a director or HR responsible that considered that this is a better contribution to the purpose and there’s a group of directors that has accepted this.

Then, it is not the organization which is like that, is us who choose to act in that way, because we are scared, because we are convinced, because we don’t want problems, because we want to belong, or any other reason. The focus lies in the fact that this are human behaviours and decisions made and executed by individuals inside a shared collective.

A New Perspective

So, in this idea, I would like to close paraphrasing the post I took as a reference for this article. My version would say something like: “I believe in a world where everyone is responsible for our own well being, from our autonomy. Taking care of our life and co-creating different organizations where we can work and reach our purposes in a well being environment. For a Mexico with more autonomous and responsible people that can take care of building the organizations that we build.”

Would you like to build a business like this?

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