“If we continue doing what we are doing we will continue achieving what we are achieving” Stephen Covey In the brief historical span of the last two decades, a variety of proposals, approaches and movements have appeared, under different denominations, that have been welcomed with greater or Less enthusiasm, and they have spread throughout the world, with increasing speed, as the context in which organizations operate changes, and there is greater pressure for competition, profitability, benefits, productivity, for optimization in the application of innovations.
But, the practical applications have not marked the same rhythms, and the disconnections between these conceptual trends and what actually happens in practice are increasing, creating situations of greater problems and social and psychological conflicts in and of the people within. of organizations.
More than the absence of foundations for the application, development and success of the proposals, as some authors point out, what happens is that the valid theoretical-conceptual proposals for handling these situations are not on par with the proposals of philosophy and theory of administration and organization.
In a word, it is not just understood that to apply these, those are necessary.
In practice, the treatment of people's social and psychological needs barely exceeds the low historical level established by the management of organizations, in this case companies, not to say at the same level.
And here is a great problem that grows like a snowball downhill; the increasing technical requirements and demands of the work process, with insufficient, insufficient or non-existent integration of the social dimension of the work process, that is, the integration of people's social and psychological needs, down to the individual level, such as integrated part of the process itself.
Process approaches, which are imposed as a trend, are not seen as interconnections between people, but as forms and procedures, sometimes it might seem that they are abstract, if it were not considered that they are carried out by some resources-people.
International standards, with increasingly high requirements, with standardization of global procedures, emphasize control, the interaction between individual and group actions, the establishment of objectives, the monitoring and measurement of processes, actions of continuous improvement.
But, regarding people, it is still limited to technical elements to carry out the relationship of exposed elements.
The results are the implementation of sudden changes, without the necessary and sufficient preparation of people, with the consequent avoidance, lack of trust at the interpersonal level, lack of skills at the managerial level, and lack of alignment of the strategy at the individual and group level. and organizational, to maintain a proposal.
So Principle Centered Leadership (Covey, S.) cannot be carried out, even if the Strategy, Structure and Systems are present, even knowledge and skills, but the main thing is still missing: The Shared Vision; effective vision.
The Shared Vision is not only a common idea, nor an idea of a person, it is an inspiring and driving force, because it is an idea that translates into collective actions.
Consequently, it begins to be seen by everyone as if it existed. Few forces are as powerful as a Shared Vision (Senge, P 1994), and few things are done as little in a company as the development of shared visions.
It is difficult to achieve the Shared Vision, common direction, synergy, if the "personal domain" is not worked, if the individual goals are not known, neither by the individuals themselves nor by the organization that goes through conscious recognition in the satisfaction of the needs, if they do not have "personal leadership habits", which gives meaning to life; if the "mental models" that determine the way of perceiving the world, the company, the way of acting and feeling are not worked on.
Effective habits, effective communication, interdependence are not achieved; the interconnection of processes.
It is necessary to insist again and again on the Shared and effective Vision, that responds to ethical humanistic values, to the needs of the being over the needs of having, and that the needs of the individual and the organization are satisfied, before the social object, because it is the way to achieve the effective Mission and this in turn becomes the terrain where the Vision becomes effective.
By now, the reader will have realized that we are interlinking the Five Disciplines of Senge with the Seven Habits of Covey and some elements of the Culture of Trust.
In everyday practice, they are missing links for most organizations.
Perhaps for a simple reason: the changes must be produced as quickly as possible, so that the environment does not “cool down”, and because the documented and auditable terms of solution are short-term to work on individual, group behaviors. and organizational.
In this way, far from “cooling”, what ignites the fire, which lasts as long as the combustion materials last, and sooner rather than later goes out.
To establish the lasting interconnections between processes, and continuous improvement, it is necessary to work on the interconnections between people, habits of responsibility, self-awareness, interdependence, personal leadership, social awareness, among others.
Is it possible that a staff without habits of interdependence that leads to innovation, of effective communication that leads to coexistence, of mutual benefit that leads to common well-being, to teamwork, of personal leadership that leads to giving meaning to life Are you aware of the importance of the activities and their contributions to the objectives of the organization?
Definitely not.
An organization can propose change when it is guided by a vision, and when it has a leader that is not only technical, but cannot change if the members of the organization lack the above qualities.
And the set of qualities or habits are part of the Organizational Climate, and a human-technical Leader realizes it, and encourages learning and professional growth.
The modifications that lead to Total Quality must be profound and global; the foundations must be strong and durable. “To achieve Total Quality, essential principles and practices must be implemented.
All organizations can do it, "said Deming, WE
But, all organizations do not, and those that do are not common. It has not been understood by many administrators or managers, as well as specialists from various disciplines, that the standardization of processes, the establishment of international standards, cannot have the ultimate goal of establishing stable and predictable, perfectly controllable processes., and results of the fixed and immovable processes.
This could have been the dream of traditional organizations.
History repeats itself, of not taking into account the people!
Although companies are process-oriented, and integrate at the process level, beyond traditional jobs, they are still basically results-oriented!
The complexities of interconnections between people are omitted, with the consequent social and psychological cost for people. It is the reason for most failures.
The process approach, without falling into ingenuities of not pursuing the results, it is necessary to refocus them and turn them into processes of growth and learning. This can be achieved to the extent that human leadership is exercised, with capacity for training and support.
It is the path of Total Quality and New Organizational Forms.
By the way, belonging to a Process Team does not imply the change of place or physical space that I occupy today within the organization, as many have questioned, in front of the fear of establishing new interpersonal relationships and coexistence very different from those that until the At that time the groups or areas in which he worked governed.
This reductionist and limited approach to the development of processes and systems does not allow us to see ourselves as part of that team, to which I contribute to the development of the process in a conscious way, with creative imagination, with moral conscience and independent will to do.
Everything else, are just limited renovations of forms, which do not get to work by processes, although procedures are established, which, moreover, has always been the ABC of the organization, and deep changes in organization and direction do not interest. of traditional organizations.
It was long established that, if a planned process of change is to be carried out in an organization, as a whole, that leads to the improvement of effectiveness, rather than efficiency, beyond Beckhard, R's initial approaches. On Organizational Development, it is essential to plan “interventions in organizational processes based on the behavioral sciences” (Grives, 2003).
In fact, this has been the initial basic support for Organizational Development, because there is no other possibility to promote comprehensive changes.
What is new is that more and more authors accept the fact that integral changes imply transformations of the Organizational Culture, which in turn implies the transformation of the cultural premises that frame individual behavior, in the way that people talk to themselves and with the others and the meanings that are possible in the organization.
This new way of transforming organizational culture is the recognition of a new way of seeing, where new paradigms are accepted.
The organization will not be seen solely and exclusively as an economic subsystem where people work, but rather it is a subsystem that is part of a larger system that is the Human System, which in turn is part of the Nature System.
This set of interconnections that are only possible from the development of systemic thinking in individuals, aligned to humanistic values for the satisfaction of present to present needs, will make possible the transformation of culture at the organizational and individual level.
Of course, new skills must be learned, which will lead to new habits, which will increase the production capacity of individuals and organizations. Organizations and society will increasingly rely on the contribution of knowledge from individuals.
The change in an organization is radical, when it contemplates not only the formal characteristics of the organization such as the structure, strategy, systems, but also reaches the basic values and the system of meanings, that is, the culture of the company (Allaire, Y. and Firsirotu, M. 1992).
So there is a growing tendency of theorists of the organization, from a time here, to raise the rank of importance of "human resources", from Argyris, Bennis, Likert, which is necessary to rescue and develop in practice; and here is the problem.
The orientation to results and the implementation of the actions of the process-based approach is not exclusive of the orientation to the person.
You should not make statistical and documentary control the center of the problem.
The tools will have to be refined, and as the application of the systemic approach progresses, it will be necessary to find systemic tools that record variations in the system, but do not reduce or eliminate them.
For example, it is not possible to consider the process-oriented approach to growth and learning, as a continuous process of experimentation and dialogue, and at the same time think about how to reduce variations, which could well be information, let's say.
If this theoretical-conceptual problem is not solved, the system approach and systemic thinking in organizations are far from being applied, the cornerstone of intelligent organizations.
The objective of this article is to underline the need to interconnect the different conceptual approaches to work the processes in practice as they should, and this is as important as understanding that there are no processes without people, that they are not abstract.
Therefore, it would be important to work together on the interrelationships of aspects such as: Organizational Climate, Organizational Learning, Systemic Thought, Needs, Humanistic Ethical Values and Leadership.
When this is achieved, it can be said that the organization will be on its way to going beyond formal approaches or the standardization of elements of a norm, and beyond the “facts” and “patterns of conduct”, and that it is transited towards an organization that reflects, and beyond, that generates, with its own energy.
If in any case you want to link this practice to a standard, because they are the international requirements for competition, welcome, but the practices would be more enduring over time, and would prepare staff for new future challenges, since the level of Current standards will also be raised over time.
The objective cannot be only of economic efficiency, or organizational efficiency; It is imperative, out of historical necessity, that the objectives are also of organizational, social and psychological effectiveness. And this is what the six aspects mentioned must tend to.
If the Organizational Climate is a set of factors, from motivational and job satisfaction and recognition, going through physical-environmental and remuneration factors, to psycho-social and communication factors (Anguita, J. 1989), or even more encompassing and aggressive such as those related to Litwin and Stinger's "structure, responsibilities, reward, cooperation, challenge, standards, conflicts, identity", the role of the manager-leader-human-technician should be to guide the design of the change process as a learning process, in which people acquire the capacity, and expand the capacity to act together, because what they do concerns them deeply.
This could be a generative learning process typical of systemic organizations, and not only proactive, or reflective, much less active.
When does this occur? As Maslow, H. says "when studying exceptional teams, the task was no longer separate from the subject, but the subject was identified with that task, could no longer be identified without including the task."
You could answer yes.
But this vision is outdated, and contradicts systemic thinking, since the task is confused with one's identity.
Shouldn't we talk about motivations, recognitions, communication, mutual benefit, social and psychological needs, such as "mental models" and "personal mastery", "team learning, shared vision" way of thinking and acting?
Of course.
Then, it is the factors of the Organizational Climate in its greatest extension, which are going to determine whether or not the process of change is one of greater learning.
These are problems to identify from the beginning, or from the beginning (Burke, 2003) that begins with an examination of oneself, of personal dispositions and of the external environment, as well as the establishment of the needs for change.
The New Organizational Forms are imposed.
Smart organizations are built, and without personal growth and development, with people who put as much effort both in their development and in the performance of the task, as if these elements were independent, where completely different behaviors are traced to achieve one or the other, without understanding that as people they are a system that does not need to be one thing at work and another at home, with their friends, etc., they do not come to understand the "dynamic complexities".
For this, it is necessary to master Systemic Thinking, and the Human-technical Leader is the guide who guides and continuously establishes the interactions between the different parts of the organization.
He is knowledgeable in different disciplines and encourages others to have them, forcing people to step outside of their narrow qualification and specialization frameworks, creating tension, and making sense of it.
Manages tensions and turns them into a creative and trusting organizational climate.
This is not done by simply chairing meetings, or formulating great ideas, but rather comes to understand people, allowing them to know the forces that shape change.
But how many executives or managers design ten sessions of one or two hours, dedicated to leading the group to a creative dynamic? How many are convinced that these group dynamics can raise group cohesion, raise motivation, transform organizational culture, improve the organizational climate that leads to behavior capable of facing higher organizational challenges?
How many consider it to be a waste of time and unnecessary expenses?
Finally, Systemic thinking, the cornerstone, integrating discipline of the proposed aspects, implies a profound change in the way of thinking, conceiving, and acting of people, and consequently, of organizations.
It is complex, because it does not work on the rationalist linear cause-effect approach present in time and space, and it observes the totality to understand the facts, and the facts interpret them from the totality, because what marks the guidelines are the interrelationships; the integration. What is the advantage over linear thinking? That it does not see a single direction, that it sees beyond what is present, that it sees the richness of interrelations.
But, to work and develop Systemic Thought, growth must not be precipitated, neither individually nor by the organization.
It has its time and its limit, due to the laws of system dynamics, its plateau with stabilizing effects and its descending phase.
If these phases are not managed well, the changes that have occurred until then are frustrated, and many times they are frustrated by the reinforcing effect invested, that is, by pressing more and more, with the consequent dissatisfaction of all.
So you fall into the circle of doing more of the same to get more of the same.
What to do?
Apply another of the laws of system dynamics, that of the lever; apply the lever at key points that may lead to further improvements, but apply it by compensating effects, not by stabilizing effects, over time of the phases.
At this point, it is especially important to realize that the "mental models" that determine our way of perceiving and acting are fundamental. And it is the moment when learning together and practicing dialogue are the most pressing. Dialogue as a learning and communication tool, which will lead the organization to become a learning organization.
A dialogue where conversations are made, assumptions are released, beliefs are listened to empathetically and the best ideas on a given topic are provided, which includes questions that the individual has asked himself or the people in the organization, such as, for example, starting by the own thought, making a participative and reflective opening, which leads to what is called change of focus or mental displacement (metanoia); it is to go from a current situation to an overcoming situation, to a self-directed group, group or organization with a new vision.
Then, only then, the determination of "necessary competences", the functions, the evaluation of efficiency, relevance, will have a new meaning, different from the traditional organization and administration; different from pursuing and proposing the only or most important objective, the result.
The challenge will be climbing, the process of growth and learning, the rest is inherent.
Organizational health is not achieved overnight, nor do the processes that the organization uses and needs, change by decree, or by someone's will; they will change and they will be qualitatively superior in the measure that the people, the members of the organization, grow qualitatively, and they say, "we did it", "we did it".
Bibliography
Alhama, BR; Alonso, AF; y Martínez, NT: Social dimension of the company. Essence of New Organizational Forms. Social Sciences Publishing House, Havana, 2005.
Anguita, J.: "Winds of change for Organizational Development" in Update for Organizational Development, University of Viña del Mar, 2005, Chile.
Covey, S: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, 1998.
Senge; P: The fifth discipline, Editorial Granica, 1992, Barcelona.
Senge, P.: The fifth discipline in practice, Granica, 1995, Barcelona,.
