Richard Hawkes - Navigate the Swirl

In most cases, the unpredictability of a complex adaptive social system only reveals itself under the pressures of change. The company may have been ticking along just fine for its first couple of years—small but profitable. It has systems and structures in place; established ways of working; and a well-developed business model for delivering its services. The team is tight, and they've been together since the beginning. They know how things work, and they know who has power and influence. They've learned how to get what they need to do their jobs. But then, one day, everything has to change.

The pressure of change can take many forms. Sometimes, it's good news, like a new market opportunity. Demand for the company's products or services takes off, and it suddenly needs to grow from a quirky startup into a larger enterprise. Sometimes, it's bad news. Competitive pressures in the industry render an existing business model ineffective, and the company realizes it needs to innovate new offerings or risk going out of business. Perhaps it acquires another company or is acquired. As the company begins to grapple with the demand for dramatic transformation, it quickly becomes clear that its old ways of doing things are not going to get it where it needs to go.

The particulars can vary, but it begins to become clear that the existing culture of the organization is faltering. Changes are needed, but aren't happening. Strategic shifts seem impossible. Cultural confusion escalates. People start acting strangely. They seem to agree with what's said in the meeting but then go away and do something different than what was agreed. The Swirl accelerates even as the need to transcend it becomes acute. Frustration grows. Indeed, it can feel as if the system itself is resisting the change. And the leader needs to figure out how to lead the system itself on the journey to higher performance.

Leadershipis the art and the science of inspiring and guiding groups of people in a complex adaptive social system to align and navigate the uncertainty of changing and learning together, toward a shared purpose.

Making the type of changes that can lead the organization out of the Swirl is never quick and easy. But here is the good news. It's not just about escaping what's wrong; it's also about discovering what's possible. And this requires a deeper understanding of how we view the organization we're trying to change. Indeed, if you truly want your business to reach its higher potentials, you're going to need to learn how to wield influence not just over individuals but over complex adaptive social systems. Change, in a complex adaptive social system, cannot really be “managed,” whatever consultants would like you to believe. It must be led, first through the development of team and company leaders, and then through the development of teams. But leadership of a social system is not a one-way street. As I learned with those three companies in the merger I mentioned earlier, it requires much more than a monologue, however uplifting or inspiring. It's a dialogue, a conversation—in fact, it requires a series of ongoing intentional conversations that have the power to align, reimagine, and consciously upgrade the social system. I've worked hard to refine these conversations into a series of Seven Crucial Conversations, a Growth River methodology that is essential to this upgrade and to building high-performing teams. They also inspired the title of this book. But before exploring these conversations in the second half of the book, there is much I need to convey about social systems, the nature of a business, growth and transformation, the evolutionary stages of an enterprise, and the latent potentials that are embedded in organizational social systems, even those that are mired in the Swirl.

I used the word consciously earlier, and it's an important term to pause and reflect on. There comes a point in the evolution of an enterprise when change must be consciously engaged. And that requires leadership. Otherwise, the inertia, good or bad, of the existing culture dominates. Indeed, one way to think about the culture is that it's what people do when no one is telling them what to do . That's unconscious or natural culture—the natural pattern of the social system when it is undirected, when people are filling the void and choosing how to behave in the absence of leadership. That may be positive, negative, or otherwise, but when you reach a point where you need to upgrade, shift, or evolve the complex adaptive social system of your organizations, make no mistake, leadership will be essential. It takes leadership to create a more conscious or intentional culture, one in which the ways of thinking and acting are purposefully aligned at a higher level of performance.

Again, a leadership style is shaped by how the leader sees the system they are working in. If you view your organization as a mechanical system made up of parts, inputs, and outputs, you'll lead it one way. If you view it as a social system composed of people playing their roles, forming relationships with others, exercising their agency to negotiate shared purpose and ways of working in the context of those relationships, you'll lead it another way. The social systems view includes the process flow of inputs and outputs between roles in the system but goes beyond it to take into consideration the human aspect of those interdependencies as well.

In the mechanical systems view, solutions are designed top-down and team members are expected to follow the directives set forth as tasks, processes, and project plans. In this view, some roles are assigned strategic planning responsibilities, and others are expected to execute. Conversely, when operating from the social systems view, all roles are expected to engage and contribute their perspective to the overall strategy. Solutions may still be designed top-down but validated and updated based on bottom-up feedback, and in the context of aligning purpose, roles, and ways of working. In this view, all players are empowered to exercise their agency and choice, and leaders need to align team members around their decisions through communication and consultation.

Although both perspectives have their advantages, the journey of growth and transformation that I'm describing in these pages can only occur if all team members fully embrace the implications of a social systems perspective, as a necessary condition for reaching higher levels of team and organizational performance.

The following are a few key characteristics of the social system mindset as contrasted with the mechanical system mindset:

Interpersonal, not impersonal: Leaders focus on influencing others and creating alignment through conversation, rather than relying on the weight of hierarchical authority.

Relational, not transactional: Leaders focus on building and maintaining strong mutual relationships, rather than supervising outputs.

Inclusive, not exclusive: Leaders focus on ensuring everyone on the team has agency and choice and is fully engaged in the transformation process.

Let's return to that swirling, tumbling river we were navigating earlier in these pages. As you steer your team and organizational watercraft through the rapids of changing markets, around your competitors, avoiding the rocks, and riding the currents, the last thing you need is for all the people on board to be rowing in different directions. You need them to be aligned. You need them to be working for a common purpose, pointing in the same direction—the direction of growth and higher performance.

If the river is calm and the current steady, it can feel like it is less important for everyone to work in a closely aligned way. Some might be rowing faster, some slower. Some might be taking a break and watching the scenery pass by. A few strong arms can keep the boat on course. But as the river gets rougher, with more obstacles, rapids, and eddies, you need all hands on deck. The more complex a system becomes, the more critical alignment is. In any system, there are multiple parts that are in motion, and the overall success of the system is the sum total of those parts aligning in the same direction. In a simple system with just a few parts, some semblance of alignment might be achieved with top-down authority, but it's really just compliance. Once the system grows in complexity, that simply doesn't work. A top-down controlled system will never be able to adapt quickly enough to the changing environment, nor will it harness the creativity and potential that is inherent in its many parts. You're treating people like parts in a machine, and the best that mechanical parts can do is not break down. They can't transform, evolve, or innovate. But if you respect that the parts are free-thinking, creative human beings who make their own choices about how to use their time and energy, you have to take a different approach. Sure, you could enforce compliance, but you recognize that that will never add up to truly high performance. The job of leadership is to create alignment, which is different than creating agreement. That difference is critical. Alignment requires that the individuals choose to move in the direction of growth. People can agree, disagree, or anything in between, but they can still independently align and move forward, and that makes all the difference. They don't simply go through the motions; they actively contribute. People who are merely complying feel victimized, and that state of mind is never conducive to high performance. Alignment is a free choice that liberates innovation and intelligence. See Figure 1.1.