Realms of Groups

The Predictable Horizon

More than twenty years of advances in modern technology reshaped the economy today. Science, technology and cultural shifts in societal values have gradually and silently penetrated organizations in profound ways.  In the last decade the majority of organizations focused on the traditional, manufacturing approaches to increase their effectiveness and efficiency to adapt to the new economy. Other organizations had the foresight to wisely sail their own way. These few realized that, even though the conventional approaches sounded promising, a new era calls for new ways of thinking.

Comfortable Myths

Studies in the late nineties showed that people capable of producing quantitative and qualitative services would be the determinant to achieve a sustainable, competitive advantage in the 21^st Century. However, a majority of organizations were influenced by the rise of competency management and turned their attention to standardized solutions as the preferred strategy to meet the challenges ahead. These organizations heavily invested in structural, instrumental solutions relying on thinking in terms of ‘human assets’ and the necessity to manage the alignment of people and systems into the future.  Unfortunately, many did not realize that their chosen approach was still based upon decades of an internalized, industrial worldview and perpetuated by the implicit order of their own doxas.

Present challenges

Those organizations that a decade ago responded with approaches informed by new ways of thinking, now belong to the few that succeeded in their transition. They left behind thinking in terms of ‘human capital’ and choose methods rooted in modern assumptions about flexibility and the innovative potential of people and organizations. Today, studies show that people need to acquire a set of 21st Century competencies. Sadly, a large number of professionals are still not fully prepared to work within multi-disciplinary teams within fast changing situations.  How do you perform according to the rules of the game if the game itself is always changing?

Uncomfortable Facts

Irrespective of their value, even with the massive investment in human resource information systems and the implementation of corresponding management policies, procedures, instruments and tools, nothing really changed. The majority of organizations today struggle in their transition.  Unknowingly, they destroy the very conditions that are needed to build the internal flexibility and innovation of people within organizations. Despite spending billions of dollars in technological systems, studies confirm the change was only temporary and did not lead to a sustainable new perspective. By reducing the internal variety within the system, they became even more vulnerable to the piercing effects of external forces. The best methods of the past have now the opposite effects causing even more problems.

” Teamwork is the collective action
to move forward to get things done.” 

Becoming competent

Entering the 21st Century, studies now reveal the disappointing gaps in the transition strategies of the nineties and the consequences of delaying implementation of adequate methods to match the future that is on our doorstep. Without delay, professionals need to develop themselves to perform in fluid networks, different structures, liquid layers and zones to achieve certain results. The industrial management doxas, which still lurk in the hallways of organizations, will continue to be the biggest barrier.

Rather than controlling ‘human capital’ and programming behavior through standardized competency programs to align people and systems, it is important to rapidly develop the conditions for people to learn while working on projects within multidisciplinary groups.

The Realms of Groups

Take the time to simply expose yourself to the reality of your organization by suspending your automatic ways of thinking. When did you have the chance to shake hands with your organization? What you call your organization does not exist. Rather, the concept of organization refers to a very complex reality. It is the world of human dynamics and the realms of people active in groups.

Continue to look around and you quickly notice how professionals, each with a unique background, personality, talent and skills, are working in teams. Many teams are striving to transfer given strategic objectives into measurable actions so they can achieve certain results, and, at the same time, matching to values and mission within a given context. Clearly, working in teams is not without effort.

High Performance Teams

Through time academics and professionals explored and studied the complex dynamics of self-organizing systems and developed theories, methods and interventions to support social systems in their pursuit of higher performance. Studies shows that the 21^st Century calls for structural, social, dynamic approaches within organizations, which are firmly rooted in an understanding of advanced group dynamics.  High performance teams need up-to-date skill sets. They need individual and collective meta-cognitive learning capacity and the ability to navigate naturally between several domains focused on diverse objectives.

Searching for Potential

Today, the concept of synergy is used by many people to explain how great the collaboration was or how well they managed and organized their activities. However, strengthening the social construct of an organization with a strong focus on improving the quality of the internal, social dynamics reaches far beyond applying the soft group methods of the seventies.
Today, more than ever, it is essential to understand the interdisciplinary field of non-linear systems and the potential of self-organizing teams within organizations.