Creating and Sustaining Positive Organizations

By Robert E. Quinn

I have been around some interesting people lately.  One was a leader in a huge global organization.  He spoke about transformation.  He said that a problem in the organization was that most people “view the future through yesterday’s eyes.”

A Woman Who Changes Her Organization

I also did some work with some senior people at Avon.  When they spoke of their CEO, they did so with awe.  I was so impressed I decided to find out more about the person.  Her name is Andrea Jung and she is the most tenured female CEO in the Fortune 500.  She has a long history of success.

In the June 14^th, 2009 issue of USA Today there was an interview with Jung that particularly caught my attention.  She talked about being proactive or “fixing the roof while the sun is still shining.”  That is, making bold change not as a reaction to problems but as the pursuit of opportunity.  My experience suggests that few executives do this.

Jung recognized the value of experience but cautioned that experience has a downside.  Like the man above, she worried that people cannot, “look at the business with fresh eyes.”  She then advises:

Fire yourself on a Friday night and come in on Monday morning as if a search firm put you there as a turn-around leader. Can you be objective and make the bold change? If you can’t, then you haven’t reinvented yourself. I’m not the same leader I was even last year, because those skills have rendered themselves not as useful. I’ve had to reinvent myself every year.

A Radical View

Managers and management researchers assume that people are reactive. Change is problem solving.  Further it is a function of authority and expertise.  Change is something the person with power does to someone with less power.  In the normal paradigm there is no place for self-change.  Jung’s position is difficult to even comprehend.  It sounds like nonsense.

A Woman Who Creates Companies

I visited with another audience, a group of venture capitalists and CEOs of start-up firms.  I spoke of self-change and the capacity to change organizations.  I spoke of significant life events or traumas that become periods of personal transformation.  I explained that during these life events we have the opportunity to assume a new and expanded identity.  When we do so our capacities automatically increase.  We can do things we could not do before.

These very innovative people resonated with the message and afterwards they lined up to tell me their own personal stories of self-change.  One of these people was a woman who started out with a declaration.

I have a very unique skill.  I create companies.    I bring people together, and out of nothing, I make something.  That is what I do.

While she said this with enormous confidence, it was not a statement of hubris.  Instead she said it with a sense of wonder.  It was as if she was being vitalized by this momentary auditing of her own ability.

I was impressed.  Imagine having confidence that you could enter new situations and bring people together in such a way that a new company emerges.  Imagine being able to do this over and over.  It seems like the power of some business superhero in a cartoon yet to be created.

I asked her how she acquired this capacity and she made another claim.

I went through a terrible life crisis.  I was without work.  I hungered to get back into my comfort zone.  So I took a job just like the one I was in before.  After three months, I realized I made a mistake.  So I made an unusual decision.  I decided to leave my job and live without an income.  Previously I thought people loved me because I made money.  I discovered that they loved me because of who I am.  I discovered I could do things I did not know I could do.  I gained a new identity and a higher level of confidence in myself.  I could see in new ways and I was not afraid to try new things.

The Message from Science

With her claims in mind I would like to consider another set of claims.  They come from a scientific paper [1] on the development of authentic leadership capacity.  Here are several points from the paper.

1. Ascending into a leadership position is due more to life experiences than to heredity.  The most important life experiences are called trigger events.  Trigger events capture attention, provide surprising feedback and invite self-reflection.  They can give rise to new beliefs about self. (The life crisis experienced by the woman who creates organizations would be such a trigger event.  It clearly captured her attention and caused deep self-reflection.)
2. Self reflection is an important process.  It is the process of consciously examining and interpreting our life experiences so we can learn from them.  It is not necessarily a natural or automatic process.  It happens in response to the experience and because we have a definite purpose that drives us. (When the above woman went back to her comfort zone, she must have continued in self-reflection because she resisted the tendency to stay in her comfort zone.  Instead she made a surprising choice to leave her job.  This suggests that a transformation had taken place.  In the natural model growth occurs when we are so committed to some purpose that we are willing to face new challenges.  Doing this can transform us because growth suddenly becomes our purpose.  This woman was willing to enter uncertainty in order to experience growth.)
3. There are two kinds of self-reflection.  Maladaptive self-reflection is a destructive way of thinking.
4. Energy is lost as negative emotions operate (anxiety, self-doubt, and fear.)  Downward psychological spirals cause the person to close off the learning process.  Since trigger events can threaten a person’s existing beliefs, threaten the ego, and distort one’s efforts to maintain an external image, some people are less likely to learn from trigger events.   Adaptive self reflection, on the other hand, is a process associated with positive emotions that give rise to learning.  It happens because one has an intrinsic desire to learn about self as a leader. (As the above woman took initiatives she was able to reflect and learn new things about herself.  She acquired a new identity and a higher level of confidence that enabled her to try still more new things, stimulating still more learning.)
5. Some people have more developmental readiness than others.  They desire to develop the environment in some positive way.  They are more likely to invest energy in experiences that expand the mindset.  In the process they are less likely to be defensive and more likely to explore new beliefs about themselves as leaders and more likely to alter habitual behaviors.  They may also be ready to seek out more trigger events, and even stimulate them.  Doing this creates a virtuous cycle that accelerates development. (The above woman hungered to develop her environment, she, for example, delighted in her capacity to create new organizations.  These creative attempts are investments of energy in activities that will expand her mindset.  Each initiative becomes a new trigger event.  But note that she is now the source of the trigger event.  She is creating experiences that invite adaptive-self reflection.  She is initiating events that expand her consciousness and accelerates her own development.)

Application

Like Andrea Jung at Avon, the above woman is committed to continual reinvention of the self.  It is from this continual self-change that she finds the power to create new organizations.

There is power in self-change.  This is why Jung tells us to fire ourselves every Friday.  She is teaching us the essence of change leadership.    We cannot make bold organizational changes without reinventing ourselves.  Only adaptive people can create adaptive organizations.  Self-change is actually a skill that comes to us as we make self-change.  Having the skill and using it increases it.

Self-change is the foundation skill of change leadership.  When we do it, we drop old assumptions about ourselves and we see the world with new eyes.  We no longer “need” the old problems that justify our assumptions.   We naturally look for new opportunities.  Because we are change, we can give rise to change.  We produce the visions that attract others to the collective learning process that is the engine of transformation.  The group begins to process collective trigger events that lead to new mindsets, new behaviors and new cultures. We can see with fresh eyes and we gain the power to create organization.

[1] Avolio, BJ, Griffith, J., Wernsing, TS, Walumbwa.   2010.  What is Authentic Leadership Development?  In Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology and Work, ed. PA Lindley, S Harrington, N Garcea, pp. 39-51.  Oxford University Press. 343 pp.

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