Creating and Sustaining Positive Organizations

By Robert E. Quinn

This week I was teaching an Executive MBA course.  We were having a particularly stimulating discussion about adaptive confidence, or the ability to move forward into uncertainty, knowing that we will learn our way to an appropriate outcome.  One man said, “I totally lacked adaptive confidence. I never did anything without a risk assessment. Then something happened.  I changed.  I began to do riskier things, always saying, ‘we will figure this out.’  Now my team is also with me.  We get to a hard place and they do not stop.  They just say, ‘we can figure this out.’”

I love the notion that he went through a significant change and learned to operate with adaptive confidence.  I am even more impressed that his team began to pick up this characteristic.

As I ponder the story, his comments lead me to think about various virtues and their connection to moral development and the process of change.  Here is one example.

Forgiveness

There has been considerable research on forgiveness [1].  When negative behaviors are imposed on us by others we have a natural tendency to either avoid the offender or to seek revenge for the perceived transgression.  This is particularly true when the offense is seen as intentional, as severe and as resulting in extreme negative consequences.  The tendency to retaliate appears to be biologically, psychologically and sociologically ingrained.

An alternative to avoidance and revenge is the exercise of forgiveness.  Forgiveness is a shift in which our feelings, thoughts and behaviors towards a perceived transgressor become less negative and more positive. This capacity to forgive appears to develop with age.  As people grow older they often mature in their ability to reason based on moral principles.  As people progress through the stages of moral reasoning they are more likely to practice forgiveness.

The Third Path

I find it intriguing that people at higher levels of moral development are able to transcend the fight or flight pattern, and can learn to consciously choose forgiveness.  I believe that this capacity to transcend biological programming extends to other virtues in addition to forgiveness and that it has an influence on the process of leading change.

Recently I viewed a scene from the movie Gandhi.  Hindus and Muslims were attacking each other.  Political leaders discussed what to do.  The first question was, “How many troops do we have?”  When they learned that they had no troops, the leaders despaired.  They had no options.

Gandhi did not engage in the discussion.  He simply got up and left.  He was not interested in the fight option or the flight option.  Instead of fleeing from the conflict, he moved towards it.  He traveled to the center of the violence.  He did so with adaptive confidence and he eventually came to a new strategy.  He found a bed on a roof and announced that he would fast until the violence ended.  His fast brought the violence to a halt.

This story is nearly incomprehensible.  Why did he have options no one else could imagine?

Four Ways to See

For several decades I have worked with executives on the topic of organizational change.  I have particularly tried to lift them to the level of adaptive confidence.

I would like to suggest that, when it comes to change strategies, there is a progression [2].  Nearly everyone who enters an organization recognizes that the organization is a technical system.  People, who hold the technical worldview, seek to bring change by finding and expressing technical truths.  “We will save more money if we take variation out of the system.”

The second strategy is as common as the first.  Most, but not all, recognize that the organization is also a political system.  There are scarce resources that must be allocated across competing interests.  These people use technical arguments but when it does not work they move to political leverage or some form of force.  “How many troops do we have?”

The third strategy is less common.  Some understand that the organization is also a social system, made up of people with agency.  Actors who take this perspective seek to build trust and teamwork through participative processes.  Instead of doing change “to” people, they understand the value of doing change “with” people.  When people add this perspective to the other two, they increase in effectiveness.

Few people ever progress beyond the awareness of these first three alternatives.  Yet there is another strategy.  It is the strategy of transcendence and transformation.  It is the strategy of changing others by changing ourselves.  By clarifying our values and increasing our commitment to the result we want to create, we increase our integrity and therefore our moral power.  We learn to change by modeling and attraction.  To quote Gandhi, we seek to “become the change we want to see in the world.”

It is very difficult to bring executives to a comprehension of this fourth strategy.  Like the politicians trying to determine what to do with the violence in India, most executives are wedded to assumptions of technical logic and political leverage.  Even at the cost of being ineffective, they will hold to the first two strategies.

Some executives have had life experiences that have lifted them to higher levels of moral reasoning.  These few people see the organization as a moral system and understand moral power.   This understanding gives them counterintuitive options.  Instead of moving away from conflict, they move towards it.  With adaptive confidence, they enter the crucible of anxiety, knowing that a series of appropriate moves will come to them.  This is what led Gandhi to the roof.  Like that wonderful man in the EMBA class, Gandhi knew he would “figure it out.”

In the corporate world, the culture teaches people to “be in control.”   This is one reason why organizational change does not happen easily.  Everyone wants to be in control.  Adaptive confidence is a rare skill.  It comes as the self evolves.  As we move to higher levels of cognitive, emotional, behavioral and moral complexity, we become more effective agents of change.

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References

[1]  Mccullough, M. E. and Witvliet, C.V.  “The Psychology of Foregiveness.”  In Snyder, C.R. and Lopez, S.J. (Eds), “Handbook of Positive Psychology.’’  New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

[2] Quinn, Robert E.  “Change the World: How Ordinary People Can Accomplish Extraordinary Results.”  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000.

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