Spirit – How Organizations Transform Themselves

Alan writes – recently I have gone back to re-read The Power of Spirit: How Organizations Transform. Its author Harrison Owen, an organizational consultant, claims that Spirit is the key to an organization thriving. “When the Spirit of a people is strong, focused and vibrant, wonderful things can happen. When the Spirit is down, it makes very little difference how good your reputation, how much money you have in the bank, or how strong the need for your goods and services. Not too much happens (p1).” He calls the later ‘soul pollution’.

When Owen speaks of Spirit with a capital ‘S” he means more than a good feeling or high morale – “We all know Spirit when we meet it. In its presence there is excitement, innovation, what we might call inspired performance. And inspiration, after all, literally means to ‘in-spirit’ (p7).” But for Spirit to really take hold of an organization and its people there must be room for chaos (an acceptance of our lack of control) and for grief work (an openness to honest feelings and a willingness to face the truth).

He says of chaos – “perhaps chaos is not antithetical to life, but rather a normal, natural, and possibly necessary aspect of what it means to be alive (p18)…the desert is the antechamber to the promised land. The prophet Isaiah puts the thought quite directly when he says (speaking for God), ‘I create the Light and make the Darkness. I create peace and chaos (p19).”

In the open space of chaos there is the possibility of something new. Without chaos, there can be nothing new.  The open space is created and protected by honest grief work. He describes the stages of grief work as:

·         Shock and Anger

·         Denial

·         Memories

·         Open Space as Despair

·         Open Space as Silence

·         Questioning

·         Vision

There are no short cuts but there are three supports. Firstly love. The love that accepts and embraces people in the midst of all their feelings through the grief process but also challenges. Secondly the power of stories. Stories well told he suggests are the carriers of Spirit. The stories we tell about ourselves define us as an organization. They need to be told. They need to be heard. Some need to be embraced for the next chapter as defining stories. Others need to be heard and learnt from. Finally he talks about the need to form a Dead Moose Society.

Drawing on a North American reality he says that when there is a dead moose nearby people tend to keep their distance. Nobody wants the job of dealing with it. A Dead Moose Society has the capacity to identify the dead moose and start the process of removing it and providing a decent funeral. In organizational terms the dead moose is the unpalatable truth that we all know, that is talked about in secret, complained about and walked around but so often never faced. Forming a Dead Moose Society encourages an organization to identify and name the unpalatable truths, to approach them, remove them and give them a decent funeral so they don’t continue to fester within the organization.

The book is not just theoretical but a "how to" for those trying to transform organizations with new Spirit. 

Comments

[Paul Fromont]

Hi Alan (and others). As I read this post I couldn't help think of Canadian Alan Roxburgh's work in this area.

In particular, his now "out of print" title: "Crossing the Bridge: Leadership in a time of change". In it he describes five phases of change; in some ways they have parallels with Owen's seven stages of grief. Roxburgh's are:

Stability.
Discontinuity.
Disembedding.
Transition.
Re-Formation.

He links these phases to the Biblical material very well.

Again, like Owen's book, it provides helpful insights into organisational change, the place of chaos / systems thinking, and particularly the role of leadership in change.

The full text of his book (co-written with Mike Regele) can be found online here:

http://www.percept1.com/pacific/PDF/CrossingBridge.pdf

Well worth checking out. Roxburgh's material is "stuff" that I keep coming back to.

Very thoughtful post Alan. Thanks so much.