CongresOver Het Nieuwe Werken

Leiderschap, gedrag en veranderingin de wereld van Het Nieuwe Werken

Prof. dr Erik van de Loo

6 december 2012

Nieuwegein

Werken zonder grenzen?

• Grote verlokkingen van ruimte, flexibiliteit, virtualiteit en snelheid.

• Welke risico’s en valkuilen gaan met deze ongekende mogelijkheden gepaard?

• Gevolgen voor leiderschap, gezondheid, produktiviteit en cultuur?

Task Technical Adaptive

Direction Provide problemDefinition & solution

Identify the adaptive challenge; frame key question & issues

Protection Protect from external threats Disclose external threats

Order Orientation

Conflict

Norms

Orient people to current roles

Restore order

Maintain norms

Disorient current roles; resist orienting people to new roles too quickly

Expose conflict or let it emerge

Challenge norms or let them be challenged

Leadership from a position of authority

Source: R. Heifetz, A. Grashow & M. Linsky, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, 2009

Adaptive Leadership

BUT: the most common cause of failure in leadership is treating adaptive challenges

as if they were “technical” problems.

Technical problems can be very complex and extremely important (e.g. replacing

a faulty heart valve); they have solutions that can be implemented based on

current know-how. Success comes from the application of authoritative expertise

and the organizations structure, procedures and ways of doing things

Adaptive challenges can only be addressed by changes in people’s priorities,

beliefs, habits and loyalties. Not authoritative expertise but discovery, letting go

of past solutions, tolerating losses and generating a capacity to thrive in anew is

what leads to success

Source: R. Heifetz, A. Grashow & M. Linsky, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, 2009

Technical Solutions versus Adaptive Challenges

• Hoe ziet u die balans voor uw organisatie? Wat vraagt dit van:– Medewerkers– OR– Leidinggevenden– Klanten– etc.

Uitdagingen leiderschap Het Nieuwe Werken (Grote Organisatie)

• Managen van verwachtingen• Enorme focus op controle, medewerkers:

zekerheidszoekers• Angst fouten te maken, klem op lerende

organisatie• Sterke domeinafbakening• Teveel top-down stijl van leidinggeven• Hoe behoud je je persoonlijke integriteit in

context van doelen, belangen en macht• Leiderschap en controle

Organizational Role Analysis (ORA)

Rol

Persoon Organisatie

Fit? Effectief?

Identificatie?

Erosie van richtinggevende kracht van Rol en Organisatie

• Persoonlijke wordt dominanter• Authenticiteit• Individualiteit • Integriteit• Personal Accountability• Waar sta ik? Wie ben ik? Wat kan ik? • Onderhandelen over rol en positie• Negotiating with oneself and losing…..

Erosion of the traditional Leadership Paradigm

Image of a powerful male leader who sits atop a hierarchical structure directing and controlling the activities of subjects toward the achievement of the leader’s goals: defense of kingdom, acquisition of new territory, waging and winning wars.

The Vanishing Organization: organizational containment in a networked world

(Cooper & Dartington, 2004)

• Organizations and institutions functioning as important ‘hubs’, generating increased complexity (through their networks of connectedness) and simultaneously experiencing a dissolution of boundary, autonomy and control. Networks escaping central control mechanisms, ‘risks’ emerge.

• Experience of continual organizational instability (change fatigue).

• Individual dependency needs cannot be met within organizations.

Work organizations no longer experienced as psychologically safe places:

failed dependency needs

• Failed hospitals• Failed schools• Failed banks• Failed prisons and courts• Failed (global) companies• Failed churches• Failed governments• Failed etc.

Emergence of a culture of comparison, creating performance anxiety in organizations and individuals.

Experiencing commitment and/or alienation

• In relation to the work itself• In relation to the employing organization

The danger of feeling like a fake (Manfred Kets de Vries)

• The psychology of the insecure over-achiever.

• At risk of ‘failed selves’, ‘failed competencies’, ‘failed careers’.

The Vanishing Organization (Cooper & Dartington, 2004)

• Relying on keeping each other in mind, even though not in direct communication, trying to maintain a relatedness to each other that had to compete for mental space with other kinds of relatedness and accountability (object constancy).

• In a ‘networked world’ we should not think of organizations as complete in themselves.

• Challenges and fears, both for survival and identity, around the nature and pace of change.

Emerging views of Leadership

• Moving from the concept of leadership as a relationship to leadership as a social process that contains complex relationships.

• A process of change where the ethics of individuals are integrated into the mores of a community.

A New Organisational Model

Integrated NetworkFrom traditional hierarchy TO

Adapted from: Bartlett & Ghoshal

Organisations without boundaries?

Source: Hirschhorn & Gilmore, Harvard Business Review 1992

Authority

Identity

Task

Political

© Erik van de Loo

Change and Transition

• Change–Change in external situation

• Transition–Internal psychological reorientation related to change

© Erik van de Loo

Leren werken met nieuwe vormen en patronen

• Pro-tainment• Compelling Spaces• Hot groups & Connective Leaders• X-Teams• Multi-party collaboration

Pro-tainment (Armstrong & Huffington, 2004)

• The making present of an organizational idea embodied in a lively and enlivening sense of the enterprise which the organization frames.

• Providing the facilitation and containment others need to collaborate with one another and develop the new ideas the organization needs to move forward.

• The leader formulates an idea of the enterprise that people can work at from divergent points of view, mobilizing hope against feelings of despair.

The concept of the ‘Compelling Space’ (Sharon Horowitz, 2004)

• Own self-initiated opportunities for professional development: putting oneself in a place of “not-knowing” and tolerating the anxiety generated by this situation, engaging with another person to learn something new.

• Does not refer to creative engagements of groups and teams, but rather to the organizational growth and development that was taking place within the immediate, unpredictable and mutual engagements of working pairs.

• These pairs reflect peoples’ creative attempts to connect with one another and work together within a vast, sometimes anonymous and diffuse organizational structure.

Hot Groups (Lipman-Blumen & Leavitt, 2009)

• A state of mind, an attitude that brings real people together around an invigorating challenge, inspiring them to meet that challenge through an extraordinary combustion of creativity, passion, exhiliration, determination and ordinary perspiration.

• Hot groups are on fire. Their members are single-minded and virtually obsessed by a task they believe to be worthy of their greatest effort. (“Flow”)

• Hot groups are speedy and usually short-lived.

Connective Leadership in Hot Groups (Lipman-Blumen & Leavitt, 2009)

1. Conductors: hands-on leaders with task-related expertise, may be different people at different stages of the project.

2. Patrons: usually high level executives who serve as ambassadors between the hot group and the rest of the organization.

3. Keepers-of-the-flame: connecting sequential hot groups, following a new but related trail, suggested but not explored by a previous hot group.

Qualities of connective leaders (Lipman-Blumen & Leavitt, 2009)

• They see connections among people, philosophies, processes and phenomena where most others see chasms, competition or disconnects.

• They join their own vision, as well as their colleagues, to the dreams of others by connecting and combining, rather than dividing and dominating.

• They engage in de-natured Machiavellianism, overtly using others as well as themselves, to accomplish the group’s (not their own personal) goals.

• They demonstrate authenticity through unwavering dedication to goals that transcend their own personal ambition.

Qualities of connective leaders (Lipman-Blumen & Leavitt, 2009)

• They remain stubbornly accountable, explaining and owning up their own mistakes and demanding the same from others.

• They create a sense of community, where many diverse individuals and groups can hold valued membership. Politics of ‘commonalities’ in contrast to politics of ‘differences’.

• They encourage active members to assume responsibilities at every level and stage of the work.

• They demand serious sacrifice first from themselves and only then from others.

X- Teams (Ancona, Bresman & Caldwell, 2009)

Differ from traditional teams in 3 ways:

1. High level of external activity – from day one members reach out to forge networks of contacts inside and outside the organizaton (via scouting; ambassadorship; task coordination)

2. Extreme internal execution – psychological safety; team reflection; knowing what others know, allowing for flexible membership and leadership structure.

3. Use of flexible phases, shifting activities over time – exploration; exploitation; exportation

Ancona & Bresman, X-Teams

Structures needed to support an X-Team

1. Extensive ties to the outside

2. Expandable tiers – core team with others coming on as required and then also going off

3. Distributed/exchangable leadership as people come and go

Ancona & Bresman, X-Teams

Extensive Relationships• know who to contact• make use of weak ties• make use of strong ties

Exchangeable membership• people shift in and out as needed

• people shift across tiers

• different tiers have different membership expectations

Expandable tiers• Core: creates team strategy and makes key

decisions, coordinates other parts of team, carries history and identity of the team

• Operational: ongoing work of the team

• Outer net: specialized or separable task, part- time or part-cycle members

Ancona & Bresman, X-Teams

Leading Collaborative Processes

• Capacity to understand multiparty dynamics• Capacity to stay in touch with emerging anxieties,

needs and emotions • Capacity to provide a minimal structure for

collaborative work• Capacity to contribute constructively to the

management of emotional processes.

© Erik van de Loo

Stellingen en vragen

• Het Nieuwe Werken stelt vragen naar de essentie van wat de organisatie en de rol van leiderschap daarbij is

• Het Nieuwe Werken is teveel een ideologie (voor of tegen) en nog te weinig wetenschappelijk onderbouwd (kennis over loopbaan, teams, organisaties, virtualiteit, etc.)

• Het Nieuwe Werken richt zich nog te eenzijdig op medewerkers en leidinggevenden, te weinig op klanten en andere stakeholders

Stellingen en vragen

• Organisaties zonder grenzen bestaan niet• Technologische mogelijkheden leiden snel tot mentale

en gedrags moeilijkheden binnen het Nieuwe Werken (balans technical solutions en adaptive challenges)

• Vanuit de evolutie zijn er oerbehoeften van een groep (richting, bescherming, ordening), deze blijven in het Nieuwe Werken onverminderd van kracht

• Het Nieuwe Werken is een innovatieve kracht voor denken over compliance, controle, cohesie en conflicten in organisaties