ARE:A Renewal Enterprise

Four Ways To Get Going When The Going Is Tough

It's a hard time to be in business, whatever your business is. A lot of nonprofit organizations and churches, for example, are experiencing shrinkage in both financial resources and membership. Unfortunately, when the going gets tough, a lot of these organizations don't "get going." Instead, they become:

• more and more inwardly focused;
• less willing to take the kinds of risks that innovation demands;
• more likely to be torn apart by internal conflicts over who gets the share of scare resources;
• more suspicious of outsiders and perceived "competitors";
• less open to new ideas and new people;
• more protective of their customs, traditions, and "the way we've always done it";
• more centralized and top-down in their decision-making;
• a lot less interesting or fun to be a part of.

Sound anything like the organization you're a part of? Here are four things you can do to get yourself (and others) going when things get tough:

Innovation Begins With Letting Go

"Change seems to be a process that can be tapped but not muscled." - F. Westley, et al, Getting To Maybe, 2006. That's just one of the key insights from the emerging field of social innovation that has shaped our thinking, the way we approach our work with leaders and organizations, and the development of the practices and process strategies of The Renewable Organization (cf. The Future Starts Now, 2009). 

Social innovation researchers, like Francis Westley at the University of Waterloo and others, study how positive change is created in complex systems. They are helping us understand that people who are called to create change must do these two things simultaneously:

• Accept their responsibility to take action and do something;
• Give up the need to be in control of either the process or the outcomes.

Feeling queasy yet?

Don't Be A Jerk

There have been some fascinating and very public examples lately of how NOT to treat the people you work with. Noriko Unoura, one of the top directors at Seiko, has just been pushed out by the board after years of bullying her employees and the 89-year old honorary chairman of the board who protected her for all these years has been stripped of his executive power. And General David Petraeus has been named to replace General Stanley McChrystal as commander of US forces in Afghanistan after McChrystal bashed his boss in public and lampooned his coworkers, calling them "clowns" and other derogatory names. 

There's a lesson here for all of us, whether you're in a formal leadership position or you answer to a boss: Don't be a jerk.