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YOUR ORGANIZATION’S BLUEPRINT FOR COMPETENCE
HOW DOES AN ENTIRE ORGANIZATION awaken compassion? By developing a social architecture that supports compassion competence. Organizations that collectively notice, interpret, feel, and act in an effective and customized fashion to alleviate suffering exhibit compassion competence. This chapter supports you in creating a blueprint for increasing these four dimensions of your organization’s compassion competence. First, a quick assessment highlights your current level of skill. You can complete this tool yourself or with others. If you choose to complete it as a group, know that shared perceptions illuminate your strengths, while differing perceptions highlight your opportunities. Use your results to facilitate discussions about enhancing compassion competence throughout your organization or system.
EXPLORE YOUR ORGANIZATION’S CURRENT COMPETENCE
STEP 1: RATE YOUR SKILLS
Think about the importance of compassion for a particular organization, division, unit, or work group as you read the following statements.
Consider your resources, broadly defined as anything that can be used to alleviate suffering. Common resources at work include presence; empathic listening; expressions of concern; helping with running errands, child care, or making meals; flexible time arrangements; task flexibility; donations of material goods; and financial aid.
Where is your organization along each continuum? Rate it as far to the right, far to the left, or somewhere in the middle.
STEP 2: IDENTIFY STRENGTHS AND CHALLENGES
Strengths: Identify the two lines where you rated your organization farthest to the right—these are your strengths. Do they correspond with speed, scale, magnitude, or customization? What insights does this generate?
Challenges: Identify the two lines where you rated your organization farthest to the left—these are your challenges. Do they correspond with speed, scale, magnitude, or customization? What insights does this generate?
CREATE YOUR ORGANIZATION’S BLUEPRINT FOR COMPETENCE
Note below whether each measure is a strength or challenge.
Explore the strategy and action questions to determine how you will build on your strengths and mitigate your challenges to increase your organization’s compassion competence.
A BLUEPRINT FOR YOUR SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE
This tool incorporates the design principles for compassion architects from chapter 9 to guide you in redesigning specific elements of your organization, such as networks, culture, roles, routines, and leadership actions that shape the way it responds to suffering. Use this blueprint to make it more likely that every time suffering surfaces, your organization will respond with compassion.
EXPLORE YOUR ORGANIZATION’S SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE
STEP 1: RATE YOUR ORGANIZATION’S SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE
Where is your organization’s social architecture along each continuum?
Rate it as far to the right, far to the left, or somewhere in the middle.
STEP 2: IDENTIFY FACILITATORS AND BLOCKS
Facilitators: Identify the two lines where you rated your social architecture farthest to the right—these are your facilitators. Do they correspond to networks, culture, roles, routines, leadership, or stories?
Blocks: Identify the two lines where you rated your organization farthest to the left—these are your blocks. Do they correspond to networks, culture, roles, routines, leadership, or stories?
CREATE A BLUEPRINT FOR YOUR SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE
Note below whether each element of your social architecture is facilitating or blocking compassion in your organization.
Focus your attention first on your facilitators, discussing how you can make them more consistent or reliable.
Then turn your attention to your blocks, discussing how you can mitigate them.
NETWORKS
The networks in our organization are _____ facilitating _____ blocking compassion.
Design principles related to networks
Create subnetworks within the organization where people can identify with one another and be more fully and authentically known.
Invite stakeholders to dialogue about important issues to open up different points of view.
Build on your connections. When suffering surfaces, offer your presence, your willingness to listen, and a simple acknowledgment that you are with the other person amid the pain.
Draw more people into compassionate action and encourage them to generate and calibrate resources.
When suffering requires elaborate patterns of improvised action, match those who are suffering with a buddy who can monitor their well-being and adjust the pattern in a quick, mindful way.
Changes to our organization’s social architecture
How might we form small networks of people across the organization who know each other well and share common interests?
How might we increase the quality of connections in these networks? How might we invite more stakeholders to participate in regular dialogues to build empathy?
What other changes can we make to leverage strengths in our organization’s networks?
How might we mitigate blocks to compassion in our organization’s networks?
The culture in our organization is _____ facilitating _____ blocking compassion.
Design principles related to culture
Regard any organizational change that improves efficiency as an opportunity to simultaneously increase compassion by tying the change to the value of shared humanity.
Point out the cost of corrosive connections and actions that undermine the cultural value of shared humanity.
Articulate the cultural assumption of shared humanity in a way that makes sense in your work. Use this statement to guide how you and others engage when conflicts or disagreements erupt.
Set aspirational community goals that help people see that their success is tied to their interdependence in a human ecosystem where everyone is striving for compassion.
Involve people in sharing their personal experiences of compassion at work as a way to heighten empathy.
Host retreats or gatherings that engage people in playful interactions with symbols of compassion and explore how they relate to their work as a means of increasing empathy.
Changes to the social architecture
How might we further develop assumptions of shared humanity in our culture?
How might we articulate values and put them into action in ways that reflect shared humanity and support compassion?
How might we make it more normal to express emotion, respect, affection, and care in the organization?
How might we incorporate more play into our work in appropriate ways? How might we leverage other strengths of our culture to support compassion?
How might we mitigate blocks to compassion that originate in our culture?
The roles in our organization are _____ facilitating _____ blocking compassion.
Design principles related to roles
Regard any organizational change that improves efficiency as an opportunity to simultaneously increase compassion by redesigning roles in ways that elevate people’s sense of responsibility for others’ well-being.
Invent roles that address persistent sources of suffering at work.
Describe all roles so they include explicit responsibility not only for protecting the organization but also for protecting the well-being of stakeholders.
Support and reward the emergent roles that happen during compassionate action, such as coordinators or expeditors who make action more predictable and enhance the competence in the system.
Changes to the social architecture
How might we redesign work roles to expand responsibility for others’ well-being?
How might we encourage people to take initiative in expanding their roles to include responsibility for others’ well-being?
How might we invent roles that would address the most common forms of suffering in the system?
How might we better spot and recognize emergent roles that increase competence in the system?
What changes could we make to leverage the strengths of roles in our organization?
What changes would mitigate blocks to compassion that originate in our role definitions?
The routines in our organization are _____ facilitating _____ blocking compassion.
Design principles related to routines
Revamp selection and hiring routines to emphasize high-quality connections, empathy, and fit with the cultural assumptions and values of shared humanity at work.
Create meeting or gathering routines that bring people into regular, consistent contact with each other and make space to discuss both work performance and relational needs for help or support.
Emphasize informal recognition and formal social recognition of compassionate actions in ways that make compassion rewarding rather than costly.
Invent training routines that address persistent sources of suffering in work.
Celebrate compassionate action regularly with celebration routines that strengthen relationships and reinforce people’s belief in the compassion of the organization.
Institute routines for discussing errors, failures, mistakes, and near misses in ways that emphasize learning and reduce blame.
When decisions involve responding to suffering, discuss the decision from the point of view of multiple roles within and outside the organization and actively consider the perspectives of others who are involved.
Develop frameworks and routines for decision-making, including measures and data tracking that make visible the costs of suffering and the value of human dignity.
Adopt formal routines for inviting all stakeholders to participate in dialogue regarding important issues to reveal multiple perspectives.
Involve clients and customers in appropriately playful engagement with the organization or its product-development routines.
When suffering requires sustained responsiveness, use a short daily meeting or check-in as a way to ensure that improvised actions are coordinated and that they continue to remain coordinated over time as conditions change.
Changes to the social architecture that will leverage strengths or mitigate blocks
How might we shift the way that we do recruiting, hiring, onboarding, off-boarding, performance management, conflict resolution, and other human resource routines to infuse them with more compassion?
How might we shift routines about our regular meetings to emphasize shared humanity and compassion?
How might we shift training and professional development to incorporate more skills related to compassion?
How might we shift the way we informally and formally recognize and reward people so that we are increasing the rewards for compassion?
How might we shift the way we plan and make decisions to incorporate greater emphasis on human worth and dignity?
How might we shift the way we routinely use communication channels to enhance empathy and compassion?
How might we leverage other strengths in our organization’s routines?
How might we mitigate blocks to compassion that are a result of our organization’s routines?
LEADERS’ ACTIONS AND STORIES
Leaders’ actions and stories in our organization are _____ facilitating _____ blocking compassion.
Design principles related to stories and leaders’ actions
Coach leaders to model compassion and related values in action.
Uphold models of leading with compassion. Share stories of compassionate decisions. Use them to spark discussions about how everyone’s roles can be recrafted to incorporate more responsibility for the well-being of others.
Share stories of times when a lack of generous interpretations of errors have caused suffering in the organization, to show how generous interpretations can alleviate this suffering.
Draw people into imagining new ways that they could collectively respond to problems or difficulties by telling stories about how the response could be more fun and engaging.
Tell stories of improvised compassionate action as a way to inspire greater participation and expand emergent patterns.
Tap into pride and elevation that motivate people to engage in compassion by sharing stories that expand people’s view of what is possible.
Changes to the social architecture that will leverage strengths or mitigate blocks
How might we elevate and showcase more leaders as role models for compassion at work?
How might we enable leaders to draw people into rituals when suffering strikes?
How might we learn to lead discussions of errors and mistakes that emphasize learning and compassion?
How might we share stories of compassion in the organization more authentically?
How can we leverage the strengths of stories in our organization?
How might we mitigate the blocks that originate from leaders’ actions or stories in our organization?