184

it’s a mystery to me.         Part of what drives the instrumental culture and keeps us entangled in practicality is our need for certainty. This is inevitably frustrated by the nature of human systems. Much of what we know about how people change or how organizations develop is based on anecdote and intuition. The social sciences are highly social with very little science. Much of the research in psychology has been done with college students, since they are the only subjects that are available and affordable. Research in living systems uses the term research in the broadest terms, since it is impossible to create controlled conditions in a human operating system. One of the tenets of science is that the research be replicable, which is impossible in a social system.

The Problem of Freedom

The insolubility of human problems began in the Garden of Eden. God could have let Adam and Eve remain in Paradise. But he summoned the serpent, innocence was lost, and the rest is history. Well, kind of. At that moment we were given our freedom and evil was created—evil in the sense that there are aspects of the world that will always be out of our control that diminish the human spirit.

It is the fact that we are free that creates unsolvable problems. The desire to see all problems as solvable is an assault on freedom. It is a belief that evil can be eradicated and that by so doing we create the false possibility that we can return to Paradise. Thus, we underestimate the power of evil and ignore the redemptive nature of the struggle.

False Certainty

Seeking certainty in human affairs breeds doubt and the belief that we are not enough. This doubt and insecurity is why we keep asking for more answers, long after the answers we have been given are unsatisfying. Seeking certainty assumes that if we knew more or knew better, we would know what to do. We would know how to end the suffering of others and our own. We think that if we were better parents, we would have happier and more successful children, or we might have gotten the children that we originally ordered. Demanding a solution, or an action plan for everything, is also arrogant. It is a wish for perfection. It is our wish to be God.

When we accept that there are sets of problems for which there are no answers, and that there never will be answers, we create room for mystery and imperfection in life. Mystery and imperfection restore our humanity. It is the imperfect room that, as for Christopher Alexander, opens us to the possibility of life. There needs to be space for wonder, gratitude, surrender, grief, and compassion in our institutional lives as well as our personal lives. It transforms what we thought were “problems” into the human condition. Our willingness to accept an imperfect and paradoxical world breaks down our detachment and creates the opportunity for a more intimate connection with the world. It helps us realize that all business is personal and thereby brings depth into our lives. And learning about questions is the potter’s clay of idealism.

A Human Organization

Acknowledging the mystery of life, of human motivation, of how people make contact with each other, changes our thinking about organizational life. The diversity and imperfection of human souls is, ultimately, what makes institutions engaging, humane, and habitable. Human systems are imperfect, the homes for unsolvable problems. And we cannot take the tools and strategies of engineering and economics and apply them to the governance of organizations.

You sometimes hear the term “management science.” But there is no such thing as management science, nor is there much valid social science. Even calling them “sciences” is wishful thinking. If you doubt this, let me ask you a simple question: In terms of your business, university, non-profit organization, school, hospital, or whatever your workplace, how is it going? Is it under control, predictable, and operating with reason? Or is it agonizingly political, filled with people and departments at odds with each other, struggling to live out its values and beliefs? And when you answer this question, think of people at your level and above. The only time the world looks like it is under control is when we look down at those below us. There is a vertical distortion looking down, much like watching the earth from an airplane. The earth looks spacious, peaceful, and very neat. Right up to the moment you land.

The Myth of Change Management

The tendency to overapply engineering and science principles to human endeavors is rampant in the arena of organizational change. For years now we have been trying to drive change. Drill down change. Roll out change programs. We want to implement and install programs. We want to prescribe the desired behavior, then train and evaluate people against it. We call them programs or processes as if they were, in fact, predictable. They aren’t. If you are the recipient of these change efforts, you will see at first hand the difficulty of being the one who is driven, drilled, rolled out, installed, trained, and evaluated.

What we call change management becomes cosmetic and fashionable when we think we can predict and control it, make it into a science. There is the art of management, the practice of management, but the science of management? Not so—not if you are in the middle of it.

The work of building, managing, and then transforming human systems suffers when we focus too much on answers. The reason that we must keep going from fashion to fashion, consultant to consultant, when we keep asking How? is that we are looking for an answer that is not there. It is like looking for the fountain of youth. Don’t keep looking for something you will not find. Stop digging.

The Value of the Question

What is most useful is to think carefully about the question. There is nothing so practical as a good theory, and even more so, there is nothing so practical as a good question. Those things in human affairs that offer solutions to problems float right on the surface. Human systems require depth. The deeper the better. Philosophy rather than psychology, imagination rather than engineering, exploration rather than installation. There is nothing more practical in human matters than to postpone the urge to be immediately practical.

If we can accept that there is no solution to human problems, that they cannot be engineered or purchased away, then we can accept that the question is more important than the answer. In fact, for each of us, knowing our question may be the real task. Perhaps transformation is marked by the shifting of our question.

It is in the realm of human endeavors that we will discover what matters. Here are some thoughts that are likely to lead to lasting development of effective human systems.

1. Understand that the task is to shift the demand for the right answer to the search for the right question. For anything that matters, the answer is in the question. Get the question right, and the answer is self-evident in every case. All that is required is to meditate, turn, and face squarely the implications of this question. Recognize that for every answer to an important question, the opposite is also true. What is the question that, if I had an answer to, would set me free?
2. Recognize that the struggle is the solution. Serious dialogue about the question brings its resolution. Resolution is not so much an answer, but the experience that our actions begin to shift in more productive and harmonious directions. Peter Koestenbaum says that we simply outgrow the question. It is faith in dialogue that replaces belief in formulas. The world offers you a formula to meet its needs, you answer with a deeper question that you have constructed.
3. See the reality in the current situation. See the suffering and the costs of what exists now. Telling the truth is a major step in any restoration effort. In this book, I have tried to articulate the instrumentality of the culture as a way of offering choice in response to it.
4. 190Grieve for the costs of what exists now. Especially for the complexity and permanence of the human condition. In facing suffering that you know is permanent, the only action that matters is grief.
5. Gain control of the nature of the debate. Who determines the subject of the debate? You regain control of your life by deciding what questions are important. This may not give you the outcome you are looking for, but it is a political act to decide what is discussed.
6. Treat the conversation as an action. It is an act of freedom to struggle with questions of identity, what matters, who we are. What do we want to become? What are our desires? Whom do we want to engage? A conversation about any of these is an action plan. It provides us with the engagement and the intimacy we seek.
7. Raise the question of what do we want to create together, even for an established institution. The real task is to help the institution question its own purpose. Making money and serving a constituency are too small. Acting on what matters is a question for our institutions as well as for ourselves. Meaning comes when we raise questions about purpose in our workplace—questions of social responsibility, social equity, civic engagement, the meaning the institution has for the community. All of these can be pursued while at the same time getting the work of the organization accomplished. The economists won’t agree, but they have had their way for a while.

Serenading the Moon

All of these actions seem to take too long. It feels like we have been asking the big questions forever. That feeling is the resistance to going deeper and to recognizing what you are up against. The questions are too big and take too long only if you expect a final resolution.