Spirit AND Organization

WHAT DOES SPIRIT HAVE TO DO WITH ORGANIZATION? Is there a relationship? Are these two ideas mutually exclusive? Rather than being exclusive, I believe that the one is dead without the other. Organization without Spirit is like the human body without the soul; it takes on mechanistic features that cannot help but treat people like components of a production system rather than as the dynamic, mysterious, willful, creative beings that they are. Such organizations inevitably become dehumanizing. People become "human resources" to be budgeted and spent or "hands" needed to get the job done. Any time we look at people and the problems of organization from a purely engineering perspective, we will tend to see them as mere tools. There is good evidence that Frederick W. Taylor developed the methods of Scientific Management from a motive of compassion for the worker (Wren, 1994, p. 129). Yet, his engineering background and the American Industrial Revolution defined the framework within which organizations were conceptualized, a framework of machines and mass production which inevitably saw workers as components of that vast machine. Fortunately, the "softer" sides of the workplace--human emotions and relationships--and their effect on productivity were gradually acknowledged and organizational theorists came to understand that people are more than machines (Rieger, 1995). The acknowledgment of human emotion was a giant leap forward in our understanding of how organizations work; but is it sufficient?

It appears that in today's world of ethical relativism, globalization, virtuality, and information overload, people are sensing a growing need from something more. The Judeo-Christian Scriptures teach that human beings are more than body and emotions, that in fact there is a third dimension, a dimension of Spirit, without which any conception of coordinated human enterprise will fall short. In the midst of the whirlwind complexity of today's workplace, the time may have arrived to finally understand that Spirit and Organization are not strangers, but cousins of the same family. Organization without Spirit is dead; but so is Spirit without Organization. The one produces a mechanistic automaton; the other an ethereal dream. James, the brother of Jesus, wrote: "Faith, if it has no works, is dead" (James 2:17). The Apostle Paul wrote that unless we pursue our dreams "by faith" then we will inevitably stumble (Romans 9:32). The reality is that we need both and that the spark of creative energy and productivity is ignited when the two are joined.

Works Cited

Rieger, B. J. (1995) Lessons in productivity & people. Training & Development 49(10), 56-58.

Wren, D. A. (1994). The evolution of management thought (4th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Biblical Quotes are from the New American Standard Bible. (1995). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

The Secret of Making Good Decisions

ORGANIZATIONS ARE ALL ABOUT DECISIONS. Organizations have prospered or declined on the basis of a few critical decisions that bent the future of the organization in one direction or another. In 1975, Victor H. Vroom wrote a seminal research paper titled "Can Leaders Learn to Lead," in which he set forth a model for the decision-making process. Part of the Vroom model consisted of seven questions that relate to all decisions. I will use these questions, worded somewhat differently, as the outline for this post. The questions comprise two phases in the decision-making process: (a) the rational phase and (b) the people phase. This is not to say that people cannot at times act rationally, but only that they often do not. The first phase is expressed in the following three questions:

Investing in People through Participation & Empowerment

In the next few posts, I want to explore the topic of participative organizational systems and the closely related topic of organizational empowerment. Though empowerment has a much broader meaning, I am here using it specifically to refer to decision-making authorization. McMahon (1976) was one of the first to research the relationship of participative management and power equalization with organizational effectiveness. Though closely related, there are some significant differences between these two approaches to organizational management. Participative systems, according to McMahon, include people at all levels of the organization in the decision-making process, but they don't necessarily give decision-making power to those who occupy the lower levels of the organizational structure. Power equalization, on the other hand, implies that those who occupy the lowest levels of the structure are given power to make real-time decisions, which pushes the decision-making power out to the place where the actual work is taking place.

Management and Leadership are two very different systems of human behavior. Both are essential to the success of an organization; yet, like the repulsing polarity of two magnets, they push against one another and, if not kept in balance, can end up ejecting one or the other causing great damage to the organization and its people. It is difficult, yet necessary, to maintain both strong leadership and strong management simultaneously.

Is Recognition Hazardous to my Spiritual Health?

Sunday morning, I was with a group of Christians who were talking about rewards. An opinion was expressed that seemed to me to be saying that, if a person receives any recognition or praise in this life, he or she can forget about receiving any kind of reward in the next life. That seemed to me like an extreme point of view. If true, it would be wise to live lives of such mediocrity as to ensure that we do not incite the praise of anyone. Heaven forbid that the quality of our work be recognized by someone!

How to Lose Valuable Employees

SOMEONE VERY CLOSE TO ME RECEIVED A MEMO from her supervisor today. I share this with you because I think it's a great example of what it looks like when an organizational leader either has no understanding of or deliberately neglects the spiritual dimension of her employees. The memo was type-written on one of Microsoft Word's basic templates, with the word Memo in thick black letters at the top left-hand side of the paper. It said: "based on your performance," the full-time position that had been promised would not be available. It ended with, "I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause." The memo was left in the employee's mailbox to be discovered at the end of the work day. There are several reasons why I say this was a leadership failure at the level of the spirit.

 What Spirituality is Not

SPIRITUALITY HAS BECOME A HOT TOPIC. Since Thomas Moore's publication of Care for the Soul in 1994, more than 800 books have been published with the word "soul" in the title. An Amazon.com search for books with the word "spirit," "spiritual," or "spirituality," in the title yielded 39,181 results. I did the same with Google.com--searching only in the titles of web pages--and came up with 3,380,000 hits!

The problem, however, is that there is no consensus about what everyone is talking about. Referring to the word "spirit," H. Grady Davis wrote in Design for Preaching:

 How to Be a Spiritual Person

My previous post introduced the idea of spirituality from the perspective of human nature. It is an integral component of what makes us uniquely human. Because of that nature, we can, at some level, relate to anyone spiritually. Another way the word "spiritual" is used is to describe a particular quality that is reflected in an individual's life. In this second sense, it is not true to say that all people are spiritual. In fact, in comparison with the great masses of the world, probably only a small group learn to live truly spiritual lives (Matthew 7:14). In this post, I will try to define this qualitative meaning of spirituality.

Empowerment: A Pipe Dream?

THE TOPICS OF PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS and Employee Empowerment have generated a persistent interest among organizational leaders for more than 40 years (Senge, 2006; Spreitzer, 1996; Ashkenas, et al., 2002). The reasons cited for this enthusiasm are pragmatic and philosophical. Pragmatists contend that participative systems work better. Argyris (1955) argued that participative management (1) increases group cohesiveness, (2) gives employees a broad understanding of the organization, (3) decreases conflict, (4) improves interpersonal relationships, (5) decreases worker turnover, and (6) increases creativity. The philosophical approach sees participative management systems as treating workers with the dignity that is due them as creative human beings. This reasoning is perhaps best captured in John Dewey's definition of political democracy as:

Spiritual is What We Are

WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY? This question can have a variety of answers depending on the way the word "spiritual" is used. It can refer either to the nature of man or to the character of an individual person. This is an important distinction because it helps us to understand how spirituality can be applied in a diverse workplace setting where people have very different starting points and convictions about religion and spirituality.

The Missing Ingredient in Empowerment

WHAT IS THE MISSING INGREDIENT in the corporate world that does not allow true participation and empowerment to fully develop? I believe that what's missing is a higher authority, one that is above the CEO and even above the organization. I am referring to a direct personal spiritual Presence, Who directs the organization, pulls the disparate parts into a cohesive whole, establishes overall direction and purpose, and is consistently available for those who will listen. Confidence that such a higher authority exists would enable the leadership to trust the empowering system because they know that it is directed from a higher source. The Scriptures provide a description of how this works in its record of the establishment and growth of the early Christian church.

So You Want to Empower Others?

WHAT IF I WANT TO DEVELOP AN EMPOWERING ORGANIZATION? What exactly does that mean? What kinds of changes are we talking about? Is it just some new management fad; or is there substance here? I believe the latter: that organizational empowerment will not only bring bottom-line benefits to the organization, but is also central to what it means to be a true leader.

As mentioned in my previous post, the leader is one of the three core ingredients of an empowering system. A philosophy of empowerment assumes that leaders behave in an empowering manner. At least six behavior patterns tend to characterize the way empowering leaders approach management. Empowering leaders . . .

(1) influence through context;
(2) create a culture of inclusion;
(3) give and don't take back power;
(4) provide moral and logistical support;
(5) communicate a clear mandate; and
(6) equip people for success.

In the first part of this series of posts on Empowerment, I approached the subject from the perspective of the Leader. In my post of December 2, 2007, I began a new series of posts that look at Empowerment from the perspective of the empowered employee (or church member). The idea here is that Empowerment does not just make demands on the leader but also requires certain aptitudes and attitudes from the employee. One of these aptitudes is what I call "Team Capability."

Create a Climate of Inclusion

Another behavior pattern that characterizes empowering leaders is the way they help all members of the organization to feel included. They create a climate, or atmosphere, of inclusion across all levels of the organization by making sure that everyone has a voice and that this voice receives a hearing (Ford, 2006, p. 515). Because they understand that great ideas may spring from the most inconspicuous and unassuming among their people, such leaders highly value these individuals and their contribution. They know that the office assistant, who deals daily with the complaints and frustrations of clients, has a valuable perspective on the status of client satisfaction. They know that the custodian sees aspects of the organization that cannot be seen from any other angle. They also know that people are inherently creative and that innovation can spring from the remote corners of the organization.

Resist the Impulse to Take Back Control

José was a humble workman who served at an orphanage in northern Argentina. I became acquainted with him when I led a team of short-term missionaries to the area. We had come to offer our services in making repairs to the roof of the orphanage and to dig a well. José had proven himself to be an extremely valuable asset to our team. He was always present and ready to help us in whatever was needed. As we were completing the digging of the well, I remembered that we needed to take photos for our sending churches back in the U. S. I had instructed José about how to use the camera and our team lined up for the photos. He was ready to click the button when the director of the orphanage showed up with an entourage of important small-town politicians. She walked directly to José, grabbed the camera from his hand and took over the task of snapping our photo.

It's time to give some balance to this discussion about empowerment. From previous posts, it may be possible to draw the mistaken conclusion that empowerment is about relinquishing one's concern for standards of quality and productivity. This would be to confuse empowerment with abdication. Abdication is what happens when a leader washes his hands of all responsibility for outcomes.True empowerment requires a clearly defined mandate. Without such a mandate, empowerment may lead to anarchy and the lowering of quality standards. There is a great paradox here. The act of giving power to others requires more, not less, definition of expectations. The need for specificity in the definition of the mandate increases rather than decreases.

Trust, Transparency, & Empowerment

In the next several posts I will focus on empowerment FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE FOLLOWER. Just as a philosophy of empowerment assumes that leaders behave in certain ways, it also implies that employees will behave in a self-empowering way. In particular, the literature stresses that the empowered follower develops skills in (1) open communication, (2) working in teams, (3) listening to the voice of wisdom, (4) having tolerance with ambiguity, (5) encouraging oneself, and (6) accepting personal responsibility. These six behaviors are the choice that an employee must make if he or she is to experience empowerment (Honold, 1997, p. 204). Let's now consider the first of these choices: the choice to own up to one's ideas and opinions.

Oh Holy Night

I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY to share some thoughts on my favorite Christmas hymn, Oh Holy Night. The words for the hymn were written by Placide Chappeau, an elderly merchant and mayor of Roquemaure, France. It was his custom to write poems for personal enjoyment and thus he wrote this beloved classic. I believe his words capture the heart of the meaning of Christmas. I find particularly moving the profound the first stanza.

Oh, Holy Night. The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior's birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear'd and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

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• human condition
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The Role of Support in the Empowering Process

For empowerment to become a core organizational competence, employees need to feel that they have the support of their superiors when they make decisions. This feeling of being supported is the opposite of fear, the fear of reprimand or sanctions because the decision didn't work out. An atmosphere of fear will chill all efforts to create an empowering organization.

The Voice of Wisdom

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU RUN INTO A ROADBLOCK in the path toward accomplishing your work? How do you respond to unexpected obstacles and unforeseen problems? Most people--either by choice or because this is the only option the organization allows--fall back on the wisdom of their superiors to resolve the problem for them. This perpetuates dependency on the manager, creates structural bottlenecks, and does not allow the employee to develop the capacity to exercise wisdom, a fundamental requisite for empowerment and for the development of autonomous work teams.

Equip People for Success

EMPOWERING LEADERS DON'T JUST DELEGATE AND DISAPPEAR. They don't give someone responsibility for an outcome for which that person is not trained or equipped to achieve. One of the worst situations in which you can find yourself is to have been given the responsibility for an outcome without the necessary resources to do anything differently whereby that outcome might be possible. Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick & Kerr (2002) refer to that kind of behavior as "entrapment" (p. 53). Instead of feeling empowered, the employee ends up feeling that he was set up.

AUTONOMOUS WORK TEAMS CAN CONTRIBUTE SIGNIFICANT ADVANTAGES to an organization because organizations that encourage such teams tend to be more creative than the traditional control and command organizations. When people are given the tools and the authorization to think, decide and make judgments in a context of responsible yet playful autonomy, innovative solutions to problems can become the norm. A controlling workplace climate crushes the creative spirit but an empowering environment encourages creativity.

 A Spirit of Resilience

When things go wrong, when outcomes are not what were expected, or even when the entire project appears to have been a failure, they do not lose heart. If, instead of obtaining a 20% growth in sales, the numbers prove that sales actually dropped, they are not devastated. If after spending countless hours developing and promoting a new program intended to draw youth into the church, the ministry team finds that only a handful show up, they do not abandon their goal. Before becoming the sixteenth president of the United States and the man who led the union to victory in the civil war and to the abolishment of slavery, Abraham Lincoln experienced many failures. He failed as a business man, as a shopkeeper, and as a farmer. He failed at his first attempt for a political office, when he sought the office of speaker, and in his first attempt to go to Congress. He failed when he sought appointment to the U.S. Land Office. His running for the U.S. Senate failed. He failed when his friends tried to get him nominated for Vice President. None of these failures devastated his spirit of confidence. This is because empowered individuals possess an inner sense of spiritual resilience that serves as their source of confidence (Chandler, 2005, pp. 156-157).

 Accepting Responsibility

A little boy watched as a newly transformed butterfly struggled to wriggle its way out of its cocoon. Feeling sorry for the creature and its terrible struggle, the boy decided to help him by cutting the edges of the cocoon and thus allowing the butterfly to exit more easily. To the boy's horror, what came out was not a beautiful butterfly, but a wrinkled and ugly caricature of a butterfly that died soon after exiting the cocoon. The boy failed to understand that the struggle of pushing its way through the tiny hole in the cocoon was God's way of forcing the creature's blood out into its newly formed wings, forcing them to expand and enabling the caterpillar to become a fully developed butterfly.

Empowerment works the same way. As people are given the freedom to act on their own, they are also held accountable for the outcomes of their efforts. This can be a painful experience, but it is this process of struggle that generates true learning.