In organizations structured around people change can be difficult. There is a saying that, in such organizations, you can recognize innovators by the arrows in their backs. To make a change requires so many buy-ins, approvals, and arrangements that the innovator simply gives up before even starting.
Most organizational change as well as leadership development efforts fail because the executive team or human resources or consultant – believe that following a predictable path and sharing a recipe is all that people need. I have been guilty of this…
Having people do something familiar, like working to solve a shared problem, in what seems like a unique or novel way, using a team building activity. You open the number and variation of choices that they may have available, therefore breaking a causal action belief.
Work has the power to be a healing place with mutual trust behaviors or a place of pain with trust repelling behaviors. My argument is that everyone wants to do their best work & have high mutual trust attracting workplaces. They just don’t know what they don’t know, or are working from a bad theory of work.
Can a hierarchical organization with Manager / Subordinate relationships increase and attract trust? Can individuals be free in a system like this? Are justice, fairness and equity false assumptions within hierarchies? Isn’t authority the same as authoritarianism and autocracy; which repel trust for the sake of those in power?