Unlocking the power of enterprise for a more beautiful world Part #5 People, teams and culture
This week’s article is the fifth of seven in the series about the Considerations for a Beautiful Syntropic Enterprise. In these articles, we explore Pillar #4. People, teams and culture
If you want to read the introduction article from March 17th, you can access it here. https://syntropic.world/unlocking-the-power-of-enterprise-for-a-more-beautiful-world-part-1/
As a reminder, here are the 6 Pillars of a Syntropic Enterprise we are currently working through.
Pillar 1. Clarity of the Source Idea — the original impulse and Evolutionary Purpose
Pillar 2. Self-development as a leader/steward
Pillar 3. Structural Integrity of Organisational Design. Creating Ecologies of Trust and Synergy
Pillar 4. People, teams, culture. A company of people and relationships.
Pillar 5. Networks and the field. A healthy economy is a healthy network of relationships with people, creatures, our Earth, the future, and the sacred.
Pillar 6. Strategy and Implementation. The Dance of Time, emergent strategy, strategic intention, and the autopoiesis of a living enterprise.
Let’s dive into the sixteen elements of Pillar 4. People, teams and culture
1. How do you build clarity of communication and accountability into the organisational design?
Communication breakdowns contribute towards the most significant loss of flow and effectiveness in an organisation.
How do you ensure that the enterprise is deliberately developmental across the entire organisation, if this serves its purpose? In a Syntropic Enterprise, communication flows are effective and designed to be clear and transparent, and the ongoing training and development of the team, including the executive team, ensure advances in communication ability, emotional intelligence, and self-reflection.
At no time is anyone or anything exploited, extracted from, undervalued, overvalued, ignored, dehumanised, not listened to, not stepped over, and not allowed to get away with their own BS?
If you have a heritage shareholder document, how do you ensure transfer to a model that is far more aligned to the DNA and purpose of the enterprise and includes categories that we have as humans so far ignored? (For example, social and emotional capital, connections and creativity.)
3. Who are the strategists on the team?
Those who see bigger, further, through complexity? How do you bring them along and enable them to contribute? Strategists can be found anywhere in the enterprise. Good strategists start with the Universe (whole) first.
4. Who is the advisory board?
Formal and informal, they ensure skill and diversity. (Of everything) How frequently do they meet and when are they called upon?
A great advisory board has skills and experience that are complementary yet different from yours. They will be fearless in speaking up.
5. Who are the creatives in the team?
How do you ensure they have a voice and channel? Plus, a big white blank canvas to play on regularly. Creatives will challenge, keep things fresh, enable perspective shift, and invite play and fun. Creatives get us to pause and consider ‘out-of-the-box’ options.
6. Who are the people’s people on the team?
Those who care for others so masterfully? How are they valued? How are they given the space, time and resources to do what they do best?
7. Who are the spacemakers on the team?
They make spaces and ecosystems that enable humans to be their best. No gathering can do without them, as they add the special sauce, turning bland to beautiful.
8. Who are the storytellers?
The keeper of the records? And how is the story captured and told? Images, music, art, performance, poetry, writing, all of the above?
9. How is beauty honoured every day
In all the ways you engage with business, enterprise and each other, how do you honour beauty?
Beauty brings us closer to greatness. A business absent beauty will wither on the vine. Beauty and integrity are complementary pairs. If beauty is missing, so is integrity, and vice versa.
10. Rituals and celebrations…what, how, when?
Leave space for some of these to emerge organically from the community, as the unpredicted and completely spontaneous rituals are often the best. People thrive on good rituals. It builds community. Build other rituals with deliberation. Choose with care what you celebrate. Then be sure to go all in with celebrating.
11. What are the agreed channels of communication and application of technology as a tool to support an increase in human connection?
What works? Review regularly, as this landscape changes fast and needs to be adapted to changes in virtual and analog mediums.
12. How do you handle failure and mistakes?
The small and the big. We are all human. We all make mistakes. Is your organisation fear-based because of how you handle failure and mistakes, or is it entrepreneurial, where first-time mistakes are celebrated and learned from, and second-time mistakes are managed with amplified attention to learning and non-repeat?
13. How do you manage team upset?
Disagreements? Violations of integrity? What is the clear, transparent process that honours humanity in its process and is both respectful and dignified?
How do you ensure full mutual understanding and avoid assumptions and presumptions?
14. What is the check for organisational safety?
Does everyone feel safe enough to bring their whole selves, speak up, name elephants, and offer ideas? By everyone, I mean everyone. (Including all stakeholders.)
15. Who is the listener for integrity?
The one who knows when the integrity of the enterprise has been violated? And how do you allow this person/people to be deeply listened to, heard and considered? They may be scattered throughout the enterprise, or you may be sure to have at least one person take this role as a major focus. The intention is for this person to listen for the hum of resonance and alignment, or lack thereof. In a Syntropic Enterprise we recommend an Integrity Council to ensure the Pattern Integrity of the Source Idea is held as sacred by the Steward Leader.
16. What systems need to be in place?
Who are the systemologists on the team? The ones who see systems before they are needed? This skill is often discounted, and yet it will make the business operations hum more than rattle.
*While creatives, people’s people, spacemakers, systemologists, storytellers and listeners for integrity may have more formal ‘other’ roles, these are qualities they have and skills they do as easily as breathing. When they are recognised for their capacity to do these things, you will create a stronger culture where people are seen in their wholeness.
Links
Clean Communication https://syntropic.world/clean-communication-living-and-working-light/
How to communicate with precision and address low accountability. https://syntropic.world/how-to-communicate-with-precision-to-address-patterns-of-low-accountability/
Synergistic Accounting. https://syntropic.world/the-evolution-of-human-experience-shaping-the-future-with-synergistic-accounting/
Beauty of Beginnings sign up. https://syntropic.world/beauty-of-beginnings-sign-up/
Speak the Truth ebook. https://syntropic.world/speakthetruth/
Conversation for understanding. https://syntropic.world/conversation-for-understanding-a-tool-to-heal-the-war-between-us/
Next week, in part 6 of this series, we will cover Pillar #5. Networks and the field. A healthy economy is a healthy network of relationships with people, creatures, our Earth, the future, and the sacred.
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Syntropic World is a global education and community of practice applying the organising principles of nature to enterprise design and human coordination. Creating ecologies of trust, ensuring integrity in everything, enabling collective sense making, and organising around a central purpose — how to create a world that works for 100% of humanity without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone.
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