Co-creating our Organic Engineering Ecosystems
Leaders as Gardeners, facilitating growth through a narrative, guiding how we tend to our underlying substrate.
"How much of your full potential do you bring to your work?"
This question is posited in the book by Sir John Whitmore, "Coaching for Performance". The book claims that in their workshops at Performance Consultants International, the average answer is just 40%. Clearly this is not a great state of affairs, either for the employee or the employer, it’s a waste of human potential. A People First approach would address this situation openly in an effort to make work a place where people strive towards their full potential.
Effective Leadership, whether you are a CTO, an Engineering Line Manager, or someone taking the lead on a project, is about setting the scene, creating a compelling narrative, earnestly striving to create the best conditions to facilitate growth and coaxing the best out of people.
Below is a hypothetical transcript of the kind of speech filled with People First sentiments that I think most Engineers would react to positively, creating a sense of cohesion, connection, interdependency and inspiration:
A Leader speaking to a team of Engineers:
“I'm not here to improve you or judge you, I accept you as you are right now. We are all at different stages on our journeys with our own unique goals and potentials. If you feel driven to grow and to explore your untapped potential, then I will do my best to help facilitate that growth - but it is you who will be doing the work. I can give feedback, encouragement, support and resources, but I encourage you to be fully responsible for yourself, your goals, and your progress. My job is to guide us in co-creating a nourishing ecosystem where we all can thrive.”
“The old model of managing as a Chess Master, manoeuvring the pieces around the board is no longer sufficient in our ambiguous, complex and uncertain worlds. It can be replaced by the Gardener metaphor, as per the advice of General Stanley McChrystal in his book ‘Team of Teams’. A seed has the potential to grow into a tree. It needs fertile soil, you can't throw a seed onto concrete and expect it to take root. It needs nutrition from the ecosystem of the soil, the substrate it depends upon, and water in order to sprout. It creates its own foundational roots to secure itself. It will push through the soil towards the light that it needs to for its sustenance, always orienting itself towards the light to provide its source of energy through photosynthesis. The sunlight is its goal, its mission that it is inspired by and feels compelled to reach for.”
“It's the same with people. They need a fertile, stable and encouraging environment to set root in, they need a solid and secure base to ground themselves in, they need to have their basic needs met before they can grow. They need nourishment and support in order to have the self-belief that they can grow into their potential. I'm here to help us tend to our garden together, to ensure you have the kind of ecosystem in which you can thrive.”
“Peter Wohlleben, the author of ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’, draws on scientific research to show that trees are actually social and work together. When attacked or threatened they have the means to communicate with each other through releasing gases, or through their roots, or using the 'Wood-Wide-Web" of vast fungal mycelium networks to pass messages through the ecosystem. Such communications are measurable. The forest is not a collection of individual trees but a thriving intelligent organism symbiotically connected through cohesive networks of biological pathways. The soil itself has systems within systems, a living organism recycling decaying organic materials to form a nutritious substrate. The old hierarchical idea of trees competing with one another for scarce sunlight in a dense forest, where the smaller tree is crowded out, has been negated by a new understanding which shows their interdependency where isotope tracing has proved that trees send excess CO2 to young saplings through their roots, as well as exchanging nitrogen and phosphorus, thus increasing the resilience of the whole community. In the same way, we can help each other grow through our attitudes, collaboration and mutual support.”
“The ecosystem of the garden has many threats. Weeds and rocks may impede growth, parasites and bacterial blight may try to destroy the flourishing of the plants. Slugs will come to devour the sapling. Diseases may infect the strongest of trees, spreading from one plant to another, the foliage loses its vibrancy, it withers and dies. Mites and bacteria feed on the decay. The garden may face periods of drought, destructive weather, cold hard frosts or malicious vandalism. The aim of the gardener is to create a resilient ecosystem that can overcome and thrive despite the inherent threats.”
“Grass does not grow faster if you pull it” - An African proverb
“The Gardener must be continually restrained and resist the urge to control. One can prune and train plants to grow a certain way but must ultimately respect the forces of nature and the complexity of the ecosystem. Too much interference may have unintended consequences. You can’t make grass grow faster by pulling on it, and you can’t force people to grow or operate in a certain way. The Gardener Leader must be humble and resist the inner urge to control.“
“I won't have all the answers or all the right insights, every situation will present new challenges to all of us and I won't be able to fly in with a Superman cape to fix things. That wouldn't help us in the long term anyway. It is our joint responsibility to work through situations together to build the learning, self-belief, and skills to overcome in the future. To grow we may have to make temporary sacrifices, but with the right attitude and proactive support, we can transform ourselves to reach further towards the sunlight.”
“We are stardust. We are golden. And we've got to get ourselves. Back to the garden.” - Joni Mitchell, Woodstock, 1969
“This is a journey on which we are participating together, we can co-create a Psychologically Safe ecosystem where we can be honest and tough with one another, taking responsibility and voluntarily accepting accountability. We can believe in ourselves, being aware and honest about our vulnerabilities and supporting one another through the inevitable difficulties. That's what a meaningful journey is about, continuous searching, continuous feedback and reflection along the path of continuous improvement. Along the path, we can look back and see how far we've come. In the words of Ben Davenport, ‘You don't travel to see different things, you travel to see things differently’. Through our journey ahead, experiencing the struggles and the victories, we will come to know ourselves better and see our worlds from a wiser and more enlightened perspective.”
“Our Engineering ecosystem exists within the wider system of our organisation, which itself exists in systems of customers and other stakeholders, all of which exist in the system of the entire cosmos. All systems have interdependencies and we can control the feedback loops for which we are responsible, the way we work, the way we communicate, the way we inter-operate. Thoughtful Stabilising Loops and Positively Reinforcing Loops, to borrow from the world of Systems Thinking, will bestow upon us the Karma-like returns from those other systems.”
“Seasons come and go, a perpetual renewal and reset, new saplings take root, and the oldest most established trees will fall. The ecosystem adapts and new order emerges naturally. Change is part of the natural flow of life, all things must pass, old life gives way to new life and the ecosystem transforms itself. We can embrace change as a natural part of our growth towards our full potential, old ideas can give way to new ways of thinking with the aim of becoming more engaged, fulfilled and satisfied with our work.”
“Captured inside the tiniest acorn is the potential to grow into a mighty oak tree. We all have untapped potential, far greater than we might imagine, together on our journey we can create a supportive, trusting and challenging ecosystem to explore and unleash our inner potential.”
Intent:
The intent of the above hypothetical speech is to set the scene for People First thinking. It hopefully encourages a Systems Thinking approach to seeing an Engineering team as an organic, self-evolving ecosystem rather than a dry corporate boxed-in fixed entity.
It encourages self-responsibility and accountability, denying the leader as a hero and encouraging people to free themselves from victim consciousness. It touches on the relevance of Psychological Safety which is a pre-requisite for a high performing team, as well as encouraging humility by being openly vulnerable which is vital for trust.
It creates a theme of growth and learning as well as unimagined potentials, which can sometimes be stifled and neglected in our everyday 9 to 5 endeavours. The ideas of adaptability and collaborative resilience are drawn from the metaphors of the challenge of nature, especially useful to diminish the contagion effect of disease or the toxic behaviours which can creep into our workplaces.
Hopefully, it creates an openness to distributed leadership, where anyone with the right skills for the conditions can take the lead in innovatively co-creating our journeys, rather than the Command and Control or Leader/Follower approach.
Above all, it hopefully illustrates the responsibility of collectively tending to our own environments, the substrate that connects us and which we depend upon, which will allow us to tackle the challenges ahead with an adventurous, resilient, and curious mindset.
“The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.” - Simon Sinek
Co-creating our stories:
We are chimps who have evolved to tell stories, bound together by our cultural narratives. We can shape and co-create our stories to bring out our best. Engineers, however, to their credit, can sometimes have quite a skeptical attitude. They have trained themselves to detect holes in the logic and do not succumb to waffle and corporate speak. It is the obligation of any leader who utters these kinds of words to earnestly believe in them and strive to live up to them.
Our stories determine our co-created future. In our uncertain and complex worlds, we can take control of the stories we tell ourselves and shape our futures for better outcomes.