We need to stop contributing to this problem and start building a new kind of social space for our work to be alive in.

We do a great deal to get in the way of people bringing their whole selves to work and we do a great deal to get in the way of people having true and organic connections to their work and this is a big part of what must change.  This is why we need freedom fighters.

We hire whole people, but it tends to go down hill from there.  Applicants are told about how people are our greatest asset, how creativity and honesty are vital, and we how we value the unique contribution of each individual.  Employees are bombarded with messages both implicit and explicit about fitting in, not rocking the boat and playing the game. Employees end up with truncated identities and trade their passion and ideals in for the rules to the game.

Continuing forward with organizational cultures that implicitly or explicitly proclaim that management has all the answers and that management owns the truth is not unlike clinging tightly to the idea that the Earth is flat.  This thinking is a fatal flaw in today’s business world and must be evicted. 

Business is simply too complex and too fast moving today for us not to be engaging the individual wholes of our whole workforce.  We can no longer drive around with the emergency brake on.  We have become very efficient at managing activity but we are still very sloppy and wasteful with talent, ability, potential and the intangible assets that each person brings with them.  The hearts and minds of a select few with select titles and select parking spaces are woefully inadequate for the challenge before us now.  We must create space for the hearts and minds of all.  We can afford nothing less than the fully stoked fire of our collective aspirations and abilities and this part of our journey cannot be navigated with spread sheets or flow-charts.

There will always be some conformity involved in joining a community or an organization.  There are some agreements involved in joining a social group, whether it is an organization, congregation, association or community.  We just need to push way, way, way, way back on those things…especially the implicit things that are baked into an organizations culture and its way of leadership.

This seems like a big piece of work and it is, but it is something that each and every one of us can contribute to regardless of our role or title.  There are a lot of things that influence, shape and contribute to a culture including our individual actions and relationships.  Here lies a powerful opportunity for us to take responsibility.    

This is not about our bosses.  This is about us and what we will do to take our work and our places of work back.

Be good to each other.

So true - Our world is so complex now that one or two of us - no matter how smart we are cannot know enough to have the answers and a traditional organization cannot move fast enough to cope.

I think the issue is now survival. If your organization relies on only a handful of leaders to know what to do and if your organization has no agility. Your organization will die - die soon.

So the point now is not to be trendy and co-opt social media. "Look Ma I am using Facebook!" It is to look at the issues that are in front of us, the systemic unemployment, the demographic crisis, the peak oil potential, the possibility of war in the middle east, climate change, the ungovernability of America, the culture wars, the generational gap, the effect of the web on all work - and say

"Any one of these could kill my organization. All of them may act upon it. How can I organize to be able to adapt and cope?"

Your new strategy - Organize the survive "interesting/complex" times.