Incest 0000i-xiv FM 1 - William L. White

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t h e i n c e st u o u s wo r k p lac e
can do to positively affect an organization is to bring it an essential ingredient
that is weak or missing. Organizations, like individuals, are
prone to excesses of character—certain traits are extolled and exaggerated
at the expense of other traits. You can formulate this strategy of filling
vacuums by studying an organization and the needs of its service
constituents, and then asking three questions. First, if this organization
were a person, what would be its dominant personality traits? Second,
what traits or experiences are missing and needed? And third, how
could I act out these needed elements through my role and relationships
in the organization?
There are three categories of things the activist can bring to the organization:
new ideas/technologies, emotions, and values. All are delivered
through relationships.
Seeding Ideas/Technologies. Most organizations operate in very turbulent
and rapidly changing ecosystems and do so based on ideas and
technologies often designed for a world that no longer exists. Ideas are
the medium that allows an organization to close the gap between itself
and its environment. That’s not to say that organizations welcome new
ideas. It is the rarest of occasions when an idea is embraced immediately
because it so clearly galvanizes a needed shift by the organization. More
often, a new idea will be viewed as an infectious agent and organizational
antibodies will be released to fight it. Such resistance should be
expected. Those of you who wish to seed your organizational cultures
with ideas must view your ideas as time-release capsules. Many ideas
will be resisted and lie dormant before they are activated and implemented.
That’s the nature of change. Organizations can utilize new ideas
only when they are developmentally ready to receive them. By modeling
a love for ideas and an openness for creativity and innovation, you can
enhance the readiness of your organization to receive new ideas.
Seeding Emotions. The process of seeding an organizational culture
with emotion is somewhat similar. Sometimes organizational cultures
are almost emotionless. Such cultures have sacrificed emotional experience
for analytical thinking and highly formalized relationships. What
such systems need is a healthier balance between cognitive and emotional
experience. To get that balance, missing ingredients must be
brought in that define and model the professionally appropriate expression
of emotion. The ability of a single employee to openly express