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KEY CONCEPTS

We need to see ourselves as primary stakeholders in any organization we are a part of, regardless of our role or position within it. We need to cultivate an organizational culture of wholeness, consistency, unity, trust and harmony with the direct, internal and external stakeholders, whether we are the CEO, a part-time member of custodial staff, or anything in between.

  • Organizations think, speak and act like every single direct stakeholder is a one-of-a-kind, authentic Masterpiece capable of meaningful and creative contribution to the mission, vision and values of the organization.
  • Every single stakeholder thinks, speaks and acts as if they were owners of whatever organizations they are directly interacting with, both internally AND externally.
  • Both the organizations themselves and every single direct stakeholder in them take the initiative to go first as role models in every opportunity.

ORGANIZATIONAL INTEGRITY SKILLS SUMMARY

These Organizational Integrity Skills are being described in Foundation Order. This means, we list them from the bottom of the foundation to the top. The first Organizational Integrity Skill we list is the base of the foundation, and every successive Organizational Integrity Skill is built upon the ones that are underneath it.

  • Organizational Vision: Organizations create and cultivate a noble purpose that drives everything.
  • Individual Purpose: Organizations empower direct stakeholders to create and cultivate their own individual purposes.
  • Organizational Transparency: Organizations are overly and overtly transparent in everything they say and do.
  • Individual Privacy: Organizations invest heavily in fostering and protecting the healthy privacy of direct stakeholders.
  • External Oversight: Organizations take responsibility for properly stewarding the WHAT and delegating the HOW.
  • Innovative Independence: Creating intentional whitespace for direct stakeholders to own the HOW and steer the WHAT.
  • Constant Change: Organizations expect constant change and empower their stakeholders to respond effectively.
  • Proven Principles: Organizations lead and manage from the context of deeply held and clearly articulated principles and values.
  • Financial Sustainability: Organizations have the greatest power to accomplish their mission and vision when financially healthy.
  • Staff Investment: Organizations see their primary, physical identity in each and staff member. As a result, the primary way organizations invest in themselves is by investing in their staff.

THE FIVE PRACTICES AND TEN ORGANIZATIONAL INTEGRITY SKILLS - DETAILS

In this section each of the Five Practices will be defined. Two synergistic yet somewhat contradictory Organizational Integrity Skills are defined under each of the Five Practices. Each Practice description will conclude with a description of how to create rhythm in the tensions between the two Organizational Integrity Skills.

    Organizational Empowerment: The Transformational Rhythm here is between the organization accomplishing its missions, vision, purposes and values, and the direct stakeholders accomplishing theirs.

      • Organizational Integrity Skill: Organizational Vision
        • OI requires a compelling mission, vision, values and purpose that encompass more than just innovative products/services and financial prosperity.
        • OI organizations prioritize and empower direct stakeholders, both internal and external, and make the world a better place through intentional consideration of and investment in indirect stakeholders.
      • Synergistic Organizational Integrity Skill: Individual Purpose
        • OI requires organizations to prioritize the discovery, refinement and achievement of direct stakeholders' personal missions, visions values and goals as a direct, strategic, short-term impact to the bottom line, with the full expectation that the organization will receive a substantial, long-term ROI on this strategic investment.
      • Transformational Rhythm
        • Unfortunately, in many organizations, there is little to no rhythm between these two Contradictions. Either the organization demands that the direct stakeholders fully subordinate their personal missions, vision, values and goals to that of the organization, or the direct stakeholders take every opportunity they can to advance their personal causes, oftentimes at the hidden expense of the organization. OI requires organizations to include the advancement of the personal goals of the direct stakeholders to be formally included in the organization's mission, vision, purposes and values.
        • OI stakeholders take real ownership of the organization's mission, vision, purposes and values and purposes intentionally and deliberately and incorporate them into their personal mission and goals.
        • OI requires organizations to cultivate a high level of trust and unity between individual stakeholders and the formal organization.

    Organizational Expectation:The Transformational Rhythm here is between an organizational drive for complete, appropriate transparency and an organizational commitment to respect the privacy of every stakeholder.

      • Organizational Integrity Skill: Organizational Transparency
        • By default, organizations are not required by law to be transparent in many areas. OI requires voluntary and intentional incorporation of appropriate transparency as an organizational value.
        • Sometimes living out this value may require more frequent collaboration with most or all of the internal, direct stakeholders.
        • Other times it might mean being fully transparent, internally with the WHO, WHEN, WHERE and WHY of decisions made behind closed doors
      • Synergistic Organizational Integrity Skill: Individual Privacy
        • Most often Individual Privacy refers to internal stakeholders with limited or no positional authority. These stakeholders are most vulnerable to abuses of the right to privacy. OI requires the privacy afforded to these stakeholders to exceed the standards of lawful privacy expectations, especially in circumstances where it is NOT in the organization's best interest.
        • Stakeholders with high levels of positional authority may have to voluntarily give up their rights of Individual Privacy, where appropriate, to respect the value of Organizational Transparency.
      • Transformational Rhythm
        • A primary purpose of this harmonious contradiction is to cultivate as much good faith, unity and trust between the organization and its stakeholders as possible.
        • Successfully investing in this harmonious contradiction will also greatly reduce the opportunities for and therefore the risk of ethical misconduct at every level of the organization, especially at the highest levels where it can do the most severe damage.
        • Not all transparency is appropriate. Sometimes, transparency would result in unnecessary harm to innocent parties. Sometimes transparency will cause confusion and fear in people that do not have a high-level, or detailed-level perspective.
        • While individual stakeholders have a right to privacy, they can waive some aspects of that right in order to develop trust and unity within the organization. Stakeholders with high positional authority have the greatest capacity to foster unity and trust by giving up some individual privacy.

    Organizational Enablement:The Transformational Rhythm here is between an organization's charge to understand what it does well enough to provide effective oversight, and cultivating a culture for the individual stakeholders to truly have the freedom necessary to innovate.

      • Organizational Integrity Skill: External Oversight
        • OI organizations take ownership for holding stakeholders accountable to the WHAT and the WHY of the organization's mission, vision, values and purpose. This accountability needs to be uniformly and consistently applied across all hierarchical levels of the organiZations and all stakeholders roles and responsibilities. In fact, the greater the level of positional authority8, the greater the accountability for WHAT and WHY need to be.
      • Synergistic Organizational Integrity Skill: Innovative Independence
        • Innovation requires fully leveraging the creative capacity of each and every stakeholder. OI requires operating under the principle that every single stakeholder is a one-of-a-kind, authentic Masterpiece who can deliver the organization's next, revolutionary, life-changing innovation. OI requires providing the whitespace and permission for each and every stakeholder to experiment and fail in all areas of the organization they intersect with, as a part of their regular reponsibilities and duties.
      • Transformational Rhythm
        • Traditionally, the stakeholders with the least positional authority also have the least amount of whitespace when it comes to HOW they perform their organizational duties.
        • At the same time, these stakeholders are most likely to have a direct impact on the end customer of the organization, and have the greatest insight into what it takes to do their jobs well. Creating whitespace for innovative thinking and experimentation can create otherwise unattainable gains in effectiveness and efficiency.
        • Empowering all stakeholders to contribute to steering the WHAT and the WHY can also create huge gains in profitability and sustainability by leveraging the collective creative genius of every single stakeholder within their unique Masterpiece.
        • OI requires organizations to create the most conducive environment for creating radically effective innovations in every area that the organization wields influence.

    Organizational Execution: The Transformational Rhythm here is between the idea that organizations should be operated under proven principles and values with the fact that we are in an age of rapid, constant change due to technology and globalization that will continue to accelerate without end.

      • Organizational Integrity Skill: Constant Change
        • The rate and consistency of change in our world today is unprecedented, and continues to grow.
        • OI requires that every stakeholder is individually empowered and equipped to anticipate, adapt to change, and share the anticipations and scale the adaptations to the fullest extent possible so the whole organization benefits. This empowering and equipping takes effort, time and money to be spent proactively.
        • OI organizations monitor how well they are doing at anticipating and adapting to change and invest in continuous improvement in this area.
      • Synergistic Organizational Integrity Skill: Proven Principles
        • Principles act as guidelines for organizational behavior.
        • Principles are context-independent and are generally and relatively true.
        • Principles are not always specifically true for any given situation.
        • Principles rarely describe the exact how or why, but instead mostly describe the what, who and when.
        • When leveraged effectively, principles will work for us, when ignored, principles will work against us.
      • Transformational Rhythm
        • OI organizations continually strive to increase agility to define and manage pivots to keep up with the high rate of change we experience every day.
        • The only area OI organizations intentionally slow down this pivoting agility is changing its principles and values. Principles and values require a much more thorough and time-consuming engagement to revise and update.
        • At the same time, OI organizations are always looking for ways to innovate, even when it comes to principles and values, and are always seeking innovation input from every single stakeholder of the organization, especially when it comes to principles and values.
        • Principles and values provide the foundation that can effectively support the massive amount of change the world throws at organizations on a regular basis. Organizations can confidently build systems and processes for anticipating and adapting to change on top of the solid foundation of principles and values, with the expectation that the systems and processes will not be crushed under the weight of the changes.

    Organizational Engagement: The Transformational Rhythm here is between what will likely be one of the highest priority goals of any organization - financial sustainability, and a radical commitment to investment in each and every internal stakeholder, which comes at the (short-term) expense of financial sustainability.

      • Organizational Integrity Skill: Financial Sustainability
        • Financial sustainability is necessary for organizations to continue to fight to accomplish their mission, vision, values and noble purposes.
        • OI organizations realize that prudent, financial decisions are the most critical factor when it comes to maintaining the ability to fight well over a long period of time.
        • There is a constant tension between fighting well NOW, in the present, and being able to continue the fight down the road, in the future.
        • While some believe increasing financial return is the primary goal of an organization, continuing the organizational mission is really the highest priority goal. That goal requires financial sustainability, not necessarily financial growth.
      • Synergistic Organizational Integrity Skill: Staff Investment
        • Salary, bonuses, benefits, vacation time, training development and whitespace for innovation and pursuing personal goals all create a short-time drag on the financial sustainability of the organization.
        • OI organizations behave as if the direct, internal stakeholders are the most valuable organization resources with best potential for maximum ROI over the long term.
        • Direct external stakeholders, customers, as well as intellectual property and investors are very important, but OI requires prioritization of direct, internal stakeholders FIRST and foremost, primarily because the long-term ROI of investing in staff is almost always the greatest, especially when considered holistically.
      • Transformational Rhythm
        • This is likely the most difficult harmonious contradiction of the five to keep in proper dynamic balance over the long haul.
        • There are so many complexities and variables, and there are really no opportunties for do-overs if you swing too far to one extreme or the other.
        • Let's define the outcome of the quality and level of Staff Investment as the health of the organizational culture.
        • The systems and processes for developing, measuring and improving leading financial indicators to assess the financial sustainability of the organization, and which direction it is moving in, are way more fully understood than similar leading indicators for the health of the organizational culture.
        • As stated earlier, swinging too far in either direction of the extremes can result in an unrecoverable scenario. It is much easier to accurately measure financial health than the health of the organizational culture.
        • The larger the organization, the more difficult it is to measure the health of its organizational culture.
        • OI requires organizations to invest in regular, ongoing assessment of the health of their organizational culture.
        • In addition, OI organizations need to identify the knobs, levers and dials necessary to improve the health of the organizational culture, and then fully understand the short-term financial costs of those improvements so prudent decisions can be made.