Historically, with increasing growth, companies have also built up increasing hierarchies, external control and measures to increase production, and many organizations still adhere to these measures and the understanding of growth to this day: The keyword is Taylorism. And this despite the fact that we have known since the 1970s how damaging many of these purely profit-oriented measures are for the human factor in a company and Frithjof Bergmann had already defined New Work at this point. Instead of New Work really being about the self-realization and meaningful work of each employee, fruit baskets, flexitime and home office are introduced, but Tayloristic principles are still adhered to.
Why is that?
It has a lot to do with our own attitude and mindset and how success and growth are defined by this base. Not only my personal attitude, but also the mindset of the entire organization influence my daily work and the way I am at work. How much personal responsibility and self-control would an employee want to take if mistakes in the culture of the organization are punished and growth is measured only by productivity? How much responsibility would a manager want to give to the employees in a company where the responsibility for the operating result is tied solely to them and power is the highest form of recognition? Which unwritten rules of an organization are preventing managers and employees from taking more initiative and innovating something new?
New Work and the Agile Manifesto put people at the center of all strategies and operations. Say the customers and employees of the organization are more important than given processes. According to the holocratic approach, the individual people in the organization should include both their own developement and the higher meaning of the system in the cooperation. Successful implementations of New Work have done one thing above all, fundamentally restructured. They have redefined growth and success for themselves as an organization and for themselves as individuals within the organization and made this transparent. In addition to the question of meaning (WHY?), the daily question of ambition (WHAT FOR?) is also important. When my personal definitions of success and growth align with those of the organization, I will experience more self-actualization. Personally, I believe that growth needs a new definition that is very different from the steeply rising career ladder and 200% economic growth, for which as many resources of any kind as possible are burned.
How do we get there to redefine growth?
In order to redefine, we need a deeper understanding, the sense of the existing personal and organizational definition. I was last month
at a speaker event. One of the speakers is an entrepreneur and has spoken of his 150% growth per year over the past ten years. At that moment, I had many questions that remained unanswered: How satisfied are the employees? How high was the health growth in the company? How steep has the learning curve been for individual employees over the past ten years and have employees been able to build resilience? Growth in the broadest sense means development, development and maturity. The direction and type of propagation are completely free and undefined. Growth in the economic sense, on the other hand, is defined in a limited way. Size, extent, number, amount must increase at regular intervals at a given point in time. A "good" growth is usually measured purely by the increase in profits in %. Not in the increase in knowledge/experience of employees, in the reduction of flight rations and burnouts through building resilience, or in the increase in social projects and energy-saving measures. Personal growth is often defined purely by the elementary educational path and certified further training. In employee evaluations, the number of innovative ideas and projects, personal development, failed attempts and subsequent adjustments or support from other colleagues rarely play a role.
So what is New Growth?
New growth refers to maturity and development. How much has an organization learned this year by trying and gaining experience? What positive and negative experiences have been made compared to last year and what has changed the organization as a result. Which new technologies have been introduced, tried out and are being used sensibly as a tool? How many times have we held on to old beliefs this year and for this reason squandered an opportunity? How often have we been able to make our own work processes superfluous and devote ourselves to new tasks? - New Growth consists of the basic idea of defining growth through learning growth instead of growth through capital growth. This does not mean that organizations do not generate profits, but that organizations have their focus, their strategy on development and social impact and profits are a by-product that we can trust in through constant learning, experience and reflection.
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