Organizational Change: What is Needed to Create Thriving Organizations?

I became interested in coaching when I realized that contemporary organizations face a challenge. The challenge is how to find a new way to not react to problems but instead be more proactive to find new solutions to old problems. This is all about understanding system thinking and organizational change.

Observing Organizational Change

I began following a few Swedish organizations that were working with local government. They wanted to start new ways of thinking and learn how to create new reception models for immigrants. These organizations were new to the idea of working in teams and had not experience of creating  innovative solutions to proposed problems.  They were new to the idea of approach innovation and organizational change…. Well, this is from my research long time ago in the beginning of this century.

It was this experience that took me in new pathways. Starting a business. Committing to my process of growth. But at the same time, I noticed that I became more and more unmotivated for my job as a researcher and lecturer.

The learning

What I learned from my 3-years research project is that people in organization lacks certain kind of skills. At that time in my research, I didn’t know what those skills were. Today I know. But at that time, my role was to be an objective researcher: to observe, conducts interviews and ask questions.

My AHA-moment happened the day when one of the projects brought in an external consultant that was supposed to help them, taking the project from failure to success…. At least, her presence there was an expression of the crisis. In the final end of the day, people was either going to be in or out. My informant was hoping for a success… that the project was going to continue.

I came early in the morning. Breakfast and coffee. Some people were obviously not happy to be there. They said: “I don’t know what we are doing here?”. In the final end of the day, the hostile energy was transformed. Instead of talking in terms of ‘I’, people was saying ‘we’. This consultant had creating something in taking peoplw form goal-less I to a common vision int the we.

The starting point for my own change!

This was the starting point for me. I was intrigued and curious.  How did this consultant make this happen? Now it’s long time ago, but it was the starting point for me to learn that – whatever this consultant have, I’m going to learn. I want those skills. Of course it was coaching skills.

Today I know: the way to get organizations to thrive is fascilitate processes of learning for their employees.

I wish more organizations understood what’s needed in order to create change. Today I teach in Leadership and Organizations and know I’ve learned a lot about these processes over the years.  There are many project leaders and other change agents that lack the necessary theoretical information.

The most  important thing that I’ve learned during these years was that people seems to learn at the moment when they have had their own experience. This has been a mission for me during my years of teaching at the University, how I can create these experiences for my students.

And of course… my own development continues. Today my passion is how to help people create conscious love and teaching about the impact of  gender neutral relationships. This is not the way forward to sustainable relationships and society, since we all as individuals wants to be acknowledged… in our needs and for what we are and reprsents.

Photo Credit