You’ve been with the burden of the crisis over the last two years. You perceive around you, and within you, a generalized feeling of wearing down and despair. In many cases, we cut not just fat but some muscle, and even the bone was touched. You feel this takes you no way, specially when your days over extend, and the eighth coffee of the day can hardly keep you alert. We’ve been for too long thinking of business as a problem to fix. More over, despite all the efforts done, we remain in the same place.
You may recall that your company was created in its moment to satisfy a social need or face a social challenge. It has a mission to accomplish. An organization is a group of people in relation with each other for the sake of creating value, from what David Cooperrider calls the “positive core” (assets, strengths and resources that constitute the organization’s capacity). Cooperrider adds later: “…organizations are centers of vital connections and life-giving potentials: relationships, partnerships, alliances, and ever-expanding webs of knowledge and action that are capable of harnessing the power of combinations of strengths”.
¡It’s the time for the positive change revolution!
Now it’s the moment to adopt a focus on positive change: “any form of organization change, redesign, or planning that begins with a comprehensive inquiry, analysis, and dialogue of an organization’s positive core, that involves multiple stakeholders, and then links this knowledge to the organization’s strategic change agenda and priorities”.
Positive change revolution seeks the liberation of everyone’s talent instead of attracting and retaining the talent of the few. Looks for authentic leadership as opposed to leadership as a position. It embraces chaos and forget about controlling everything. Support and enhance relations and connections between its members to boost action and useful knowledge expansion. It creates nexus of caring and purpose instead of hierarchy of instructions. It opens the space for authentic dialogue.
Most likely, we have exhausted the sources of problem solving, which helped us to reduce the denominator. But we haven’t exhausted, and we will never do, the sources of creativity and human potential that feed the numerator, specially when the strengths of many are combined to unfold a collective dream. A future which is worth fighting for. We human, are naturally creative, resourceful and whole, and thus we have the capacity of dreaming and creating the sustainable future we want.
Imagine your organization 10 years from now, when everything is as you always wished, What do you see?
