Inclusive Organizational Transformation

An African Perspective on Human Niches and Diversity of Thought

Rica Viljoen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317117605
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Globalization, consumerism, legislation and human rights issues impact on workplace demographics, changing the very nature thereof. It is of strategic importance to ensure that the benefits of diverse viewpoints and stakeholders are leveraged. However the underlying worldviews of economists, business leaders and consultants are often informed from a Western paradigm and solutions proposed and interventions facilitated are not integrated, integral, systemic or congruent with the containing environment or ecology. In Inclusive Organizational Transformation, Dr Rica Viljoen acknowledges that diversity of thought presents both gifts and challenges to leadership in multi-national organizations. The existential question with which an individual is confronted impacts on his or her worldview. By continuously applying a specific worldview, certain gifts manifest. These are called Human Niches. Here, Inclusivity is positioned as a radical transformational methodology with the purpose of unleashing the benefits of engagement and diversity of thought. The process of Inclusivity enables organizations to optimize the gifts of and contributions from a diverse workforce and unleash tacit knowledge. Case studies from Ghana, South Africa, and one where the same strategy had to be implemented in Australia, Peru and Tanzania are included and insights gained from the dynamics observed are shared. A synthesis of Inclusivity is presented in a model, meta-insights are derived and the prerequisites for Inclusivity on individual, group and organizational domain are illustrated.

Chapter 1
Finding My Roots

1.1 Introduction

In this book the stories from different voices are weaved together in a tapestry that manifests in the organizational gestalt. These voices include integral organizational voices from the South, East, North and West; voices from various disciplines in organizations and societies; voices of the subjective self and various literature; and most importantly voices from elders that studied human dynamics in the laboratories of their own lives through their own lived history.

An integral framework for inclusivity is constructed, human niches (spiral dynamics applied) are introduced and emphasis is placed on diversity of thought. The phenomenon of inclusivity is explored. The importance of congruence between the individual’s thinking systems and the changing life conditions in the external environment is stressed.

Two case studies and the actual interventions to optimize individual thinking and external adapting are shared. In both cases a similar philosophy, namely an integral inclusivity methodology and human niches insights, suggests the practical solution to rewire the human energy in the systems to perform more effectively. Ultimately, insights about multi-cultural settings are derived from, and these insights are applied on, the societal level.

This book is the outflow of a satisfying relationship that formed between Ronnie Lessem and Alexander Schieffer from Trans4m and Rica Viljoen and colleagues from Mandala Consulting focusing on bringing the fields of integral theory and spiral dynamics closer. The book forms part of the Gower series¹ on integral theory and presents a specific focus on life in organizations within multi-cultural spaces.

True to the GENE model of Ronnie Lessem and Alexander Schieffer (1) the four aspects, namely Grounding, Emerging, Navigating and Effecting, will be loosely applied as the structure for this book. In this chapter, the narrative of the author is told as an auto-ethnographic tale, inclusivity is conceptualized and story-telling is positioned as an organizational development methodology to facilitate inclusivity. The researcher’s ontology and epistemology described in this chapter serves as grounding for the rest of the book.

1.2 Finding My Voice

The more consciously we address the questions of our worlds, the more we will experience our worlds as meaningful. (James Hollis (2))

There is no other place to begin a work that attempts to capture the essence of authentic story-telling, than to share a bit of the self, and the ancestry of the self. As Carl Jung (3) explained, ‘if you want to move forward, look back, look back, look back’.

Back in the days when I was growing up the hippy era was the physical ramification indicative of the rising levels of consciousness. Topics and social issues that remained unsaid in the past were openly aired. The authority and assumptions of leadership in private and public organizations were challenged. The Age of Aquarius dawned on us, and forever changed the way members of the human species interacted with one another. Marilyn Ferguson (4) clarified the issue that one person cannot persuade another to change, and that every person has a gate of change that can only be unlocked from the inside. She explained why organizational interventions often did not work, and provided the following as reason: ‘Because the solutions lie outside the accepted patterns of thought.’ She documented insightful paradoxes and paradigm shifts, from old ways to new ways of thinking.

Later it would dawn on me that the post-modern philosophy fitted my thinking system to a T. Themes from different fields of study, across industrial and country boundaries, and from different cultures are integrated in an attempt to seamlessly weave an archetypal understanding of different realities. Ultimately, a narrative or a story of the social system under study is shared.

Kroonstad at the time was a small rural town in the Free State, South Africa, we were an average middle-class household. Today of course it is a city in its own right. Without access to independent newspapers and a television, I was oblivious of the atrocities of the Apartheid regime, and of what was happening in the real world out there. Later I began thinking back, and reflected on how I could have contributed more to the freedom cause in South Africa. What if I had been older and at university? Maybe then I would have been exposed to views from different people? How could ignorance, not knowing, not being aware, ever be an excuse? This sense of guilt remains with me to this very day. In an attempt to rid myself of blame I argue that I was much too young to realize that a minority of 8 per cent whites attempted to rule a country where the majority of citizens were black. I argue that I was not even born during the genocide of the Second World War. What influence could that have had on my generation? How could we have been involved?

Unfortunately this excuse could not be brought to the table for the indifferent response towards the atrocities in Serbia and Bosnia when I was 20. It almost felt like watching a horror movie with a sense of detached curiosity. This attitude was not helpful, and would not result in any form of healing. Carl Jung (5) warned that what we suppress as silence will come out as a cry. By not speaking up, on becoming aware, I contributed to the deafening silence surrounding these issues. James Hollis (6) philosophized as follows:

None of us will find the courage, or the will, or the capacity to completely fulfill the possibility invested in us by the gods. But we are also accountable for what we do not attempt. To what degree does our pusillanimity beget replicative haunting in our children, our families, our communities, our nations? To what degree does our flight from the honest struggle with our various and separate haunting burden the world to come with additional haunting?

Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Clare Graves (7) elaborated that ‘you cannot be before you are’. Carl Jung (8) warned that even if you are unaware you will still laugh, but not all your laughter, you will still cry, but not all your tears. Somewhere in between that time and the present moment awareness came to me like a thief in the night. Now I can no longer hide away from repetitive haunting questions such as what to do when the autonomy of state does not serve its purpose anymore, and when attacks against humanity take place, like in neighbouring Zimbabwe today. In the words of the Oriah Mountain Dreamer (9): ‘I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.’ I can no longer be a silent witness.

1.3 Growing Roots

I spent most of my corporate career as a strategic organizational development practitioner in Absa Bank, now part of the Barclays Group, and one of the leading banks in South Africa. During this time, I studied the works of Carl Jung, Russell Ackoff, Peter Senge, Eliot Jaques, Margaret Wheatly, Clare Graves, Chris Cowan and Don Beck, and Ronnie Lessem to name a few. I was fortunate to be allowed the freedom to experiment with different facilitation schools such as Rogerian, humanistic and psychoanalytical stances, practice with techniques such as world-café methodology, and design thinking. My phenomenological ontology and post-modern epistemology were largely influenced by ethnographical experiences in multi-cultural settings.

The work to be done became clear to me. In the worlds of Loraine Laubscher (10), ‘the gift that Africa can offer the rest of the world is the Spirit of Humanity’. I would translate between minds, between leaders, between countries, between spaces. I would retell the old stories that different nations entrusted to me. Sometimes the stories will come in organizational format and other times in the whispers of traditional wisdoms.

During a visit to Zimbabwe, a with colleague of mine with Scandinavian roots, and I held conflicting views in the PhD class that we facilitated. I said that in my heart and blood I was a child of Africa. My colleague passionately argued that he would never be able to claim that. His ancestors came from Finland more than three centuries ago. Even after all this time he could not bring himself to think of himself as African. Even though Africa was the country of his birth and his mother tongue is Afrikaans. On the way to the airport I apologized to my host for any possible disrespect. With wisdom that was not found yesterday, he explained calmly to me that his tribe was known as the warriors, the lions. They used to be the aggressors among the local tribes. If I now express regret for my forefathers’ behaviour, it means he must apologize for his. He could not now be apologetic on behalf of his ancestors as he honours them deeply. As the chief of his village, though, he stated that he could learn the lessons from the past, and, through living in the present, create a better future. We both were saddened. My host was sensing loss as he had lost his chieftainship to the Mugabe regime. He cried on behalf of his people. Although my host was vulnerable he still told me that if ever I wondered again about being African, I must remember that day – the day when a chief of Zimbabwe declared me African.

1.4 Mandala: A Space for Growth

I founded a small niche consulting company with the name Mandala Consulting in 2004 with the purpose of assisting individuals, groups and organizations to become authentic and true to self; to live their own myths. Mandala survived 10 years of recession, the credit crunch and other changing external realities. This is the space in which the symbiotic synthesis of academia and practice emerged. Jungian psychological practices were integrated with organizational psychology, organizational behaviour, strategy, systems thinking and leadership theory. The essence of Mandala can be described in the words of Carl Jung (11):

Only gradually did I discover what the Mandala really is: ‘Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind’s eternal creation’ (Faust, II). And that is the self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deceptions.

It is in this space that multi-cultural research and a facilitation practice based on Jungian principles emerged. In this space, I attempt to ensure that even the silent voice is accounted for in organizations through the work of Mandala. Later it registered with me that a mandala is nothing but an archetype or a fractal – where each part tells us something of the bigger whole. Not only would I strive to assist individuals to become whole, Mandala as a company would also attempt to work with clients (organizations or communities) towards integration through an integral, inclusive approach.

In 2008, I completed my doctorate in Business Leadership at the School for Business Leadership, University of South Africa (Unisa). The unique focus of my thesis was on inclusivity as radical organizational transformational methodology that leads to sustainability. Although my thesis assisted in contextualising the concepts that largely impacted on the philosophy of this book, a gap was identified. In the closing remarks I explained that spiral dynamics offered valuable insights and that the integrated argument made in my thesis was still not grasped to its full potential. This holistic, dynamic philosophy of inclusivity was adopted as the philosophy of my organizational practice.

1.5 Becoming Culturally Aware

In the late 1990s I was conducting organizational climate studies to explore how employee satisfaction impacted on behaviour-based safety in the mining industry in Mali. Very soon I became aware that the groups were extremely quiet in the class every day. However, I could see the expressiveness and the willingness to grow in the eyes of each individual. Knowing the personality type theory well, I tried to make sense of it from an introverted point of view.

It was a very diverse group of people in the workplace. Members of the top management spoke English, and were internationally deployed individuals from Canada, South Africa and Australia. Middle managers spoke French, and were mostly Malian, and were trained in Russia. In addition to their technical capabilities they had also been introduced to communism. A large contingent were Muslim. The workers were Malian and spoke Bambara.

A few days into the sessions I became aware that tea circles were formed after the working day. As Muslims the employees did not drink alcohol, but every day after work they had tea together. During these gatherings a group decision would be made on how to collectively respond the next day in class.

The instrument used to describe culture indicated that levels of trust in the organization were very low. However, on translation of the results the Malians disagreed totally, and explained that they would not place their trust in man. As a woman I was not even allowed to mention the name of their god.

The researchers had designed their measurements in a way that did not specify multi-cultural dynamics, and had misinterpreted the reluctance to put their trust in humans as distrust! The consultancy, to which I was subcontracted, was contracted to sell a few million rand’s worth of interventions to improve trust. I proved that their interventions was based on wrong assumptions. Sometimes the best lesson one can learn is how NOT to do something. This incident forever changed my views on how to go about doing research in diverse contexts.

The Malians named me Djenebe Traore, meaning descending from a royal family. This social standing afforded me unheard-of liberties. For example, if I saw a watch that I liked, and if the owner were inferior in the social structure, he or she was obliged to simply hand it over to me. I became acutely aware of the impact of social structures in the workplace. On my departure, the head of the union told me: ‘For a woman you actually speak sense, Djenebe.’

This experience triggered my interest to read about African leadership. Little did I know when I stumbled across the work of Ronnie Lessem (12) on African leadership, that more than a decade later, I would meet him in the integral space.

1.6 Telling Organizational Stories

The Benchmark of Engagement (BeQ) was developed as alternative to culturally insensitive methods of describing organizational culture. It was an outflow of my PhD (13). It can be viewed as a strategic organizational story-telling tool to enable the emergence of the causalities in the system, and to ensure that interventions are firstly not generic, secondly that one-size-fits-all interventions are not applied but rather custom-made, translated and focused, and lastly as a framework and measurement for organizational culture and the effectiveness of strategic human resource interventions.

The BeQ is used as a philosophy, an approach towards sustainable business, a diagnostic methodology to determine organizational and national culture that focused solidly on principle- and value-based leadership dynamics. It functions by integrating the narratives of the system under study, and tells the story of the specific organization. Today the BeQ has been administrated in nine different languages and in 42 countries. The BeQ research team has collectively listened to more than 50,000 stories. Some of the stories are confidentially shared in this book.

In the days leading up to the development of the BeQ, a research project was underway in Yatela, a small mine in Mali. Late one night, I was delivering a presentation under the dilapidated roof of an old shack in the field. This was taking place before a new shift started. Mine workers were eagerly awaiting the end of the presentation. Every few minutes, the co-facilitator of the session ever so slightly moved me from one side of the shack to the other, and then back again a few minutes later. I did not really understand what was happening, and finished the presentation on time. Afterwards, I asked the reason for being moved and shifted about. The co-facilitator told me to look up at the roof. There must have been at least 30 hu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• About the Author
• About the Book
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• Abbreviations
• 1 Finding My Roots
• PART I THEORETICAL GROUNDING
• PART II EMERGING OF HUMAN NICHES
• PART III NAVIGATING DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT
• PART IV NAVIGATING THROUGH TRANSFORMATION
• PART V EFFECTING INTEGRAL LEADERSHIP
• Afterword by Mfuniselwa J. Bhengu
• Index