Artsmonkey Blog

Transitions in life can be so releasing, change is freeing, adventurous even. I have been immersed in the Organic leadership blog whilst managing a hand-over period. Is there a down loadable ‘guide to good hand-overs’ out there in the web-verse? Am I hands off enough, have I left enough structure in place for the new incumbent to grasp on to without feeling constrained by my ways, my approaches? I seek comfort in the poetry and poor grammar of the OLB (yes I know my grammars not up to much either, probably like me, Mr Smith [OLB] blogs straight from the brain to the keyboard because it’s such a freeing process, although I’m not sure I expect anyone to read my blog other than myself and internet robots unresponsively garnering info for web geeks).  ”There are so many blogs and posts out there that show you how to create a search friendly site that will gain readers rapidly through title selection and linking. The blogs that I read and have seen grow quickly - it is not links or titles that have contributed to their growth as much as the conversations and friendships that are created.” Billy Smith. That sums up my thoughts about work, it’s the shared discoveries, the conversations and friendships that cement our working lives and help build the work we do, taking us from one stage to another, bouying us up, encouraging us on. It’s no good going to a conference if you don’t bother talking to people you don’t know, or going to a meeting if you don’t give a little time to finding out how people present are feeling, even a simple question like ‘did they have a good journey’ helps with perspective.

This year I met an ‘information hoarder’, a ‘communication blocker’ it was a shock to discover someone who operated by holding on to information instead of sharing it and who blocked communication by questioning in a challenging manner, turning a conversation into a test, to the point where you had no sense of shared understanding by the end of it and lost the will to talk to them at all. Lovely person, but no fun to work with. Maybe this approach was designed to hide their inexperience or their insecurity in their work environment or perhaps it was a misinterpretation of organic leadership. Could they have been browsing www.theartofleading.net  and not fully grasped the point?

• In mechanistic organizations, direction can be deliberately decided and planned.
• In the organic case, direction evolves or emerges through trial and error learning.
• Direction is discovered rather than decided in an organic organization.
• What’s not recognized is that leadership itself is organic in organic organizations.
• Leadership here is the spontaneous action of challenging what someone else is saying and advocating a different idea or direction.
• It’s also the entrepreneurial seizing of opportunities

To quote Mr Smith (again) “We seek so much to be discovered and through seeking we forget, lose one whole dimension of life: the joy of discovering with others. It is through this collaboration that growth, learning, and friendship is created. All of these are so much deeper than ‘being recognized.”