I am a great fan of Cirque du Soleil. I admire the way they revolutionized their show business and the image of circus. They are revolutionary because of their being a circus without animals but also because of their unique combination of aesthetics and acrobatics. They are a performance arts company. They give me a lot of inspiration. Watching Cirque du Soleil is my energiser trick especially at times when I am down. They remind me how fantastic it is to be a human being. They seem to have achieved the “organizations as brains” metaphor that Gareth Morgan describes in his book “Images of Organisations” (Morgan, 1997)Gareth Morgan interprets Bohm’s holographic theory at the organisational level with the concept of “building the whole into all the parts”. Morgan suggests four ways to accomplish what I call connectedness in organisations. I took the liberty to label them as corporate imprint, corporate intellect, holographic structure and holistic teams in my own words.
Corporate Imprint
Firstly, Morgan introduces "the visions, values, and sense of purpose that bind an organization together can be used as a way of helping every individual understand and absorb the mission and challenge of the whole enterprise. To create brain-like capacities for self-organization, however, it is vital that the cultural codes uniting an organization foster an open and evolving approach to the future." This is one of the strongest aspects of Cirque du Soleil. When I watch the interviews with different members of Cirque du Soleil, the first thing that strikes me is that they are connected around a shared sense of purpose, identity, and meaning. They are consciously aware that this connectedness helps them to be more of themselves which keeps them more connected at the end.
Corporate Intellect
Technology has different level of impact in our businesses. It helps us to cut costs, increase efficiency etc. However it is revolutionizing the way companies operate and the way organizations exist as it gives the power of information to the frontline employee. Command and control was required in the past much more than today as more information was possessed by the higher level of organization. So you would need instructions from your superiors to do your job as they would know the bigger picture better. Technology today brings connectedness and therefore power of communication to the fingertips of employees regardless of their level of hierarchy. For the first time in corporate history, a frontline employee in a large organization is able to act as flexible and empowered as an employee of a small organization keeping all the advantages of a large organization. Also, corporate intellect in the organizations can be achieved with the help of technology and "information systems that can be accessed from multiple points of view create a potential for individuals throughout an enterprise to become full participants in an evolving system of organisational memory and intelligence." (Morgan, 1997)
Holographic Structure
“A third way of of building "the whole" into "the parts" rests in the design of organizational structures that can grow large while staying small which ... We have many examples of this. Consider, for example, the case of Gore Associates, one of the most innovative and revolutionary organisations in the world that has kept to grow at a rapid rate. Gore Associates’ philosophy is encoded in a simple set of business principles and the rule that operating factories must remain on a small scale to avoid becoming impersonal. Thus, once an enterprise reaches a size in the region of 120 people, the only way it can grow is by spinning off another unit or factory...The process has a "fractal" quality in that the same basic pattern reproduces itself over and over again."
Holistic Teams
According to Morgan, a fourth way of building "the whole" into "the parts" rests in how work tasks are designed. Under old mechanistic principles work processes were usually fragmented into narrow and highly specialized jobs, linked through some means of coordination...The holographic approach to job design moves in exactly the opposite direction by defining work holistically. The basic unit of design is a work team that is made responsible for a complete business process within the team. Roles or jobs are then broadly defined with individuals being trained in multiple skills so that they are interchangeable and can function in a flexible, organic way." This is again one of the distinct and revolutionary qualities of Cirque du Soleil.
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In any show business and performance arts specialization is required. If you are clown, you are only a clown. If you do trapeze, you only do trapeze. However, in Cirque Du Soleil, every body is required to have multiple skills and perform at different acts in different capacity staying as an organic, flexible part of the “whole”. One of my favorite shows is La Nouba. In La Nouba, there are 4 clowns which are called Les Cons who act as the heart of the whole performance and you see them dancing, doing serious acrobatics in addition to their classical role of being a clown. It is possible to do a 1 hour of fantastic performance with only 3-4 members of the cirque which would be a smaller scale version of a typical show which may have more than 50 people on the stage.
What strikes me about Cirque du Soleil, the constant feeling of “flow” they seem to have as well as their connectedness with each other, with the audience and with everything under the Grand Chapiteau. In certain resident shows, they are able to connect with each other and different audiences always with the same vigor, joy, and quality for 360 days a year.
Does Cirque du Soleil have special people who are able to experience this “connectedness” or can it be something that can be experienced at any organization? A good answer to this question comes from Cinematrix. Cinematrix, a unique audience interaction tool, developed by Lucas Laboratories’ Chief Scientist Loren Carpenter, acts as a simulator of connectedness and “flow” in organizations. It is an audience interaction technology that we sometimes use in our meetings for large groups where several thousands of people can fly an airplane together without direct communication with each other. Every time I watch a cinematrix session, I am intrigued with power of connectedness in the room. Kevin Kelly describes it as a “graceful” experience:
“In a darkened Las Vegas conference room, a cheering audience waves cardboard wands in the air. Each wand is red on one side, green on the other. Far in back of the huge auditorium, a camera scans the frantic attendees. The video camera links the color spots of the wands to a nest of computers set up by graphics wizard Loren Carpenter. Carpenter's custom software locates each red and each green wand in the auditorium. Tonight there are just shy of 5,000 wand wavers.”
Loren Carpenter launches an airplane flight simulator on the screen. His instructions are terse: "You guys on the left are controlling roll; you on the right, pitch. If you point the plane at anything interesting, I'll fire a rocket at it." The plane is airborne. The pilot is...5,000 novices. For once the auditorium is completely silent. Everyone studies the navigation instruments as the scene outside the windshield sinks in. The plane is headed for a landing in a pink valley among pink hills. The runway looks very tiny.
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There is something both delicious and ludicrous about the notion of having the passengers of a plane collectively fly it. The brute democratic sense of it all is very appealing. As a passenger you get to vote for everything; not only where the group is headed, but when to trim the flaps.
But group mind seems to be a liability in the decisive moments of touchdown, where there is no room for averages. As the 5,000 conference participants begin to take down their plane for landing, the hush in the hall is ended by abrupt shouts and urgent commands. The auditorium becomes a gigantic cockpit in crisis. "Green, green, green!" one faction shouts. "More red!" a moment later from the crowd. "Red, red! REEEEED!" The plane is pitching to the left in a sickening way. It is obvious that it will miss the landing strip and arrive wing first. Unlike Pong, the flight simulator entails long delays in feedback from lever to effect, from the moment you tap the aileron to the moment it banks. The latent signals confuse the group mind. It is caught in oscillations of overcompensation. The plane is lurching wildly. Yet the mob somehow aborts the landing and pulls the plane up sensibly. They turn the plane around to try again.
How did they turn around? Nobody decided whether to turn left or right, or even to turn at all. Nobody was in charge. But as if of one mind, the plane banks and turns wide. It tries landing again. Again it approaches cockeyed. The mob decides in unison, without lateral communication, like a flock of birds taking off, to pull up once more. On the way up the plane rolls a bit. And then rolls a bit more. At some magical moment, the same strong thought simultaneously infects five thousand minds: "I wonder if we can do a 360?"
Without speaking a word, the collective keeps tilting the plane. There's no undoing it. As the horizon spins dizzily, 5,000 amateur pilots roll a jet on their first solo flight. It was actually quite graceful. They give themselves a standing ovation.
The conferees did what birds do: they flocked. But they flocked self- consciously. They responded to an overview of themselves as they co-formed a "5" or steered the jet. A bird on the fly, however, has no overarching concept of the shape of its flock. "Flockness" emerges from creatures completely oblivious of their collective shape, size, or alignment. A flocking bird is blind to the grace and cohesiveness of a flock in flight. “ (Kelly, 1994)
Stacey describes the similar process as a coherence emerging in interaction between people. He claims that ‘plans and actions, the emotional and rational impulses of individual people, constantly interweave in a friendly or hostile way. The basic tissue resulting from many single plans and actions of men can give rise to changes in patterns that no individual person has planned or created. From this interdependence of people arise an order which is more compelling and stronger than the will and reason of the individual people composing it. It is the order of interweaving human impulses and strivings which determines the course of the organisations.’
Cinematrix proves that connectedness can be achieved with any organization. “Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991). How can we bring this notion of connectedness to the organizations?
Robert Quinn introduces a similar concept called “fundamental state of leadership” which he associates with “moments of greatness” (Quinn, 2005). In our “normal state”, we are comfort-centered, externally directed, self-focused and internally closed while in the “fundamental state” we are results centred, internally directed, other focused and externally open. “Fundamental state of leadership” is a state where we have work with a sense of purpose, focus on our being and evolving ourselves with a deep sense of unity and high awareness.
Further, he argues that “flow” concept (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991) lacks certain elements needed in the organizational context. ”First, flow is an individualistic concept. There is no requirement of human relationship. The fundamental state of leadership is focused on self-alteration or the repair or reintegration of self while operating in relationships. It is about transformational influence. Second, the state of flow is amoral. The flow experience may derive from an ethical or unethical act. The fundamental state of leadership is more ethically demanding. It requires increasing integrity on four dimensions including the integration of purpose and potential, values and behavior, self and others, knowledge and learning. Finally, the fundamental state of leadership integrates the state and the method for getting into the state. It is formulated around the four basic questions for transcending our normal hypocrisy and becoming a leader of transformational influence. It is, in this sense, simple and immediately applicable in any setting.”
Csikszentmihalyi’s “optimal experience” as well as Quinn’s “fundamental state of leadership” approach is closely associated with Positive Psychology movement started by Martin Seligman in 1998. Positive Psychology aims “to shift the mindset in psychology from mental illness to mental health with a focus on building stronger attributes as opposed to trying to fix weaknesses, creating good lives for healthy people as opposed to treating people who are psychologically distressed, and building the best in people as opposed to trying to develop the gaps” (Seligman, 1998). There is recent school of thought called Positive Organizational Scholarship. It is building a similar focus in the organizational context “by examining thriving and generative dynamics within organizations, and by emphasizing the role of embedded contexts (extra-organizational, organizational and intra-organizational) in explaining generative dynamics and positive states of individuals, groups and organizations”. (Dutton, Glynn, Spreitzer, 2005). “Thriving at work” concept (Spreitzer, Sutcliffe, Dutton, Sonenshein, Grant 2004) is especially interesting for three reasons.
First, definition of thriving is more related to the organisational context than flow where thriving at work is defined as “the psychological state in which individuals experience both a sense of vitality and a sense of learning at work. When people are thriving, they feel progress and momentum marked both by a sense of learning (greater understanding and knowledge) and a sense of vitality (aliveness)”
Secondly, the research inquires about behaviours that support thriving at work. Thriving starts when “people are active and purposeful with work” and following behaviours contribute to thriving: contribute to thriving at work are task focus, exploration and heedful relating. “Task focus means attention to getting one’s work done in a satisfactory manner. Exploration involves experimentation, risk-taking, discovery, and innovation behaviors that help people to stretch and grow in new directions. Finally, when individuals operate attentively to those around them, we say that they are heedfully relating”
Thirdly, the research looks into what enables thriving in the organisational context. According to the study, the impact of these behaviours outlined above is more “when work contexts feature decision making discretion, broad information sharing, and a climate of trust and respect.”
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