Our bodies are a living system, providing another excellent metaphor for thinking about our organizations as living systems as well. When we consider organizational pain, the similarities run even deeper.
Originally developed by Moshe Feldenkrais, The Feldenkrais Method® is a remarkable approach to human movement, learning, and life change. The method is recognized for its strategies to improve posture, flexibility, coordination, athletic, and even artistic ability. It’s also quite helpful for people with restricted movement from chronic pain.
Lessons on interdependence from our bodies
Lessons from the Feldenkrais Method for our bodies can be applied to our organizations as well. One of the biggest lessons is about interdependence. Just like within interdependent living systems, a problem in one part of the body will affect other parts. If someone is experiencing pain in the right knee, a Feldenkrais practitioner will first work on the left knee, as that area would typically be more open to receiving stretches and other healing work. Because the body is an interdependent system, the work on one part will influence other parts of the body – including the area that is in pain.
Feldenkrais teaches us to always start influencing the body’s health where the body is most open to receiving it.
Finding the true source of pain
Because our bodies are interconnected, we need to think about the source of pain from an interdependent point of view. This is a remarkable lesson we can use for our organizations. For example, how many of us have looked at an organizational problem and pointed toward a problematic employee? Viewing the source of “pain” as one single person is the same as applying an icepack to a spot that’s hurting our body. A sore back, for example, may be a symptom of a deeper problem rather than the cause. As leaders, we have to explore how our “problem employee” may actually be connected to other things happening in our organizations. Those may be the real source of our pain!
In my consulting practice, I’ve observed that teams focused on working toward the future often have a real provocateur in their group. This person can be viewed as an irritant by the other members when in reality, their prickly presence often helps the team look more deeply at their background assumptions. Questions they may ask often counteract unconscious bias in decision-making. On the surface, the individual is the source of the team’s pain. A closer look, however, reveals that the source of pain is the unconscious background assumptions are shaping the team’s behavior and decision-making processes.
Sourcing the pain while avoiding blame
Within organizations, this dynamic often triggers blame. Identifying someone to blame for a problem or mistake results in unnecessary energy spent shifting the blame and/or pointing fingers at each other. As many of us know from personal experience, blaming (or even shaming) behavior is extremely painful to the person being scapegoated.
The focus on finding blame can be a crutch to avoid looking deeper into the root causes of why something occurred. A dynamic, interdependent organization will always have a web of variables that contribute to a problem. It is never just one thing (or person). By focusing on finding a person or group to blame for our “pain” we are applying a simplistic strategy that doesn’t help us to get to the true source of the organizational pain. Using our metaphor of the body as a living system, it’s the equivalent of applying an ice pack for a back spasm. The problem might seem to disappear in the short term, but it will return as we still haven’t found the actual source of our pain. We’ve used the spasm as our scapegoat!
A framework for finding the real problem
Within military teams, a lack of unity is not only distressing, it can be life-threatening. One way the Army focuses on the actual source of pain or problems is an After-Action Review
The After-Action Review is a framework of retrospective analysis of previous critical actions. The Review evaluates performance, documents the effectiveness and efficiency of responses, analyzes critical procedures and policies, and makes recommendations. The result of an After-Action Review is a broader understanding of events and actions. This enhances future operational planning, assists in policy development, and protects the resources of the team and its members. Future responses are improved, and there is much more information shared.
The After-Action Review is just one example of a way to look deeper for the true source of our pain. Like the Feldenkrais Method, it provides a more integrated way to learn what has happened and why. It is a beautiful example of not focusing on the immediate pain but learning from the context and interdependent nature of the system itself.
Do you have your own version of an After-Action Review? Let me know in the comments!
Excellent! I learn from you all of the time!
I am so pleased to see your reference to a provocateur in a group. I remember so well, (and still blush at the memory) being desperately frustrated at what I experienced as the self-obsessed obstructiveness of a group member on a Tavistock group relations programme – probably my first, in 1983. I was floored by my own fury for a day – then a few days in, it dawned on me that she was talking sense – that I now could see what she saw … and ever since I have been especially alert to the person I wish wasn’t there!