|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A great deal of resources is invested in organizational development, yet poor relationships between people often place obstacles in the path of success for companies and organizations. What could be offered that would change the game? Here is a glimpse into an approach that connects evolution and business.
The integral approach to organizational development and success in the business world is essentially a “natural” approach, one that we learn from nature itself. Unfortunately, it took us a long time to recognize that in order to continue to exist and succeed, we need to become similar to nature.
A deeper observation of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels of nature reveals a remarkable organization, a perfect arrangement that enables the development of life. Nature is a single complete system that constantly balances itself.
In nature, everything exists in an integral form. Its elements are interconnected in mutual and harmonious relationships. No element intentionally wishes to harm another in order to cause it suffering. Creatures at different levels of nature can indeed use one another in order to survive, live, develop, and reproduce, but none of them acts from a desire to harm another or to derive personal pleasure from doing so.
We did not recognize this during thousands of years of our development because we viewed nature through the narrow lens of human egoism, a desire to enjoy for self-benefit at others’ expense. For example, we assumed that relationships within a wolf pack must be harsh, as expressed in the saying “man is a wolf to man.” Yet when we began to study wolf packs, we discovered complete harmony. friendship, connection, division of roles, and mutual care.
If only we, in our supposedly “advanced” human society, could exist according to the same laws. All we need to do is observe and replicate them. Nothing more is required to build a harmonious work environment that leads to prosperity and flourishing for both the organization and its employees.
Most organizations today do not function in a balanced way. They are founded on force, control, and various egoistic distortions instead of mutual understanding and cooperation.
The integral approach to business encourages all employees within the organization to actively participate in what is taking place, from the CEO and management team to the gatekeepers and cleaning staff. This is its unique feature.
The method turns the organization into something round. The internal hierarchy and management pyramid naturally continue to exist, but alongside them a connection forms among everyone, built on mutual understanding and empathy.
Within this method, organizations hold lessons, discussions, workshops, exercises, and engaging activities in order to build a new envelope that surrounds everyone, an environment that creates a new, warm, and unifying atmosphere.
The benefits of this approach can be very significant. For now, we will mention two prominent examples.
The first benefit is the smooth flow of processes within the company without resistance or clashes. People stop competing with each other in destructive ways and instead cooperate for the overall good of the organization.
The second benefit arises from the positive connection between employees, the ability to develop a collective intelligence. Ideas, plans, long-term vision, and execution capabilities emerge with qualities that can only be achieved through fruitful collaboration among employees.
Developing the integral approach stimulates great creativity, involvement, and care among everyone. People in different roles within the organization, junior and senior, begin to feel how they can contribute more. A creative force and a capacity for development become revealed within them. Each person begins to look several steps ahead and, accordingly, understands how best to prepare.
Employees begin to more accurately sense the environment in which they operate, their customers, suppliers, and partners. This could be an insurance company or a manufacturing plant; it makes no difference. When people adopt an integral perception, they begin to feel the needs of all the factors with which they interact. As a result of this sensitivity, each individual develops a new outlook and new ideas, and the organization as a whole becomes increasingly prepared to progress.
Alongside the creativity awakened in employees, the method also expands managers’ ability to receive new ideas, encourage employees to develop them, and think together about how to implement them. In this way, the organization gradually becomes a living body, in which all employees actively participate in action and development.
Gradually, the organizational culture also changes. Structures and procedures become more friendly, flexible, and “round.” The reason is that when people begin to connect and the organization becomes integral, there is less need for insensitive commands imposed from above to demonstrate control.
Building the organization as a family is the ultimate goal of the integral approach. A well-functioning family serves as an example of a healthy, stable, and highly developed relationship system. In such a family, every member feels a strong sense of belonging and wants to contribute as much as possible to the family’s success.
From a broader perspective, organizations and companies that succeed in creating integral connections and a warm family-like atmosphere will make significant breakthroughs. This is because they will already be adapting themselves today to the form that humanity as a whole will soon be required to adopt.
In a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected and characterized by such high levels of mutual dependence, we will not be able to survive without cooperation. When we internalize this and apply the integral method of living in connection and complementarity, we will be in harmony with the great system of nature. There is no more reliable formula for prosperity and success.
Based on “New Life 106 – The New World of Work, Part 1” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.