Get Ready to Rumble
BY WILLIAM COTTRINGER

Did we really think we could make a major transformation into the Information Age and shift paradigms from traditional, hierarchical, and controlling bureaucracies to experimental, flattened, empowering, free-floating organizations without some serious consequences? Changing values such as divergent thinking, empowerment, discretion, ingenuity, diversity and responsible freedom, all have consequences just like their more traditional counterparts do.

The lesson we should learn from the present transformation and paradigm shifting that we are going through is the wisdom of balance. We can't exchange one whole set of paradigms and values on the left for another different set on the right in a wholesale fashion, without some dire consequences. It is the thoughtful blending of the two extremes that creates real progress.

Here are a few of the internal shifts that are presenting new problems in organizations which require a balanced leadership response to quell the rumbling. Without such a careful response the rumbling may be destructive.

Convergent Thinking vs. Divergent Thinking

According to intelligence theorists such as Robert Sternberg, the successful thinking that is needed today is a blending of logic, creativity and common sense. The challenge for leaders is to teach others how to achieve this blend of successful thinking by demonstrating these three different mental skills themselves for everyone to see. The difficulty is in letting go of learning expectations-it takes great patience to avoid over-focusing on the consequences of inevitable mistakes that people will make in trying to improve the quality of their thinking. It will take a lot of practice to get it right.

Beliefs vs. Principles

If knowledge workers are going to be fully productive and successful in the Information Age, they will have to trade in their obsolete, , rusty truth compasses for shiny new ones. Unverified assumptions and emotionally-based beliefs must to be replaced with practical principles that are proven and evidenced-based. The difficulty here is that people quickly adopt wrong beliefs and then those beliefs become almost impervious to change, regardless of compelling evidence to the contrary. Effective leaders need to demonstrate the level of self-confidence and mental flexibility that it takes to openly question their own faulty beliefs and replace them with tried and true principles.

External Motivation vs. Intrinsic Motivation

Employees will always need to be encouraged to perform better with the promise of external rewards such as personal acknowledgment, public recognition, and financial incentives. But, some of the important cognitive skills we are expecting employees to learn and practice today can only come about by intrinsic motivation-wanting to do something just because it feels satisfying to do in and by itself. The knowledge workers of today need jobs that afford significant meaning, real responsibility, custom uniqueness, a sense of making a contribution, flexible autonomy and multiple choices. These things provide both external and internal motivation.

Outer Directed vs. Inner-directed

For people to reach their full potential and be as productive as they can be, they must move from an outward focus of control to an inner-directed one-paying less attention to what others expect and say, and more from what they know by their own experience and thinking. To encourage this transition, leaders must create situations that can build such autonomy without having too many undesirable side effects. The difficulty is that such a transition requires skills such as critical thinking, creativity, intrinsic motivation and good listening, which may have to be taught first.

In a sense, we are all headed towards uncharted waters where we have to learn and improve by sharing our pieces of the map and working together as a team. Leaders have the challenge of orchestrating all this with their balanced leadership abilities to minimize the rumbling.

Copyright 2003 William Cottringer. All rights reserved. William Cottringer is a bnsiness consultant, sport psychologist and college teacher from Glen Carbon, IL. He is author of You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too. He can be reached at ckurtdoc@charter.net.