From IQ to WeQ - Do you still fight or do you already cooperate?
2016, August 31
Are you also someone thinking that you need to solve everything alone? Would you like to change it? Then I have good news for you!
In this blog article you experience why we may leave the illusion of being a lone warrior and leverage cooperation, in order to come to meaningful and innovative solutions for the challenges of our business world and really implement them.
I have a dream
Martin Luther King1 created with his famous „I have a dream“-speech an inspiring vision of a united nation living together in freedom and equality for millions of people in 1963.
I also have a dream for our way of collaboration in the 21st century:
- Of a working world, in which every individual lives authentically, strong and aware, being rooted to their values and acting accordingly.
- Then we are able to build teams, which perform not only with good outcomes, but also interact with other teams in a creative and flexible manner.
- Thus we can come to common solutions, which have a higher level and transform old destructive structures within our organizations.
- My dream is that the male success principles, which were overemphasized for several millennia, get complemented by female success principles.
- My dream is that we as organizations and humanity use our huge potential to really solve the challenges of our times.
I’m convinced that we already have the knowledge for the solutions. What we need is a shift in our thinking and awareness.
Let’s have a look, how those shifts dramatically changed our world and business lives in the past:
From the railway to the internet and forward? – The 6th Kondratiev2
We constantly experience economic cycles. Alongside the short- and midterm cycles with a duration of 3-11 years there exist the long economic cycles, so called Kondratiev-waves, with a duration of 40-60 years. These long waves arise from the bunching of basic innovations that launch technological revolutions, that in turn create leading industrial or commercial sectors.
Since the late 18th century 5 Kondratiev-cycles occurred:
- Steam engine and textile industry
- Railway and steel industry
- Electrical engineering and chemistry
- Automobiles and petrochemicals
- Information technology
Each of those basic innovations didn’t only generate a new economic boom, but also changed our working and life environment in a revolutionary way.
Prof. Dr. Nefiodow, who already predicted the IT cycle, describes in his book “The 6th Kondratiev”, that for the first time a soft factor emerges as a basic innovation at the next long-term cycle, the “Psychosocial Health“.
I’m relating to one important aspect of psychosocial health: the cooperation – “the grand art to create relationships with other individuals in a way, that they are fruitful for all participants.“ 2
During my occupation as International Project Lead I managed projects e.g. of production-relocations. There were many obstacles and challenges to be solved: I had scheduled a cross- functional team meeting and still remember enthusiastically the specific moment when the higher solution emerged from the common discussion. It was like a ripened fruit falling from a tree. The solution was really bigger than the sum of all individual solutions and afterwards the project went smoothly forward. Fascinating!
This phenomenon accompanied me through the diverse stations of my industrial career and I started to investigate it:
The principle of cooperation we know from nature and from our bodies. Our body cells and organs for example cooperate in an excellent way. Expressed in a simplified way: If the cooperation stops, we get ill (dis-ease).
If we compare an organization with our body, the different functions or departments with our organs, then we quickly see how important a good cooperation among every single body cell is.
Over the last decades the topics cooperation, communication and team work got strongly encouraged in many organizations. In the view of the importance of those topics they don’t unfold their full potential within many Western organizations. Why not?
- Individual performance and competition between the employees are still mainly promoted, rewarded and paid within Western management structures.
- Despite more women in upper management positions, female quotas etc. male success strategies like “conquest, competition, goal orientation and focus“ get higher rated than female success strategies like “cooperation, intuition, sharing and caring“.3 Please don’t misunderstand: Everybody incorporates male and female parts within their selves, the animus and anima principle, and in turn can access and use both success qualities.
- The “Either-Or“-logic diminishes our decision- and solution- space. It is time to widen our angle of vision and to think bigger.
- When the team building approach is pursued, the team runs through the different phases–Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing– in the well-known way. Achieving the status of a “High Performing Team“ prevails to be the top objective.
Performing Teams are highly capable and motivated teams. Individual effort and development of the personal capabilities and potential aren’t inconsistent with the performance of the team. They are their prerequisites and they even strive for balancing the different forces.
“Best Practice Sharing“ is an important tool. Sounds promising, doesn’t it?! Where is the catch?
Often they create barriers towards other teams within the organization. They build a kind of “skin” around their own team, which results also in silo-thinking. A classic example out of my practice is Marketing vs. Sales: “Marketing doesn’t have a clue, what we need in the filed!” “Sales doesn’t follow the strategy!” etc. Does this sound familiar?
The second part of this blog topic is dedicated to the questions:
- Which approaches for the solution do exist?
- What are the advantages of Reforming Teams4 towards Performing Teams?
- What does the mega trend WeQ5 mean?
You can be curious!
With cooperative regards,
Annette Freund
FREUND INSPIRED MOVE
Annette Freund is Founder and Managing Director of the consulting company FREUND INSPIRED MOVE in Switzerland. She is inspired by change processes: Strong Individuals! Reforming Teams! Transforming Organizations!
She provides her services in German and English speaking environments.
www.inspiredmove.ch
Inspired by:
1Martin Luther King – “I have a dream” - Speech
2Leo Nefiodow – The sixth Kondratiev
3Veit Lindau – Human Trust Coaching Community
4Friedrich Glasl – Trigon Entwicklungsberatung
5Peter Spiegel – WeQ more than IQ
Picture: © THIESSEN PHOTO