Second Order Change

"When the manuscript for Out of the Crisis was circulating at MIT over 30 years ago we used to talk about the two hemispheres. Deming would refer to a process and a behavioral side to the thing, to optimization."
Paul Hertz, Ph.D., Deming Colleague

There is a second-order change in dimension when you go from Flatland to Sphereland.

Second order change is change that transforms a system entirely. Second order change is also defined as a critical phase transition. In a critical phase transition as the information, energy, or temperature passing through a system reaches a tipping point, the system experiences a period of perturbation, and then suddenly transformation, it has "escaped" to a new steady state.

It is the same simple experience as falling in love, first one state, then disequilibrium, then suddenly, out of time, a new state, a new "way of being." Same molecules, now transformed.

In the case of Machine View vs Organism View of organization, the change is a symmetry-breaking escape from a self-limiting paradigm of reality. The mechanistic paradigm of organization is giving way, to essentially, a quantum paradigm. The sweet spot of optimization is particle and wave and they go together.

Process and Passion, Tangible and Intangible.

The physics of optimization are quantum physics.

Deming as Servant Leader

W. Edwards Deming is the hero of many a Quality advocate. He learned from Shewhart the Control Chart and the Shewhart PDSA (Plan Do Study Act) Cycle that is the core of contemporary performance improvement science and practice. (See the new Deming videos.) Deming was clear about Leadership he did not equivocate. Did he have the experience of Superperformance? Certainly. He was the central champion and pioneer of the global quality movement that transformed Japanese manufacturing, and in more and more enlighted areas, is transforming organizations all over the world today. Superperformance is within anyone's reach.

On Leadership, Deming had this to say:

The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not to find failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure, to help people do a better job and with less effort.

Deming's position was that the job of the leader was to use their authority and the resources at their disposal, to make life easier and better for the people doing the work. Deming saw how western management was tethered to a business paradigm of sub-optimization.

Mechanistic management operates with the opposite paradigm. Deming describes the Biazarro World when he wrote:

Most acts of supervision in management ... instead of providing help to people, accomplish just the opposite.

Was Optimization guru Deming a robust model of Servant Leadership? Absolutely.

Study: Millenials Not Engaged

Human Resources consultant BlessingWhite recently published the results of an engagement pulse check across three generations around the world—baby boomers, Generation X and Millennials (also known as Gen Y). This was determined through a survey conducted between December 2007 and February 2008 and the results were sobering. Here are the top-line results:

Disengaged Employees Levels by Generation and Region

	Baby boomers (born 1946-1964)	Generation X (1965-1977)	Generation Y (1978-1990)
Australia & New Zealand	13%	24%	25%
China*	–	34	33
Continental Europe	18	20	28
India	16	12	14
North America	17	20	25
Southeast Asia	16	20	35
U.K. & Ireland	18	22	30

* There were too few survey responses for baby boomers in China to include.

"The research suggests that the more senior the employees, the more engaged they are," BlessingWhite CEO Christopher Rice said in a press release on the results. “Around the globe, senior executives are generally more engaged than frontline managers or individual contributors. Gen Y [Millennial] disengagement levels may reflect, to some extent, their low seniority since more baby boomers would predictably hold leadership roles. Increased engagement is an expected outcome from power and position.”

Disengaged workers can only become a larger and larger handicap for companies. India may have the answer for us. That’s because the exception to a general picture of disengagement among Millenials can be seen in India, where younger employees have higher levels of engagement compared with other regions.

Rice explained in the BlessingWhite press release. “This probably reflects the expanded opportunities as well as its young, fast-paced, knowledge-based economy. In fact, all generations in India are happier than employees in other regions.”

Millenials are our future. Often they bring a much healthier approach to work and the workplace than many older workers do. They are the first generation in history that will teach the generations before it how to make use of the next generation of technology, Web 2.0 and 3.0 tools.

We should see this global engagement survey as another wake-up call that the Knowledge Economy has arrived. Knowledge worker productivity is driven by personal engagement and commitment. Increasingly in the future, this will be the main responsibility of management. Motivation of knowledge workers requires that managers reframe their paradigms from command and control to servant leadership. Why?

Knowledge work is driven by intrinsic motivation. It is chosen.

The Super Pattern

Superperformers leverage passion and process to become everything they can be. We share this foundation of opposites with all of life in general. We inhabit a universe of chaos and order, left and right, male and female, expand and contract. Everyday we buy and sell, twist and turn, think and feel.

The ancient Chinese philosophy of yin-yang holds that everything in nature consists of opposite forces, which must remain in balance for life to thrive. The yin and yang are opposing forces that constantly shift, operating in continual conflict, but at the same time in need of each other for completion. These opposites drive each other towards creativity and excellence, while at the same time restraining the other to inspire harmony.

Twenty-first century physicists exploring the immutable forces of nature have come to the same conclusion. In referring to this inescapable influence, Nobel Physicist Niels Bohr’s famous complementarity principle described the paradox of the particle-wave duality encountered at the subatomic level of light. Bohr discovered that fundamentally, light consists of streams of particles (photons) that simultaneously behave like waves. Afterwards, Bohr saw evidence of complementarity everywhere. Not just subatomic particles, but all of reality, he insisted, fall under the sway of complementarity: “‘We have been forced to recognize that we must modify not only all our concepts of classical physics but even the ideas we use in everyday life . . .”

Superperformers leverage this same ubiquitous relationship. It is this interaction that is the nuclear reactor of Superperformance. This is the sweet spot. Superperformers have simply joined their tangible and intangible parts to “escape to a new level” of performance.

If there is a mechanics of optimization it must be a quantum mechanics.

Join us in Houston on March 6, 2009 for "Servant Leadership - The High Performance Link"

http://servantleadershipconference.com/
Servant Leadership-the High Performance Link, slated for March 6, 2009, will be held at the University Hilton at the University of Houston . This conference is a production of CEO Netweavers, the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, and the International Society for Performance Improvement.
Its’ purpose is to shine the light on servant leadership at work, especially the powerful and unmistakable connection between true servant leadership in action and outperforming return on investment, operational excellence, and joy in work.
Along with a transformational conference experience, CEO Netweavers Houston will inaugurate the Servant Leadership in Action Award, to be announced and presented to a local servant leader as a conference highlight.
CEO Netweavers is a rapidly growing organization of CEOs and their trusted advisors dedicated to transforming organizations and enriching lives through application of the principles of servant leadership and the practice of netweaving.
The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership is an international non-profit organization founded by Robert Greenleaf in 1964. Its purpose is to promote the understanding and practice of servant leadership.
The International Society for Performance Improvement is the world’s preeminent performance improvement society.

Servant Leadership is Super Leadership

Superperforming CEOs = Servant CEOs

It's a consistent, astonishing pattern.

Google’s Eric Schmidt, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, Harley Davidson's Richard Teerlink, SYSCO's John Baugh, SW Airlines' Herb Kelleher, IBM's Tom Watson, Medtronics’ Bill George, AIM's Ted Bauer, Sterling Bancshares' George Martinez and others - all of these can be described as men of uncommon humility and personal values. Most, if not all, could also be described as people of great faith. This begs a crucial question:

Is there a correlation between Servant Leadership and Superperformance?

In describing Servant Leadership, Robert Greenleaf wrote, " “The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. He or she is sharply different from the person who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such it will be a later choice to serve – after leadership is established. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types.” (italics added)

“The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged . . .will they benefit, or, at least, will they not be further deprived?”

Is it actually possible to possible to achieve (or sustain) Superperformance without a CEO with a fundamental love for people?

Superperformers are always Green

When I’m green I’m growing, when I’m ripe I’m rotting.

 

Ray Krok