An Organic Approach to Organizations

I’ve been in the business world for almost 15 years now. In that time, I’ve been an entrepreneur, a financier, a salesperson, a consultant, and an author/artist. Probably like you, I’ve been overwhelmed and mostly disappointed with the endless number of theories, approaches, philosophies, systems, and steps to success. I don’t want to add to that. If anything, I want to subtract from it.

If you could subtract all of the stuff that doesn’t work in your organization — where it’s stiff and rigid, where it’s overstretched and burnt out, where it’s blocked and uninspired — if you could subtract all of that, you’d be left with a lot of space. There would be room to move and create, to evolve and expand, to innovate and transform.

I want you to create space in your organization. I want you to shed some layers and systems and beliefs and barriers. Something really special happens when you do that. Your organization opens itself to what is naturally there, to what the marketplace is already asking you for, to what you and the team already want to produce and create.

What begins as complex and dense becomes simple and clear. That’s tapping into the organic.

FLOW

What is the source of success, growth, and profitability?

Think about it for a second.

You may think it’s effort or discipline. You may think it’s the right people or structure or organizational design. You may think it’s the right values or mission statement or culture. But it’s not.

The source of success is alignment with flow.

Whatever success you’ve achieved up until now has not been a reflection of effort or discipline or any of those other things. It’s been a reflection of the extent to which you are aligned with flow.

The more aligned you are with flow — moving with it, growing with it, letting it evolve your organization — the more things work.

When you’re aligned with flow there are times of incredible effort and times of reflection, times of discipline and of disruption.

There’s no better teacher of this than nature. Nature teaches alignment with flow. Just observe the clouds or a tree or a river. They don’t fight to get somewhere or to prove themselves — to be the best tree or the largest cloud or the fastest river. They don’t cling to results or get attached to things being a certain way. They’re not stuck in any way — they move naturally with their environment.

We tend to think otherwise, but aren’t human beings as natural as a tree or river? Planet Earth has grown trees and rivers, just like it has grown people.

There is something at work here and it’s been at work for 14 billion years.

It’s the capital “F” Flow of existence and life. It’s the motion of the stars and trees and rivers and animals. I may sound like Yoda here talking about the Force — and in a sense, I am. It’s the source of it all. It’s the unfolding process of the universe. That. It’s beyond words, yet those point at it.

I call it flow.

If you think organizations and business have nothing to do with it, think again. Because you can’t escape it. You can’t get outside of it. You can’t contain it to certain areas of life.

It permeates everything. Including you.

It’s like the ocean and you and your team are sailing in it. Flow is the movement of the wind and water — the waves and rhythms and currents. Your success as a team is a function of your alignment with that flow. When you’re aligned with it, you get to your destination. When you’re not aligned with it, you go off course, get lost, and maybe even shipwrecked.

(That’s not a perfect analogy because it seems like you and your team are something separate from flow, but you’re not. You’re as much a part of it as the wind and water.)

INTERRUPTING FLOW

So deep down underneath all the layers and accountabilities and org charts, there is a flow. It is already running around and through your organization and its people. You can give it space and align with it or you can interrupt it.

There are two ways to interrupt flow: by pushing and by blocking.

Pushing is more common, especially among successful organizations. Pushing is attempting to force an outcome. It’s the unnecessary extra effort and struggle to make things happen — usually done to prove something or “be the best” or “kill the competition” or “save the world.” It’s attempting to force a level of sales or growth or work ethic that is unnatural and inauthentic for your organization. It kills morale and burns people out. It chokes the vitality of your business. Over time, it destroys an organization.

Hardly anyone notices when pushing is happening because there’s usually lots of success and wins to go along with it. But eventually you pay the price if that growth is inorganic and unsustainable.

It’s the same as listening to your body. If your body is telling you to slow down when you’re working out and you don’t, then you’re sure to be dealing with burnout and injury in the near future. You’ll end up rehabbing your body with a physical therapist — being forced to slow down anyways.

On the other hand, organic growth is sustainable growth. It’s not a guarantee of future performance, but it’s sustainable. There is a strong foundation naturally there that the growth and success flowed out of. To quote an old friend, “Don’t push the river, it flows by itself.”

So that’s pushing. It’s trying to force the river to go further and faster. It’s being stuck in the future.

Blocking is stopping the river from where it’s going in the first place. It’s being stuck in the past.

Blocking flow on the organizational level looks like keeping things the way they are because “that’s just the way we do things.” It’s the opposite of space and flow. It’s rigidity and stagnation. It is a claustrophobic and lifeless workplace. In this kind of organization there is little to no space for the new.

On the employee level, it’s the same. It’s staying stuck in certain work routines, structures, and beliefs from the past that no longer serve you. For some reason or another, the flow has stopped and all that’s left is repetitive and mechanical work. It’s Groundhog Day where each day looks like the last.

Flow isn’t being stuck in the future or past or even the present. It’s being unstuck altogether.

ALLOWING FLOW

Here’s the good news: When you don’t block flow, it happens naturally.

That’s why this approach isn’t about adding anything. It’s about subtracting everything that is not an expression of flow. When you remove what’s in the way, what’s left is organic.

Organic is flow and its expressions.

You can’t add organic. Organic is what’s there when nothing is added.

That’s why I don’t say this is a new approach. It’s as old as nature itself. But it is a radical approach. Radical because of how entrenched we are in the additive-forcing-blocking, anti-flow paradigm.

To allow flow is to give space to the new. Space to new thinking, ideas, projects, and people. It is authenticity and transparency. It’s an organization that allows for and embraces the natural rhythms of creativity/contemplation, activity/passivity, and expansion/contraction. It’s an awareness and attentiveness to the environment in which you operate.

The most important aspect of allowing flow is discovering the feeling of it, the tone, or quality of it. Outside the business world, sailors and jazz musicians know it. Judo masters know it. And deep down, you know it. It takes trust and practice to really tune into flow, but it’s as natural to you as your own breath and heartbeat. And it’s that natural to your organization as well.

Find that feeling, that tone, that quality. Let it move you and your organization. You don’t move it — remember what my friend said?

CONCERN

There may be something unsettling here. It’s that I’m not giving you any answers. I’m not telling you what to do. “How fast should we grow?” “How many clients should we have?” “How long should our Monday meeting be?”

I’m not giving you the answers because I want flow to give them to you.

In a society addicted to the steps and concrete applications, this will challenge you. But anyone who sells you the one-size-fits-all, exact-steps system is cheating you. It’s the classic problem of when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

In reality, prescriptions and steps and recipes turn into rules, rigid structures, and untouchable laws which block flow. They may have been appropriate for a period of time, but more often than not they harden. They become sticky and just “the way things are done.”

An organization like that is predictable and easy to control. Things stay the same. The rules are clear and widely communicated. But this kind of organization can’t adapt or evolve with the market. It has no vitality or dynamism. It may succeed and have stellar results for a time, but as soon as the tide shifts, the organization fails.

RESULTS

Aligning with flow will challenge you.

Flow may reduce your profitability. If you’re more profitable because you’re selling a product that you don’t actually believe in, then it’s time to discontinue it and focus on those you do believe in.

Flow may slow you down. If your organization is growing at any cost while burning people out and sacrificing quality and partnership then it’s time to slow down. It may even be time to shrink — to regroup, reflect, and get back to basics. Growth is not a linear, straight-line phenomenon. Not in life, not in nature, and not in business. To attempt linear growth (+25% every year!) is to attempt to transcend the natural rhythms and there are major costs to doing that. Costs that the business pays and that you personally pay in your relationships and sanity.

In fact, flow may take you away from your business altogether. If you’re an entrepreneur but you really want to be fishing off the coast of a tropical island, then it’s time to sell the business and do that.

So taking an organic approach — attuning to flow — may mean less growth, less revenue and less profitability, at least temporarily (emphasis on temporarily).

But that’s OK. Actually, more than OK. That’s great. Because if it’s time for your organization to be sold or to discontinue a product or to slow down, then listening to that is vital.

So profitability and growth may happen or they may not. But what will happen is an openness, vitality, and creativity that will have you and the team operating at a whole new level. That I can promise you.

It’s the difference between a river that’s allowed to flow and one that isn’t.

THE HARDEST THING

If the organic approach is so promising, why is it so rare?

Because it requires a level of trust that we are unaccustomed to.

When you’re aligned with flow, it will take you beyond where you’re comfortable. It will bend and turn in ways you could never predict. It will move you into new areas of exploration, into new kinds of clients and products. It may slow you down before speeding you up again. It may have you expand then shrink then expand again. It will move you to something new just when you got comfortable with the old. It’s impossible to control, to pin down, and command.

In our culture, we think the absolute hardest thing is intense effort and discipline. To have the discipline to work day in and day out. To always be “on.” To smile when you don’t want to. To work when you need to rest. To have clients you dislike and to travel to places you’re not interested in. To do it all in the name of growth or success or some noble cause. And to do it until you’re spent and have nothing left to give.

Believe it or not, that’s not the hardest thing.

The hardest thing is to be clinging to a rock in the middle of a vast rushing current. Stuck there. Without seeing the safety of the riverbank. Without knowing where the river leads. Without knowing the terrain or what lies ahead. Without control or authority. Without knowing if you’re prepared. Without knowing how you’ll have to move and transform and evolve.

But you let go.

You trust.

And you let the flow take you.

THE EASIEST THING

If you’re clinging to the way things should be or to certain outcomes or to specific people, then you are out of alignment with flow.

To let go into flow — to trust it after years of forcing and blocking — may be the hardest thing.

But being aligned with flow is the easiest thing.

When there is space for it to move you and your organization, everything begins to work naturally at a new level. The organic approach has that kind of power.

That doesn’t mean it won’t require effort, intentionality, or discipline a lot of the time. Of course it will. But even those are done within a different context.

They are done within the context of flow.

They have the feeling and tone of flow.

They have the quality of anything that’s done in alignment with the real source of success.

WHAT’S NEXT

So there you have it. That’s the heart of the organic approach.

I left nothing out — not in any fundamental sense at least. No secrets, no hidden steps, no up-sell after you read this to get the “inside scoop” from me. This is it. There’s no inside scoop.

Now of course there are numerous applications of this approach to the numerous aspects of business. What does leadership look like in an organic organization? What do sales and marketing look like? What about meetings? Culture? Financial targets? Investor relations?

But once you get the heart of this approach, it flows from there into all the applications.

It can help to talk with someone though. I’ve been putting this approach to work as a consultant for over 5 years. As you can imagine it’s a unique kind of work, much closer to an inquiry and investigation than coming ready-made with answers. Together, we find space for flow, we align with it, and allow it to unlock the new.

If you want to talk, reach out to me.

If not, then go where the flow is. That’s what I would tell you to do anyways.