The Undeniable Role of Stewardship
Why we must replace a sense of belonging to a place with a sense of belonging to a community.
In my last post, I introduced the concept of Living Companies from the incredible research and book by Arie de Geus.
Today I want to talk about stewardship. Last week I wrote:
Managers in Living Companies were chosen mostly from within, and all considered themselves stewards of a long-standing enterprise.
It got me thinking…
What does good stewardship look like?
Luckily, the research in the book provided answers.
Managers at Living Companies understood that sustainability meant handing the company over to a successor in at least the same health they received it in.
To hand a company down through generations, managers must let people grow within a community held together by clear values.
This goes far deeper than having values created by the founding team and splashed on the company website.
Values in Living Companies are shared values
You may have seen this image in my essays on How Great Companies Become Ultimate Learning Machines or my follow-up tutorial on Transforming Your Learning Culture.
This is our VASE Framework. What began as an exploration into a new corporate training model has become a codified framework for consulting with our clients.
Reading Arie de Geus’ work, I realized that good stewardship comes down to a Shared Vision & Assumptions carried by Shared Stories & Experiences, as reflected in our model.
This also manifests as shared values, which another Ari (Weinzweig of Zingerman’s fame) equates to the roots of a healthy organizational ecosystem (technically, values are the exposed roots in Weinzweig’s ecosystem, while beliefs are the underground roots. This makes sense to me as beliefs are the same as Shared Assumptions in our model).
The only way to create Shared Values is for people to adopt them willingly as their own. The only way for that to happen is to:
value them as people, not assets
loosen control and let them decide
shape a human community
cultivate a healthy learning culture
So what's the takeaway here?
Invest in your Learning Culture
In this volatile environment, your Learning Culture is your ultimate competitive advantage.
These days, organizations operate much like libraries. Companies process massive amounts of information and increasingly rely on the ability to organize that information to be successful.
A business that relies on information relies on ideas and experience vested in people's heads. The route to revenue is not a straight line. Rather, it’s a road signposted with tacit, tribal knowledge in the heads of your frontline salespeople, product engineers, account managers, etc. You should think about how to turn this tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.
To create a sense of trust that people will use this information wisely (apply it sensibly and share it broadly), some element of reciprocity must exist. This motivates the shift we discussed earlier, from viewing people as assets to members. People who think of themselves as members have more of an interest in the future of the business.
Membership would replace a sense of belonging to a place with a sense of belonging to a community. A sense of belonging is something humans need if they are to commit themselves to more than simple selfishness. A sense of belonging is something managers need if they are going to hand the company over to a successor in at least the same health they received it in.
That’s what good stewardship looks like.
Next time, I want to explore the idea of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge in more detail. With a sense of belonging established, this strikes me as the key skill an organization needs to develop in the era of super-information processing.
Till then, let me know what thoughts this piece left you with.✌️