The simplest answer to finding out where an organization wants to go: do nothing special. Let self-management work its magic. There is a word that often comes up with Teal pioneers: sensing. We are all natural sensors; we are gifted to notice when something isn't working as well as it could or when a new opportunity opens up. With self-management, everybody can be a sensor and initiate changes- just as in a living organism every cell senses its environment and can alert the organism to needed change. We cannot stop sensing. Sensing happens everywhere, all the time, but in traditional organizations, the information often gets filtered out. Only the signals sensed at the top are acted upon, but unfortunately these signals are often distorted and far removed from reality on the ground. Holacracy's Brian Robertson uses a powerful analogy to talk about organizations filtering people's ability to sense their environment:
A transformative experience [happened happened] for me when I nearly crashed an airplane. I was a student pilot, and shortly into a solo flight my "Low Voltage" light came on. Every other instrument was telling me "all is well," so I ignored it, just like we do in organizational life all the time, when one lone "instrument" (a human) senses something that no one else does. Ignoring a key instrument proved to be a very bad decision when flying an airplane and helped catalyze my search for organizational approaches that didn't suffer from the same blindness- how can an organization fully harness each of us [as as] human instruments, without "outvoting the low-voltage light"? [1]
For an example of how this might work in practice, see "Concrete Examples for Inspiration - Buurtzorg" below.
Brian goes on to say, "… getting clear on purpose is more like detective work than like creative work. What you are looking for is already there, waiting to be found- it is no more a decision than your child's purpose is. Simply ask yourself: "On the basis of our current context and the resources, talents, and capacities at our disposal, the products or services we offer, the history of the company and its market space, and so on, what's the deepest potential it can help create or manifest in the world? Why does the world need it?"[2]
While people are naturally gifted sensors, we can increase our capacity to sense with practice. Meditative or spiritual practices, in particular, can help us distance ourselves from self-centered needs and tap into broader sources of wisdom.[3] For an example of how this might work in practice, see "Concrete Examples for Inspiration - Sounds True" below.