Balanced Organisation™
In 2012, I embarked on a study to define the balanced organisation. The focus of balance was the organisational ECO-System and began with understanding pond, the frogs that attempted to survive and thrive in it, and the transformation that needed to take place to create better balance.
One of my dearest passions and continuing ambitions lies in my dedication to improving outcomes for women in leadership and this continues to be the topic of my studies and conference speaking. My determination is for organisations to move away from ‘fixing women’ to conform and comply with a masculine and sometimes toxic workplace pond culture, towards a dedicated focus on fixing the places where all varieties of people work. Only then will we see balance and allow the credible and incredible to flourish in every version of our human experience. After publishing award-winning book, Dancing Round the Handbags® in 2011 (a coaching resource to support women to achieve their potential whilst balancing work and life), I embarked on this multi-year study as part of my consultancy and Executive Coaching CPD, to define the core of feminine leadership practice, and as a result, the criteria for melding the masculine and feminine to create and sustain a ‘balanced organisation’ – one where everyone would flourish.
The results are compelling and first, we must recognise and stop tackling the symptoms of glass ceilings by ‘fixing’ women through initiatives like quotas that help them to comply with the expectations of pond life, and start addressing the root cause of the pond toxins that prevent them from thriving. For women especially, surviving (never mind thriving), in certain ponds is a continuous struggle. In these environments, the expectation of compliance with cultures, behaviours and customs that do not align with our own natural preferences, means camouflaging and muting our authentic self. And whilst some organisational cultures can be toxic to both men and women, the continuous response in most is still to ‘fix women to fit in’ and set quotas for positive discrimination, rather than fix the pond in which they swim. However, cleaning ponds is not about setting targets and quotas, nor developing policies for positive discrimination. Those strategies are bonkers; a bit like providing diving suits and breathing apparatus to certain frogs and setting targets for them to swim to the ‘top’ as fast and freely as the dominant frogs. Frogs in suits become unrecognisable, unseen, unheard, and even alien. They can’t swim freely, and their authentic voice is muffled within.
The Study
In 2012, I embarked on parallel studies to define:
- The preferred exemplar feminine leadership model.
- A balanced organisation system & culture framework.
The objective of both was to model the pond environment where all people and organisations could thrive, and where everyone was valued for their contribution towards purpose.
By 2019 the balanced organisation had been defined, but nothing could have prepared me for the plug-pulling rebalance that has happened because of the COVID-19 global pandemic. As a result, much is now changing towards a new pond environment, and my study provides an indication of exactly what that new pond could look like, and how it must transform: for good!
The balance that is emerging is an organisational Eco-System that balances several critical indicators, including the balance of masculine and feminine. That balance is not just about gender identity and differences. As our generations in the workplace and society challenge and experiment with gender, and its labels and life choices in the physical realm, change is also happening at the unconscious level, and that includes better balance in the culture of organisations and the markets they serve.
Conforming and complying with the current pond environment that serves only a few, must change.
This means moving away from ‘fixing’ women and others, to a dedicated focus on the System that prevails. The answer, if not quotas, lies in the complete transformation and modernisation of the organisational eco-system (the pond): the type of transformation that I mean is not tweaking with processes and fiddling with leadership behaviours, instead, what I have discovered during my 10-year study, is the kind of transformation that is a complete substitute. This is indeed a new way of leading and shaping organisations that offers an alternative to the way structures and people work. This is radical change, that will give benefit to both men and women as well as bottom lines, customers, communities and the long-term sustainability of a balanced organisation and the wider pond of work and life.
If adopted, there will be no going back, just like it would be crazy to abandon modern communication methods for a return to red telephone boxes and letters in the post, or preference for a toxic, choking and destructive pond, rather than a flourishing eco-system that benefits human and organisational wellbeing.
The transformation that I suggest in this work is a radical change to business and organisations; to people systems, organisational alignment, leadership and the development and progression of all people in work. I will provide the insight to create balance; but not just balance in numbers of men and women, balance in the chemistry of work itself – masculine and feminine, investment and cost, productivity and engagement, and the wellbeing of people, organisations and communities.
This could become the ‘new normal’ for work.
Better Balance.
