Did You Get What You Need to Satisfy Your Tension?
Creating Engagement through highly decisive meetings focused on giving 100% Sacred Space to one Tension at a time.
We just had a Tactical Meeting at WonderWorks this morning for the Communication Circle. I’ve recently started energizing the role of Facilitator and Secretary (if you’re familiar with Holacracy Tactical Meeting format).
So far I’ve really enjoyed working with WonderWorks in their mission of helping organizations implement Holacracy. It’s really exciting and fulfilling when an organization realizes they can unleash the collective genius of everyone in the organization by distributing the authority of decision making power throughout the entire structure.
However I’m possibly even more excited to actually be learning the system myself and building it into my muscle memory in a real hands-on way. I’ve worked in several kinds of traditional corporate environments and also in a few more egalitarian and flat structures in the non-profit sector. Never before have I experienced the kind of value that Holacracy offers, in exquisitely balancing the sensory needs of the individual with the purpose and mission of why the organization exists.
My experience has been that in most traditional corporate environments a formal nervous system connecting the organization throughout its structure, for the purpose of processing tensions, simply didn’t exist. For the purposes of discussing Holacracy, ‘Tensions’ are simply sensory data of a perceived gap between what is, and what could be. In the more egalitarian (flatter) structures, tensions were easily processed, however it seemed a common phenomena was that there usually wasn’t a formal, clear, coherent, and codified system connected to actually integrating tensions, and consistently iterating the evolution of the organization based on those tensions.
So in the corporate structures it was difficult to get the sensory data of tensions to be processed or transferred through a formal system across the low-to-high of the structure. In the more egalitarian organizations it often felt like we lacked a formal system that was consistently iterating the structure and functionality of the organization towards its purpose based on processed tensions. Ultimately in Holacracy based systems, we don’t want to just process tensions, but we want to have a set of protocols and methodologies that can help test and validate sensed tensions against the purpose of the organization and then integrate them if they need to be integrated to help evolve, grow, and scale the organization.
So when I’m facilitating a Holacracy Tactical Meetings and I’m asking someone “Did you get what you need to satisfy your tension?” — to me that is one of the most cutting-edge qualities of what Holacracy has to offer an organization. The singularly focused sacred-like attention that is given to each tension doesn’t slow the system down like you might think, but actually speeds up the whole process of being able to get the work done to achieve the results that the organization is looking for — to scale its purpose. This happens while simultaneously creating increased engagement from individuals filling roles and reinforcing a conscious culture. To understand the fluidity and swiftness created by giving full attention to every tension, imagine for a moment how much more drag is being caused on an organization by dissatisfied and less than fully engaged members of the organization who feel that they have no consistent and formal structures for addressing every tension they might sense. Simply put — unprocessed tensions cause organizational constipation!
I feel so lucky to work in an environment that allows for the processing of any tension I might feel, especially anything that relates to a potential obstacle that is keeping me from getting my work done as it relates to one of my roles. It’s completely new to me, and yet at the same time it’s so familiar and I’m aware that it is what I have been looking for all along.
WonderWorks Founder Anna McGrath just published a short video on how “Processing Tensions Is Critical.” Check it out and let us know what you think.
Do you feel like you have resolved all of your tensions when you walk out of your weekly meetings?
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Oct 1, 2014, Rashid Gilanpour, WonderWorks Consulting, Hello@yWonderWorks.com
