The Authentic Organization

Most of the nearly 1000 organizations with which I’ve worked would object profoundly to the idea that grieving is even a legitimate organizational ability and many others would be merely puzzled. What the hell is Michael talking about now?

I’m not talking about an organizational version of crying and wailing. Nor am I saying that organizations should necessarily become places where individuals cry and wail. That is all very culturally dependent and any particular behavior that comes to mind when you hear the word “grief” may or may not have any bearing on the behavior and norms of an authentic organization.

We use the word “grief” to refer to both the interpersonal and the psychological processes for dealing with loss. Organizational life, like life in general, is full of loss, ranging from the ordinary to the extreme. Even if we eventually choose another word to represent the organizational response to such loss, we can learn something from the more personal process that we call “grief”.

Healthy grieving serves to create enduring and functional understanding of a loss. Whether that loss is construed as a failure, as I perviously explored, or just a transition, or whether the loss is personal or broadly experienced in the organization, an environment that supports the healthy integration of the experience is an environment that will foster learning and authenticity.

One common experience I have had with this is in the world of nonprofit change management, particularly technological change. There are losses that come with change, of course, but often leaders and evangelists will create an environment that doesn’t acknowledge those losses, either before or after the fact. The single most common outcome of this environment is inexplicable (or poorly explained) resistance. No doubt many of you have had this experience as well.

So, the question that’s on my mind is: What can we learn, from what we know about the structures of healthy grieving, that can help us improve and enrich the processes of organizational change?