Community, The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block
Peter Block’s Presentation:
Community, the Structure of Belonging
Introductory Plenary Session
We, learning and development, training, OD practitioners etc, are in the business of the restoration of humanity. Society is designed as a system of economic units. They extract our humanity.
High performance is all about relatedness. Our humanity matters. Our organizations package it as outcomes and productivity. Our job is hard to do. We are told to sell ourselves by selling the bottom line and productivity. Instead, we need to balance this perspective by focusing on transformation to restore humanity. There must be a shift in thinking – a shift in the narrative or conversation.
Performance reviews are only about sovereignty (“I own you”) and not about learning.
We have to decide where the cause of this resides.
Change doesn’t happen from the top. Change starts in the middle, with the bottom.
Employees create the bosses.
The audience creates the performance.
Kids raise their parents.
Inversion is where the cause resides.
Organizational development is community organizing.
When we ask employees how they are, how the boss is treating them, we are colluding with them to keep them subordinate. We need to treat them as equals, as partners.
We need a new story. History is social construction, but we can make a new narrative. Conversations will create a new meaning.
The old perspective on OD is that life is a series of problems to be solved – requiring a needs analysis and identifying gaps
An alternative is that there are possibilities – that real change is possible.
Solving problems makes tomorrow a little better but doesn’t change the basic cause.
We need to take ownership of our part in creating this situation.
Our questions are usually about changing someone else.
Real question – how are we doing about creating the world we want?
What have we done to create the world we want?
High control
Community, the Structure of Belonging
Introductory Plenary Session
We, learning and development, training, OD practitioners etc, are in the business of the restoration of humanity. Society is designed as a system of economic units. They extract our humanity.
High performance is all about relatedness. Our humanity matters. Our organizations package it as outcomes and productivity. Our job is hard to do. We are told to sell ourselves by selling the bottom line and productivity. Instead, we need to balance this perspective by focusing on transformation to restore humanity. There must be a shift in thinking – a shift in the narrative or conversation.
Performance reviews are only about sovereignty (“I own you”) and not about learning.
We have to decide where the cause of this resides.
Change doesn’t happen from the top. Change starts in the middle, with the bottom.
Employees create the bosses.
The audience creates the performance.
Kids raise their parents.
Inversion is where the cause resides.
Organizational development is community organizing.
When we ask employees how they are, how the boss is treating them, we are colluding with them to keep them subordinate. We need to treat them as equals, as partners.
We need a new story. History is social construction, but we can make a new narrative. Conversations will create a new meaning.
The old perspective on OD is that life is a series of problems to be solved – requiring a needs analysis and identifying gaps
An alternative is that there are possibilities – that real change is possible.
Solving problems makes tomorrow a little better but doesn’t change the basic cause.
We need to take ownership of our part in creating this situation.
Our questions are usually about changing someone else.
Real question – how are we doing about creating the world we want?
What have we done to create the world we want?
High control