Stepping Down of the Founder
A large multinational social organization is battling with the issue of 2nd generation inheritance. The Founder and visionary man behind the content, the purpose and the culture of the organization is stepping down and moving out from his active role.
In response the acting CEO and management group wants to tighten their control over the whole organization, specifically bring new procedures in the process of appointing new area and country managers.
This is causing uproar in the whole organization especially with the current office holders in the different regions. The organization is now in a chaotic situation where there is a loss of trust and much intrigue.
What is the process that this organization is going through? What would be a good way forward?
What does Systemic Constellations offer in such a case?
Mostly groups of people who come together for a common reason create an immediate organization that can dissolve as quickly as it came together or evolve for a while, sometimes for a very long while. Through its life this organization moves between different polarities that are to do with the movement between – evolving and the dissolving, Order and Chaos.
Chaos – to allow creativity, freedom, independence, self expression and a wish to fulfill potential on different levels – from the personal to the organizational – from the content to the vision – To allow the inner personal and group wisdom to emerge.
Order – to bring together, to streamline, to survive, to hold from parting, to utilize, to create a community, an Organization, to help move forward the whole.
The wish for this movement between the two forces may come from within the organization or from without the organization, and from different levels in those.
To Chaos and Order there is a down side of course. That comes about when the two are fighting each other.
The Organization has to be aligned and in a way born out of its content, its purpose and vision. If these are fundamentally changed or forgotten, the Organization will lose its core and will just try to function in a robotic kind of way bringing bitterness and intrigue to its people.
However, when it becomes an Organization – that has its own content, purpose and vision, the two – Origins and Organization have to find a way to marry without stifling each other. They also should have and hold the deep knowledge through what or who was it all born. If they forget that they will lose their core.
When a small group of people ‘take over’ it is usually a reaction to the Organization’s deep need for a structure, a need for an order from the chaos. To bring about what is missing in the organizations. However if they lose the connection to content, purpose and vision they will not hold for long.
In cases of inheritance and taking forward what others have started, all children feel they have the first right. And they are all right. They do all deserve the first right. That is a deep human impulse, and for that it is right. Of course if this is allowed with its full energy, then war ensues. And the original organization breaks down into different second generation organizations that may fight each other or form sub groups. Sometimes this is the way forward for new ways, contents, purposes and visions of the new generations to be born. The anger between them helps them to develop differently and so together add much more to the original field of content. May be through time, when they are more confident and mature in their independent way they may find a way to work together again. So that the new ways can marry and that will give way to even newer ways, contents and visions. Through all of that, for the different groups to survive and develop they must stay connected, in their own way to where they were originally born from.
The Challenge: how to do this in a good way? Is this the only way? The answer will mostly come from reconnecting to the original content, purpose and vision and to who or what it was all born from.
How to do that? This is our job – as systemic constellations facilitators and consultants to help such movements, being with large and small organizations move on in a productive and trustworthy way.
Yishai Gaster
