Assessments

Five Organizational Orientations

Excerpted from Chapter 6
Edgewalkers: People and Organizations that Take Risks,
Build Bridges, and Break New Ground
© Judi Neal 2006

There are five different orientations that people can take in an organization, and these affect the extent to which the organization can truly be on the leading edge.  These five orientations are:

Each of these will be defined, and then we will look at the implications for organizational culture and performance. 

These orientations are based on two factors:  (1)  Relationship to Time, and (2) Relationship to Change.  The Relationship to Time factor is a continuum between focus on the past and focus on the future.  The Relationship to Change factor is a continuum between being closed to change and being open to change.

Edgewalkers

Edgewalkers are people who walk between worlds and have the ability to build bridges between different worldviews.  They have a strong spiritual life and are also very grounded and effective in the everyday material world.  They have five qualities of being:  Self-Awareness, Passion, Integrity, Vision, and Playfulness.  As they grow and develop, they increase their skills in these five stages of development:  Knowing the Future, Risk-taking, Manifesting, Focusing, and Appreciating.  Edgewalkers are much more oriented towards the future than the past to the degree that they can sometimes run roughshod over tradition and can close their ears to what has worked in the past.  They are also high on the change continuum, with a basic philosophy of “If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway.”

They are restless and always seeking newness and change.  For this reason they can sometimes be difficult to manage, especially for a traditional manager.  The Edgewalker may be more focused on his or her creative ideas than on what is most needed in the organization.

Flamekeepers

Flamekeepers are those people who keep the original vision and values of the organization alive.  They are like the Olympic Torch Bearer, keeping the flame lit at all costs.  Or like the Keeper of the Flame in a temple, the ones who keep the sacred candles lit morning, noon, and night.

I only know of two organizations that have institutionalized the concept of Flamekeepers.  The first is a non-profit group called the Kripalu Consultant Collaborative (KCC).  This is a group of consultants, trainers, coaches, and others that meet two to three times a year.  They share an interest in spirituality in the workplace and they meet to support each other’s spiritual and professional growth.  The group has designated the founders of the group, Ron and Randy Nelson, and a few others who have been in the group a long time, as “Flamekeepers.”  Their job is to keep the original vision of the organization alive and to continually explore how the organization can more fully live that vision.

The second organization was the Strategic Programs Division of Xerox in Rochester, New York that created the first truly green, “zero to landfill” copying machine, the Document Center 265DC.  The organization went through a massive six-year cultural change to support the development of a whole new series of products.  In order to support their larger vision of a culture that focused on people first, they created what was originally called the Council of Elders and later renamed the Council of Wisdom Keepers.  A nominating committee selected sixteen people, two from each of the eight functional groups.  In the beginning, the people chosen needed to be 55 years or older, and have at least 20 years service with the organization.  Later Xerox decided that it would be better to have more diversity on the team, since most of the people 55 years or older were white males. 

Flamekeepers are focused on what is best about the past and on preserving the core values of the organization.  At the same time, they are open to change and are willing to look at how the organization can build on what has been developed in the past.  They may not be your biggest innovators, but once they see how a new product, service, or strategy fits with the core values and is in alignment with the vision of the founders, they will be the biggest supporters of change.

Hearthtenders

Hearthtenders are the people who get the day-to-day work of the organization done.  They are the ones who keep the home fires burning when the Edgewalkers are out scouting new territory.  They keep things running smoothly and are committed to a sense of family in the organization, and to creating a “home away from home” atmosphere in the organization.  Hearthtenders are the ones who remember peoples’ birthdays and who enjoy the organizational milestone celebrations.  They are the ones who think of creative ways to celebrate accomplishments and to bring people together. 

They enjoy working on continuous improvement, and if given half the chance, will have creative ideas about how to improve the workflow in their area, or how to better serve customers.

Hearthtenders are in the middle of the model in Figure 1.  In time orientation, they tend to be focused on the present, and they are moderately open to change.  These people are generally satisfied with their jobs and with the organization, and are happy to keep things the way they are unless someone has an idea on how to make their work more streamlined and less stressful. 

Hearthtenders serve a very important function in the organization by providing stability and by keeping systems running smoothly.  Depending on the climate and culture of the organization, Hearthtenders could move into any of the other quadrants.  If you are trying to create an organization that is more values-driven and more innovative, you will want to actively find ways to help Hearthtenders to be either more future-oriented, thus moving into the Edgewalker orientation, or more past-oriented, thus moving them into the Flamekeeper orientation.  Often Hearthtenders are Edgewalkers or Flamekeepers in disguise and can be encouraged to be more change-oriented if they are listened to, supported, encouraged and rewarded.

Placeholders

In contrast to Edgewalkers, who tend to be rare, just about every organization has Placeholders.  Tom Brown defines Placeholders as the people who are holding back organizational progress and innovation.  There are the people who see boundaries instead of possibilities, who are focused on the past instead of the future, who use up resources instead of looking at renewal, and who value doing over dreaming.  They are the ones who want to employ as few people as possible in contrast to the leaders who engage all of humankind and look for ways to grow the enterprise.  Placeholders are a drag on organizational energy and are usually the ones that clog the organization’s arteries with bureaucratic processes.  They will tell you why something can’t be done and will resist change because “we’ve always done it that way.”

Placeholders are primarily motivated by fear and ego.  They are risk-averse because they are afraid of losing whatever they have.  They feel like they can’t afford to fail, and so they get frozen in place, fighting mightily to keep things the way they are.  Oh, they will give lip service to change, but they will follow any words of support with statements such as:

Placeholders do have a tremendous amount of organizational memory, and perhaps even some wisdom.  A Placeholder is, in many ways, like a pessimistic, angry, cynical Flamekeeper.  Probably at one time they deeply believed in the vision and values of the organization and perhaps had their faith and ideals trampled on one too many times.  So they retreat into their protective shells and long for the past.  And they try to block any new initiatives that move them even further from what they perceive as their idealized past. 

It takes a tremendous amount of work, a high level of interpersonal skills, and may even spiritual intelligence, to deal with Placeholders.  If you are trying to create more of an Edgewalker culture in your organization, you are likely to create even more fear in Placeholders unless you find a way to deal directly with their motives for being a naysayer.  From a spiritual perspective, its important to remember that there is good in every person, and if you are in a change agent role, you want to find a way to unleash that goodness in your Placeholders. 

Programs that increase self-awareness, that focus on values, and that help people to rediscover their inherent sense of service and higher purpose, can be very successful for those at lower levels in the organization.  One-on-one coaching, whether it is with a professional coach or with a competent boss, can also help Placeholders to be more open to change, particularly if they can be shown that they will have some influence on the new direction.

But if your top leaders are Placeholders, your organization is essentially stuck in the mud.  Edgewalkers and Flamekeepers will eventually leave out of frustration, and you will be left with people who keep the machinery running but who have forgotten the higher purpose and mission of the organization.  

Doomsayers

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a Doomsayer as “one given to forebodings and predictions of impending calamity.”  Even more than Placeholders, they can be a tremendous drag on organizational energy.  These folks are not just “the glass is half empty” folks, they are the “glass is broken, the water is going to stain everything, and I’m probably going to bleed to death” folks.  They are very concerned about the future, but they always predict the worst possible calamity and then spend their time preparing for doomsday.  Or else, in their fear, they just get paralyzed and helpless. 

Typically Doomsayers get pretty marginalized in organizations because they are such an energy drain.  They tend to gravitate towards jobs like safety, environmental engineering, cost accounting, auditing, and other jobs that by their nature are supposed to look for what is wrong.  The goal of these kinds of jobs is to prevent serious problems from happening and to quickly handle a crisis if it does.  Many people in these professions handle the prevention work and the crisis work in a calm and professional manner.  Doomsayers on the other hand turn everything into a drama. 

They get themselves into a vicious cycle.  When they see a potential problem emerging, they do whatever they can to get the attention of people who can do something about it.  Often this includes using strong emotion to express their concern.  Doomsayers also use exaggeration to get their point across.  Because so many things seem like a crisis to them and because they tend to exaggerate and blow things out of proportion, they become like the little boy who cried, “Wolf.”  People become immune to their cries of alarm, and then, when there is a real emergency, no one believes them. 

Like Placeholders, Doomsayers are change averse.  But their resistance to change is based on a belief that the future holds danger.  Their theory about the world is that it is not a safe place, and you have to protect yourself at all costs from bad things happening.  And as Jack Gibb said, our theories create our reality.  So if the least little thing goes wrong, they are able to say, “See, I told you.”  They tend to ignore all the things that go right most of the time, and if you point that out to them they say, “Well, we’ve been lucky so far, but just you wait.”

Doomsayers are very difficult to change.  However, if you are creating an Edgewalker Organization, you will have to find a way to deal with them because their negative and fearful energy can be so contagious. Do anything you can do to help them develop a more positive relationship with the future.  They are already future-oriented, but it is a fear-based orientation.  If you can help the Doomsayer to understand how he or she creates his or her own reality, you have gone a long way towards transformation.  Once they can begin to accept that there may be other ways to think about the future, you are on your way towards moving the Doomsayer to either the Hearthtender quadrant or even the Edgewalker quadrant.

Appreciative Inquiry is a wonderful process for beginning to open up the consciousness of the Doomsayer.  They often find it very difficult to shift their thinking in this way, but it is possible.  When I offer workshops, I often build in a one-hour or two-hour vision quest in nature as part of the process.  This kind of experience can also be very helpful to the Doomsayer.  Other programs, like the Noble Purpose program or the ONE program, also have the potential for helping Doomsayers to see that they could choose a more positive future for themselves.  Once they see this on a personal level, they naturally begin to see it on an organizational level as well.

See Chapter 6 of Edgewalkers: People and Organizations that Take Risks, Build Bridges, and Break New Ground (Praeger 2006) for a detailed description of each of these orientations, as well as guidance for how organizations can assess their Edgewalker Profile and fully utilize the best these orientations have to offer.