A colleague and I made a visit to a company that was part of a major pharmaceutical corporation. I was there only a few minutes when I knew I was in a productive community that was engaged in positive organizing, I could feel it. As we started a session together, my colleague asked the top management team to make a list of the strengths of the company. They did. As the list grew, and despite my initially positive feeling, I began to suspect that they were posturing. The list was too good to be true. The characteristics were outside the normalized realm of organization. Consider their claims:

• We are proactive: when a product is still climbing in the market, we move on.
• We shape practices in the market.
• We love responding to a challenge.
• We think big and seek success at all costs.
• We are the place you go in the larger corporation if you want to become a leader.
• We cannot stand to be anything less than #1.
• We take strength from having done the impossible in past crises.
• We are highly galvanized and rally in times of crisis.
• We appear to have very few formal systems, but when a problem arises, a team spontaneously emerges, solves it, and then disappears.
• We have quality people with a "can do" spirit.
• We have people-friendly policies; it is a place of high trust.

As this list was being articulated, my attention was drawn to a particular conversation. The third to the last entry on the list came from the statement, "Whenever there is an important problem, a team of appropriate people spontaneously emerges, solves the problem, and then voluntarily disbands." I thought it the most extreme claim of all. At that moment it was made, a woman on the management team responded:

“That is right. I have been here three months, and it is driving me crazy. I have worked in a number of corporations, and I pride myself in being able to rapidly comprehend the culture of any organization. This place baffles me. I watch those teams form and disintegrate. It is like magic. I cannot understand or explain it.”

To this statement, there was a rejoinder by another member of the organization: “I have been here more than a year. I am in charge of systems and processes. I cannot understand it either. It is an extraordinary phenomenon.”

As the day unfolded, I became convinced that the list was for real. These were people with a powerful culture. It was a hard-driving organization making lots of money. There are, however, many hard- driving organizations that make money. This one was more. It was an organization in which people were as committed to each other's success as they were to their own. Because there was trust, people could communicate their problems and get help. Because there was trust, there was cooperation. The self-interest, which is the bedrock of most corporate cultures, was also operating here, but the collective interest and individual interests really were one. Here everyone was a servant to the collective good and to each other. This was a focused, money-making company that was also a productive community. They were engaged in positive organizing.

The Problem of Split Logic

When I share examples like the one above, people often get excited by the vision of productive community and positive organizing. They claim they want to create such an organization and they tend to espouse the need for characteristics like openness and trust. They also tend to condemn hierarchy. In doing so they set out on a path of split logic that will never take them to where they want to go. Normal logic does not give rise to positive organizing.

The reason that our normal organizational experiences are less than energized is because human beings lack the virtues necessary to keep the hierarchical structure aligned with the emerging demands and possibilities in the external world. In looking to improve logical analysis we can only fail. The challenge is to improve something more basic than logic.

When High Performance Happens Naturally

A productive community is a relationship or collectivity that is both structured and spontaneous. It is both highly differentiated and integrated. Members are clear about both their accountability and their freedom. When positive organizing occurs great outcomes follow. They derive from extreme human commitment but afterwards seem to happen without effort. Consider the following statement.

“I have a critical mass of individuals from both the staff and board that are willing to look at our challenges in a new way and work on solutions together. At our meetings new energy is present. What previously seemed unimaginable now seems to happen with ease. I sometimes wonder why it seems so easy, why we now have such a positive culture.”

The statement comes from a man who is one of the subjects of my new book, Building the Bridge as You Walk on It. For four years he worked at the head of his organization. He thought of himself as a leader. Then he experienced a crisis that led him to make a deep personal change. Afterwards he wrote of the impact on his organization and provides the above description. What did he do to bring about the process of positive organizing?
He answers his own question. The answer defies what is written in almost all the textbooks on management and leadership. It defies common understanding and practice. It is a promising answer in that it suggests that every one of us has the capacity to transform our organizations into more positive, productive communities, like his. Yet it is a painful answer that almost no one wants to hear. The man states:

“I know it all happened because I confronted my own insecurity, selfishness, and lack of courage.”

In that seemingly illogical and impossible sentence is the essence of what gives rise to positive organizing.

The Normal State

My most recent work is an applied theory of leadership that is derived from the reports of people like the above person. The central argument is that most people, no matter how high or low their position, spend most of their time in the normal life state. In the normal life state people tend to be comfort centered, externally driven, self focused and internally closed. Conversely, it is possible for anyone, no matter how high or low their position to enter the extraordinary state which I call the fundamental state of leadership. In this state we become results centered, internally directed, other focused and externally open.

The Fundamental State of Leadership

When we enter the fundamental state of leadership we become a distortion to the social system in which we reside. We are a new signal to which others must respond. In this sense we become creators of a new order. We become a stimulant of positive organizing or the emergence of a more productive community. The above description captures the phenomenon. The man who thought he was a leader, entered the fundamental state of leadership and his organization changed, at that point he became a leader indeed.

His personal transformation gave rise to positive organizing, to a more productive community. He suddenly had a critical mass of people who saw things in a new way. They were more willing to join together and produce innovative initiatives. They were more energized. Seemingly impossible accomplishments began to happen in an effortless way. Leading suddenly became easy. That effortless accomplishment was born of agonizing change.

A New Theory of Leadership

Building the Bridge as You Walk on It presents a radical, inductive and applied theory of leadership. Radical means returning to the root or foundations of a thing. The foundation of leadership is not thinking, behavior, competencies, techniques or position. The foundation of leadership is who we are, our identity or foundational state. When people alter their interior world they also alter their exterior world. As we come to understand this fundamental framework, our understanding of leadership is radically altered. The book is designed to help us to alter ourselves and thus create more frequent episodes of positive organizing.