Organisational Energy

Imagine walking into a room full of people.

With every tentative step, you are sizing up the room. You are picking up signals from a whole ocean of data points – faces, voices, expressions, gestures, movements, words, even stillness.

What we are tuning into is the energy of the room.

Within a few steps, we have completed a fairly complex assessment and arrived at a decision. To stay or to go.

If we choose to stay, we then make the choice of where we’ll go, who we’ll approach first etc. All of these decisions happen faster than we consciously realize.

What is true for a room, is true for organisations too.

Organisations as conduits of value

Every organisation has an unmistakable energy about it. One can feel it within the first few interactions one has with the place; sometimes even before one interacts with a real person.

I remember visiting a client’s office some time ago and being struck by the layout of the office. Free, open space, lots of day light, real plants, quirky lighting and furniture and overall, a laidback vibe to the place. The interactions that followed did not surprise us.

Organisational energy is an elusive, hard to define but, easy to feel experience. It can be the defining experience of being a part of that organisation and working with its many parts. Regardless of its tangible or vague nature, the question of importance is whether it serves any real purpose in the performance of an organisation or its various parts.

What is the material impact of something that can be instinctively sensed by an outsider?

These questions ask us to return to a fundamental view of organisations, stripped of all the external firmaments and their autotelic complexity.

At the end of the day, all organisations are human systems imbued with a purpose. They are conveyor belts that take an input at one end and deliver value in some form to a customer at the other end. Irrespective of whether one makes products or sells services, every organisation is a conduit for value.

Seen that way, the defining measure of effectiveness for a conduit (of any type) is flow. In his path-breaking book, The Goal, Eliyahu Goldratt defines this as ‘throughput’ or the rate at which the company makes money (realizes value).

How does value flow through the system and reach its intended destination?

This is the fundamental question that underpins any inquiry of understanding organisations and influencing them.

What is Organisational Energy?

Organisational energy (OE) is the primary factor that influences this flow. It works from within and without, impacting the organizational flow at every stage. All enhancements that are brought into the organisation are essentially agencies to accelerate this flow – process, technology, analytics and perhaps, most importantly people. Over a period of time, it is easy to get lost in the world of these agencies as they each have a character and voice of their own that can hold and distract our attention and imagination.

Prof Heike Bruch and Bernd Vogel defined organisational energy as the extent which an organisation has mobilized its emotional, cognitive and behaviour potential to pursue its goals.

At Somajna, we define organizational energy as the collective will of the organisation.

It is the sum total of the expressed and latent potential of all the interacting human systems of the organisation.

Energy and Culture

Organisational energy is distinct from culture. It is a vector, with a certain strength and a direction that constantly dynamic in nature, unlike culture which takes shape over a longer time horizon. OE exists within the culture and shapes it, moment by moment simultaneously getting affected by the culture.

In that sense, it is relatively easier to access and tap into, compared to culture which typically needs a much wider and longer arc of influence. In other words, changes to organizational energy can be felt quickly with the introduction of the right stimulants.

Imagine a meeting that’s been called to announce the onboarding of a new leader who will be entrusted with taking forward a significant strategic initiative of the company. All you need to do is ask the most obvious question (yet, usually avoided) in a meeting and see what happens.

In less dramatic ways, there is a clear shift when any one of these events take place in an organisation—a new customer comes on board, an influential new employee joins the team, a major change is announced etc. Any of these factors can and usually do affect the collective will of the people impacted and by consequence, the flow of value through the team/organisation.

Indicators of Organisational Energy

While by itself it can be an elusive, abstract concept, OE can be recognized through some very tangible indicators.

1. Shipping on time, in full: OE can be easily assessed based on the completeness and timeliness of delivery – of projects, products, initiatives etc.

2. Openness to change: The reluctance to change status quo, resistance to new ideas and a general commitment to the existing inertia. This could further get amplified during certain change and transition phases when external interventions are added.

3. Communication: Overall, does the interaction of teams and systems move towards creating value or conserving its own energy?

While there are many others, these are perhaps the primary indicators of flow and organizational energy. Also, each of them has their own drivers that function underneath them and influence them. For example, clearly defined goals and the expected standards are the first requirement for shipping on time, followed by the definition of the most efficient process for producing value.

How does OE affect Flow?

When viewed as the collective will of the organisation, it represents the overall range of action and the arc of possibility accessible at any given point in time.

OE can be viewed as the prevailing mood or emotional undercurrent of a team that predisposes it to certain ways of being.

What does it mean?

Within a certain mood or emotional landscape, teams are predisposed to think and act in certain ways that contribute or support their core concerns.

We have learnt from Richard Boyatzis and his work on the Intentional Change theory that individuals and teams are fundamentally oriented either in a ‘promotion’ focus or a ‘prevention’ focus. We also know this as the ‘towards’ or ‘away’ state—the tendency of systems to move towards a vision that nurtures and opens possibilities and conversely, the need to move away from anything perceived as a threat.

What supports this evolutionary orientation is the configuration of our nervous system and our physiological functions, which shape and guide our attention towards what is perceived as most important – to survive or to thrive. Accordingly, a unique emotional climate is created within the body that Boyatzis refers to as the positive or negative emotional attractors (PEA/NEA).

Biologically, the prevention instinct is four times stronger than the promotion instinct. Our need to survive is much stronger than embracing the uncertain opportunity to thrive.

Going back to the example of the new leader calling a meeting, just the perception of this leader being aggressive can put people into a defensive, survive mode even if the meeting was meant to be open and creative. By merely anticipating a threat, NEA gets triggered and with it, a fixed mindset that allows for a very narrow range of actions, mostly aimed at survival. When this happens, behaviours that are essential for effective collaboration between teams are replaced by self-preservation driven behaviours, automatically impacting the flow of value. When flow is impacted, the system’s outcomes are compromised which in turn triggers more anxiety, thereby perpetuating the same loop.

This is why purposeful change in organisations is hard to achieve.

Naturally, sensing and working with Organisational Energy becomes a strong determinant of any organizational change initiative or interventions that are designed to facilitate them.

It requires an understanding of the factors that create and drive OE along with the ability to flexibly use practical tools and techniques that can create a shift in those factors. Without consciously choosing to address the underlying factors, a lot of effort and resources can be wasted, creating more anxiety and frustration for the system.

At Somajna, a combination of interventions that integrate methodologies of team coaching and appreciative inquiry are built into our programs. This includes an online asssessment of OE called 'ALiVE' and a diagnostic tool called the 'Energy Wheel'. These approaches are designed to help teams identify and take necessary actions to align their organisational energy and remove any blocks to flow.

If you would like to know more about working with OE, do reach out to us through our website www.somajna.com