How do you balance interdependence and independence in your organization?
Today’s business leaders face incredible pressure to anticipate, adapt, and produce. Unfortunately, ongoing uncertainty and increasing demands cause many to fall into the trap of over-management. And it’s not uncommon: when a system crumbles and a new one is not yet fixed in place, we get a lot of chaos and confusion.
Figuring out what’s next is not easy for business and organizational leaders. What are the questions they need to be asking in order to find clarity? How do they find a new vision, when there is ongoing uncertainty about any return to former norms?
What leaders need is a recovery of balance. They need to focus on economics and management issues, as well as how they respond to social, technological, cultural, political, environmental, and religious issues. Childcare, education, and working remotely have a tremendous impact on how they do business. I hear about this with increasing frequency: meeting after meeting leave workers with very little time to actually do the work and complete assignments as agreed.
We need to rethink our previous assumptions about how we do business, and where we are going. What we have known about the past and assumed about the present is no longer sufficient to prepare for the future. Effective leadership requires a balance of interdependence and independence.
Independence Versus Interdependence
Recently, I scrolled past a map on social media that grabbed my attention. It claimed that there were fundamental differences in the balance between individual liberty and the common good based on U.S. geography, specifically, eleven regional cultures. And then I recalled a study I read in Harvard Business Review a few years ago about social class and individualism. While there may be an element of truth to both of these theories (consider the attitudes and beliefs we pass down to our children), I bristled at the notion they we are still elevating independence as our corporate culture ideal.
Too be sure, workplaces that support self-assertion, individual expression, and new ways of thinking/being are to be applauded, but what happens when this is valued greater than collaboration, or worse, greater than the common good?
Consider this: in Descent of Man, Darwin proposed that we humans succeeded because of our empathy and compassion. He wrote, “Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.”
So while there is a place for independence in every organization, effective interdependence will sustain an organization and allow it to thrive.
What do you think? Are you leaning more toward independence, or have you swayed into interdependence? I’d love to hear from you. I can be reached here, on LinkedIn, or give me a call: 561-582-6060.
