Blog - Lead Together

Basic Principles of a Living Organization, by Rea Gill

Basic Principles of a Living Organization by Rea Gill

There are two major challenges to the ongoing creative activity of an evolving organization, much like there are two elements to managing our individual lives. We have to deal within each moment and each day with what is living growing and evolving immediately before us and widely around us. We also must look at the present moment in relationship to the whole of our life and our life in the whole of culture and humanity’s evolution.

It is actually easier to perceive and understand the form, processes and evolution of a human being than it is an organization. The principles of human development are a part of us and as educators, it is something we have trained ourselves to perceive and that we continue to develop with our colleagues every day. We experience theses principles through our life. In our organizations, especially in schools, the principles of organizational development can also be evident but because organizations are social creations involving numerous people and have greater levels of complexity, it is harder to see and work with the processes that guide our organizations. Whereas in education, though we have classes and a student body we are a part of, students stand before us as objective reality and we are outside them. With a school, it is harder to see the whole life of the organism as we do not stand outside it in the same way. As teachers, we know it can be helpful at times to try to enter into the beingness of the student to gain insight about their nature. As social creators, it is equally as helpful to try to step outside the organization to gain perspective.

Once we step outside, we take a step towards becoming social scientists.

Here are basic principles related to the school as a living entity with thoughts on how the ideas can be practically helpful:

The school is a living entity:

Just like our approach to the nurturing of the students in our care, it changes things to think of the school, not as a problem to solve, but as a mystery that is unfolding. Once we start to see the school as a set of problems to be solved, it is easy to forget that it is the wholeness of the being that must be the place of our attention. Diagnosing and trying to solve school problems is similar to diagnosing and trying to change the behavior of the students. We need to consider the whole being. It is much more effective to look at the constitution and development of the student or the school. The use of metaphors is most helpful in this realm. How would you describe your organization if it were a person? How would you draw a picture of your organization as a landscape? Often a creative approach helps reveal insights about the quality and nature of the whole school.

The school has a biography

The founding gesture and impulse of the school, much like the conditions around the birth of a child, provide a signature to understand and provide insights into the unfolding life of the being. Every beginning has three basic elements: parents (or founders), family heredity (or culture), and the individuality/or vision. It is important for those in leadership positions in an organization to regularly reconnect with the founding (celebrate founder’s day, recognize founders, retell the founding story) for the signature of the organization will be discernable and shared. In addition, the significant turning points in life whether they are accidents or growth opportunities, have an effect on the growing being. So too do the major events in an organizations life: major crises, conflicts and cultural shifts. I have worked with a number of schools where the lack of resolution or healing of a past crisis was actually holding the community back, and where a conscious effort towards healing/resolution/understanding allowed the community to move forward with more trust and unity. Annually, there are times when a review of the year and how it fits into the ongoing biography can yield insights into its next steps in development.

The school grows and develops through phases in relationship to social laws

While each school is a unique endeavor, (not like a franchise that is intended to be exactly like its siblings) the school moves through phases that can be observed and understood. The character of these phases is both general and uniquely connected to one institution. A good description of the phases and their qualities, challenges and opportunities, is offered in Chris Schaefer’s Phases of School Development posted in this newsletter. A school, like any organization, is a social creation made by people that follows social laws. (It may be creative but in the end not helpful to try to depict the relationship between the years of a humans life and the organizations life. It often become too conceptual and leads people away from a deeper observation and understanding of the organization’s life and of the underlying social laws that govern its growth and development.)

The school is a social organism made by people.

The founders of the school and their ongoing relationship to the school has a profound impact on the unfolding life of the institution. The relationship between founders and organization and its challenges is well documented in non-profit literature. But the school also grows gradually through the gifts of those who are involved over time. As a social creation, it is important to understand that the entire organism changes (to a greater or lessor degree) with the addition of one new member. As teachers we know this is true in our classes – the addition of one child changes the entire configuration of the class in subtle or not subtle ways. With this imagination, it becomes more important how we incorporate (orient, invite and socialize) people into the organization and how we support and encourage their development and participation in the organization. As organizations grow in size, it is helpful to consider forming a group or organ that has as one of its primary responsibilities the incorporation of new families in to the school.

The school has body, soul and spirit

All three aspects of the being of the school need attention and behind each aspect there are principles that are uniquely important – it has physical structures and resources needing to be sustained; it has people and relationships woven into a community and culture needing to be nurtured; and it has ideas, principles, policies and processes that need conscious attention, ongoing renewal and re-creation. It is important in the ongoing renewal of the organization that the spiritual dimension is attended to regularly – a little in each meeting through developing a culture of inspiration, and more fully annually in reviewing the mission and vision. Staying connected to the vision is key to organizational harmony.

The school is part of its environment and the greater culture

Like any being, the school is an integral part of its environment and has an ecological importance. The health of the organism is related to the quality of the relationships it has with the world around it. How an organization participates and takes an interest in the community out of which it was born contributes much to its success. Unfortunately, this aspect of board work is quite often the one most frequently moved aside to deal with more pressing issues.

The school has a physiology

The school’s physiology includes a physical form and substance, a set of processes connected to its life in the world, organs for supporting the processes, a set of ideas and principles that continually shape and recreate it and a purpose/individuality that guides it. And all of these elements of the physiology are created by people and thus reflect social ideals. Torin Finser explores these relationships and qualities in depth in his book, “Organizational Integrity.”

A school learns as it grows

Over time, a school can take its experiences and learn from them, turning the lessons in to institutional wisdom. The wisdom lives both in the individuals and in the policies and procedures established. Like all life, the challenges that come from the future as opportunities for change test our core beliefs. It is very helpful for the community to commit to articulating their core beliefs/values and to regularly come back to renew and evolve them. The way that the school gathers its wisdom has a significant affect on the parents and the students of the community.

It has a lifespan

An organization’s lifespan is affected by the initial purpose and the changing nature of the culture. Ecologically if there is no longer a need for or support for the organism, then the organism cannot continue. This is important to keep our eyes on as we look into the future and explore aspects of sustainability. We already see a change in the culture of education since 2000. From 1980-2000 almost 100 new schools were founded. Since 2000 there have been, in North America, relatively few.

Principle	Notes
Every organization is a social creation with a unique purpose	The ongoing role of founders has a significant effect on organization.
Every organization has a biography	The biography of an organization does not follow the life phases of a person. It has unique patterns and transition points.
There are social laws that govern the life of organizations
An organization is born out of its surrounding community	Its relationship with the community determines to a great degree how strong its roots are.
An organization grow, lives and learns in relations to its leadership
It has a physiology of structures, ideas, principles, and processes
An organization has a relationship to the threefold nature of social life
An organization expresses healthy or not so healthy effects.
It grows and learns through mistakes and crisis	It experiences the equivalent of inflammation (heat) and Sclerosis (hardening, or being overly fixed) Both sclerosis and inflammation are important aspects of its healthy life.

Leading with Spirit Summer Leadership Workshops 2017

Announcing a new professional development opportunity in administration and leadership for administrators, staff, trustees, faculty and parents of Waldorf schools this summer in NY, Ann Arbor and the Pacific NW.

Join us for a week intensive this summer

Working Together in Community:

Conversation, Teamwork, Facilitation and Decision-making

Waldorf Institute of S Michigan, Ann Arbor Michigan, July 23 - 28

With Sian Owen Cruise and guest teachers

Principles, Roles and Practices in School Administration

Whidbey Island, WA, July 2 - 7

With Marti Stewart, Michael Soule and guest artists

Waldorf School Leadership and Governance

Alkion Center in Harlemville, NY, July 9 - 14

With Mara White, Lisa Mahar and guest artists

For more info and to register

Go to www.LeadingwithSpirit.org

A part-time two-year professional development training program including:

Three week-long summer intensives,
Professional mentoring over two years,
Independent research projects and
Participation with a cohort of colleagues online.

Participants may register for summer intensives alone, or may enter the full two-year program.

Core Faculty

Mara D. White:

Marti Stewart

Sian Owen Cruise, PhD

Michael Soule, MA

Program Advisor

Christopher Schaefer, PhD

Chaos in Life: Cleaning and Caring by Linda Thomas

This article was published in the British journal, Kindling. Contact information is at the end of the article.

Chaos in everyday life – about cleaning and caring

Linda Thomas

When it comes to housekeeping, the concepts of disorder and chaos often get confused. In our households, order is often related to a certain regularity and clarity. I call a room orderly, when everything is in its place and I can easily orientate myself and find my way around without fuss. However, as soon as I start working in the room, or the children start playing around in it, the order very soon turns into disorder. Order seems to have this special quality of merging into disorder without much effort, yet the opposite never occurs. I have to consciously intervene in order to re-establish the lost order.

In the Kabbalah, the story of Creation tells us that God withdrew Himself, thus producing a void. The chaos that arose within this void formed the substance from which the world was then created.

In our homes, we very often face chaos. The mere fact that we have countless ways and means, in which we can structure our daily lives, puts us face to face with chaos. We have the opportunity of purposefully re-establishing order and structure where formlessness and haphazardness have taken over.

When I clean, I do not simply want to remove dirt, I consciously try to create space for something new. Removing dust and dirt, results in a void – this void I put at the disposal of helping spiritual beings who are linked to the place I am cleaning, that something new and positive may come about.

About fourteen years ago, I started an ecological cleaning company, in order to be able to finance the Waldorf School tuition for my children. In the very beginning, I was not only the “boss”, I was the only employee and also apprentice. I had so much to learn, not only about the right equipment and cleaning agents; it was important to learn how to conserve my strength, how to protect myself, and most of all, I wanted to learn how to respect the space of other people.

The attitude that we have, regarding the work we do, is of the utmost importance. If we are unable to lead the meditative spiritual life we wish to lead, we can try to find a spiritual attitude towards everything we do in our daily lives. In other words, if you are not able to do what you love, you should try to love what you do. Things that repeat themselves constantly either turn into routine, which can have a very dulling effect; or you can try to make an exercise of awareness out of the most menial task, and already you are starting on your spiritual path.

I found an anecdote I heard a long time ago, very helpful in this regard. In a monastery, there lived a monk who was quite simple and all the menial tasks were given to him, such as washing the dishes, sweeping and scrubbing the floors and so on. He did not mind this, did all his chores lovingly while always pronouncing little prayers while doing his work. “Dear God, as I wash this dish, please send one of Your angels to wash my heart and make it pure” or “Dear God, as I clean this floor, please send one of Your angels to help me, that every person who walks on this floor, may be touched by his presence.” For every chore, he had a prayer and he continued working in this way for a great many years. The legend says that one morning as he woke up, he was enlightened and people came from very far to listen to his wisdom.

Many memories of things my father and mother once said have come back to me. We are seven brothers and sisters, and one of my brothers often came to the breakfast table in a very bad mood. My dad used to ask: “Did you get out of bed with your left foot again?” Many years later, I turned this remark into an exercise. When I wake up in the morning, I try to put myself in the upright position straight away and then very consciously, I try to always put my right foot forward when I get out of bed, thus doing something positive to start my day.

I started doing things in this way, and after a certain time, I made a very important discovery. There exists a great difference between cleaning and caring. When we clean, we remove dirt, and the result of cleaning sometimes does not even last five minutes. At the Goetheanum, you have barely cleaned the hallway, and already someone walks over it, leaving footmarks everywhere. The same goes for parents with young children. For this very reason, many people consider cleaning a frustrating and unrewarding activity, a troublesome necessity.

Yet, we should try to do this task with our full awareness, with all our love. Once we learn to consciously penetrate each little corner with our fingertips, then cleaning takes on a nurturing aspect and becomes caring. And what is so wonderful about it, is that the result of caring, lasts considerably longer than the result of removing dirt! When we have taken special care of a room, the little bit of fresh dirt which is brought in, is barely disturbing, one can live with it. The radiation is totally different from areas where layers of dirt and grime have built up......Lately a new cleaning culture, which we should really try to prevent, is trying to establish itself. There is supposedly a spray for everything – you spray and you wipe away – not much water is needed! One does indeed remove a small quantity of dirt, but instead of caring for a surface, you leave a chemical layer behind, containing quantities of dissolved dirt.

While caring for a room, we do not only come into contact with the physical world. The whole atmosphere changes, the room is filled with light. Especially children react strongly to this transformation and they also seem to perceive the change directly. We once gave a big house around here a very thorough spring clean. Returning from school, the ten year old boy immediately wanted to know whether the walls had been painted, as the house seemed so bright and shiny.

Only we can decide how seriously we take this occupation. For me, caring for a space is very fundamental. Every living organism thrives on caring, be it a child, a plant, an organism like the Goetheanum, a school, our personal household and very important, our relationships. After a workshop, one of the participants told me about her experience of the healing influence conscious caring for household can have. She had been married for fifteen years and somewhere along the line the relationship got caught in a rut. Their barely five year old house was already neglected even though it was not even quite finished. No sooner had she started applying what she had learned in our course, did her husband also start finishing things around the house. Later he told her, that as soon as she started caring for the home again, he not only felt respected but he also felt that she was aware of him again.

Consciously caring for the home enhances our sense of perception and this is what enables us to release the elemental beings, thus creating space for something new. We are constantly surrounded by and in contact with elemental, as well as countless other invisible beings. We release the elemental beings by consciously perceiving that which surrounds us – when we remove dirt, wash our hair, air the room or light a candle. A totally different atmosphere is created when we leave the burned porridge pot overnight on the stove, or when we choose to ignore the specks of cream that remain on the wall after whipping it.

We release other elemental beings through diligence and gayety, through contentment and composure.

All elemental beings can not be treated in the same way. In a school where we cleaned, there was one room with a particularly bad smell. I tried everything to get rid of the smell: my ecological cleaning agents, chemical agents, with my steam-cleaner I tried to clear even the smallest crevice. Nothing helped, the smell remained. I then assumed that I was not kind enough to the room. With loving care I again went through the whole procedure, even singing whilst cleaning. As there was still no improvement, I accepted that I would have to learn to live with it. I few weeks later I arrived at the school feeling hot and tired, and as I opened the door to the room, the odour was so intense and seemed so aggressive that I became furious. I ripped the window open, stamped my foot on the floor, shouting: “I have enough of you! I AM HERE, and there is not enough room for all of us – get out!!” Like a fury I went through the room, angrily cleaning it from top to bottom. The odour was gone! A few months later a colleague took over the job and after explaining the attitude to have toward these beings, she also managed to keep them away.

The opposite of caring is neglect. I perceive neglect as something creeping. It starts in all those little corners we do not penetrate. It comes creeping from behind the cupboards, from under bed and behind the curtains where we find so many cobwebs.

Then most houses have certain drawers......There is the oven, the vent above the stove, the windowsills where we have our collections of stones and plants. By and by it seems to take over until we can no longer stand it. Then, like a flash we speed through the house in an attempt to put everything back in order.

Many mothers and fathers feel overwhelmed and under pressure to keep the house tidy and clean. A young mother once told me: “I have been working hard the whole day, and by the time I finally had the kitchen cleared after supper, nothing seem to have been done at all. We tried to reconstruct the day, and this it what it looked like: She intended cleaning the parents’ bathroom upstairs. Just as she wanted to start cleaning, she remembered that she used the cleaning agent to clean the basin in the laundry in the cellar three days ago. So down she went to the cellar, only to discover a very smelly cat-litter box right next to the washing machine. Of course that had to be cleaned and refilled immediately. She closed the soiled litter in a bag which was taken into the garage. There she discovered piles of old newspapers and other paper, which needed to be bundled for the paper recycling which was to be collected the following day. After looking for the string for a while, she remembered that her son and his friends used to it build a cable car in the attic. Up the stairs she went and fortunately, as a bonus, she found a pullover, which has been missing for several days, next to the string... By the time she had finally bundled all the paper, it was time to start preparing lunch. Then followed a dentist appointment and music lessons. That evening, when she finally stood in the bathroom to brush her teeth, she remembered that the cleaning agent was still in the laundry.

Often it is not the work we have done which tires us, the mere thought of all the things that still need doing really exhausts us.

I know that it is not always possible to plan things in advance, because there are always those unforeseen things that happen. Yet it can be a great help, once we have decided to do something specific, to prepare everything we will need for the task the evening before. The will is activated in a totally different way once we have made up our minds to do something and then sleep over it. The household should not be a compulsion. Men and women should be master of their household and not the other way round. Yet it is important that we do not try to fool ourselves. It is the way a task is fulfilled that distinguishes the maid from the princess.

The image of the equilateral triangle helps me a lot when it comes to balance. There is thinking, feeling, willing; you, partner, children; time for work, family and yourself. The only person that knows what that triangle looks like is you.

We so often say, “I must do this, I must do that, that absolutely needs to be done….says who? You say it and I say it. We are the ones who overtax ourselves with those high expectations and demands we set ourselves. Another reason for being overwhelmed is that we do not have enough faith in all those invisible helpers who surround us. There are angels, elemental beings, the spirits of our homes…..When we get up in the morning and greet the day, nothing prevents us from asking the angels to help us to at least spend part of our day in harmony. (Perhaps until 8am, just to ensure success!) When I was in Sunday school, the pastor told us that the angels up there in heaven are totally bored because they do not have enough to do. So many requests are addressed to them which they are not allowed to answer. And then all of a sudden there is a child, or in our case, an adult who stands by the window requesting help to create harmony in the home. FINALLY! We have something to do, they say, and rush in to help us!

Before I started being the housemother of the Goetheanum, I use to regularly stand in for the person who was responsible for cleaning the toilets. I used to start at 6 in the morning, cleaning 64 toilets every day, often singing to make the job easier. For cleaning the toilets, I have my own method. There is the daily care, and then the thorough cleaning once or when necessary twice a week. Then the toilet gets cleaned from top to bottom, the whole bit. This of course requires a little more time. As the bending, cleaning, turning, bending again use to make me quite dizzy, I decided to clean the toilets kneeling down. Once you kneel down in front of a toilet, something changes. It is quite subtle, there is a change in attitude, the way one perceives it, the way you do the work, the encounter with the elemental beings. Once the job is done, I have to get up again…..I tried to also change this into a conscious exercise of putting myself in the upright position. This experience was so rich and fulfilling, that even today, if I have the choice, I will rather clean 20 toilets than vacuum clean a carpet. I love this work also because I always consider it a special gift when I am able to use a toilet that is clean and well cared for.

Last year I was in Norway to give cleaning workshops. The morning courses were in English and in the afternoons they were repeated in German. The first afternoon a woman came to me and asked me if she could still participate, as she had not signed up for the course. She mentioned that she really considered it quite a cheek that someone had to come from Dornach to tell them how to clean. Yet when her husband came home from the course and announced that she had to wait with the dishing up as he first wanted to clean the toilet, she simply had to come and see who had caused such a miracle. Her husband had never cleaned a toilet before….

Once I start talking about cleaning, I can continue for hours. And it truly is a never-ending subject. How do we clean? With what do we clean? How can we learn to discover the deeper meaning of cleaning and learn to love it? How can we educate our children (and sometimes our partner!) to pay attention to the small things and to carry an action through to its end? For instance, how do we teach them that, after wiping the table clean, the cloth needs to be rinsed, wrung and hung out to dry, rather than just dropping it into a heap in the basin, still covered with butter and bread crumbs.

This reminds me of another anecdote. A few years ago I was asked to give a lecture about my work here in the Goetheanum. The day before the lecture, an elderly gentleman phoned me to tell me how happy he was to hear that I was going to talk about something as practical as cleaning. He personally knew Hanny Geck (who helped Rudolf Steiner with the carving of the Representative of Man) and she had told him this story: Whenever Rudolf Steiner was called away from his work on the statue, he would always sweep up all the woodcarvings and chips lying on the floor and place them in the garbage can. Although she had often offered to do this, he insisted on doing it himself. One day she asked him why he took the trouble to sweep up everything even if he had to leave for only a few minutes. His answer was something like this: “While I am working, everything I work with is part of my working material and I am master of the situation. As soon as I stop working and leave the studio, everything that lies on the floor is garbage and therefore belongs in the garbage can, because the beings who feel at home in garbage, are not the kind of beings we want around when working artistically.

Finally I would like to tell you about an experience which showed me, that we should never underestimate the importance of lovingly caring for our surroundings, and the opportunity it can give us to create space for something new. These are the precious moments that enable us to constructively contribute towards peace and renewal.

I was requested to do a thorough cleaning of a home for juvenile delinquents because they were planning an open door day. As I was shocked by the state of extreme neglect and filth the house was in, I wanted to know who was responsible for the upkeep of the place. “The youths” replied the educator. “But who teaches them how to do it?” “The educators do that”. I then wanted to know if there was an area that was cleaned by the educators, and he showed me the rest quarters for the people in charge of the nightshift. Of course this was no better and I told him so. It annoyed him slightly and he wanted to know whether I wanted the job or not. I said that I was very eager to do it, but not with my own employees. My offer to come with all my equipment and material, but to clean with the youths and educators, came as a bit of a surprise. As this had never been done, he had to consult with the board first. I incidentally mentioned that the charge would be Fr. 3000.-if I came with my employees and Fr. 600- if I came on my own. The offer was accepted but then I had yet another condition. Because I have never worked with youths and I am neither a pedagogue nor an educator, I believed that I would need the support of their guardian angels. Therefore I wanted to meet the youths and learn their names before working with them. I was invited to have breakfast with them.

There were ten young boys aged 13 to 18 living in this house, and as five of them spent weekends with their family at a time, the work was planned for two weekends. The house has three stories and the whole stairwell was painted with the most horrific, demonic pictures in black and very bright colours.

Our job was to clean windows, heaters, doors, floors, showers and toilets. Yet once they started, they wanted to clean everything. They started removing posters and stickers from their walls and wardrobes. One boy even took his whole bed apart and in the process found a whole pile of missing clothes. Another wanted me to show him how he could clean his hi-fi set “ecologically”……Of course they could not work without music, and some music it was! To me it sounded like a mixture of an express train and a machine gun. The boy who chose the music actually told me it filled him with energy, although I could not see a trace of it. He wanted to know what I like listening to and I told him that I still liked listening to some of the old sixties’ music that I listened to when I was his age. All of a sudden I heard Cat Stevens’ “Morning has broken” and it sounded like a symphony in comparison to the earlier “noise”. I was even able to convince him that it was easier to clean a window to the rhythm of “Morning has broken” than to the “tu-dum, tu-dum, tu-dum” we heard before.

There was a wonderful working atmosphere and we managed to get a lot done.

Upon my return the following Saturday, the most wonderful surprise awaited me. The five boys who had cleaned with me, asked permission to take Monday off and with their own money they bought paint and repainted the stairwell from top to bottom, thoroughly covering the walls with white paint. But they did not leave it at that. The complete surface was covered with naïve childlike pictures - houses with green doors, pink curtains and smoking chimneys.

Trees covered with red apples and cherries. There were daffodils and tulips and children flying kites under a beaming sun. There were even birds, butterflies and tiny little snails crawling in the grass.

These “tough”, severely socially damaged young people felt the need to create a world of beauty and harmony on those walls, filling void, the space created though their own efforts.

Kindling, the Journal of the Early Childhood Group, Steiner Schools Fellowship

3 Church Lane, Balsham

Cambridge CB1 6DS

Tel/Fax: 01223 890988

E mail: JanniSteinerEY@aol.com

Redefining Accountability and Transparency: LeadTogether Highlight #15 3-15-15

Understanding and Redefining Transparency and Accountability

If I had a nickel for every time someone said the phrase, “We need more accountability and transparency in our school!” I could buy a lot of lattes for my wife! Instead I am launching a campaign to rid our organizations of both words. I can’t remember when either word was mentioned in a positive vein or without someone cringing. Besides being quite negative. These terms have become intelligent-sounding catch phrases for things that people little understand.

The demand for transparency usually means “ Quit being so sly and secretive and withholding information from others.” The real issue is .are we communicating in the right ways about the right things? How are we communicating overall? Can I trust that you will tell me what I need to know when something affects me?

We would do a lot better to explore the questions of communication and information sharing. “There is a lack of transparency” is already an accusation of villainous behavior. Wouldn’t it be better to agree on what kind of information should be shared in what situations? There is also the aspect of transparency relating to whether someone is being honest. In this case we should focus on honesty, rather than transparency

Transparency is not a virtue. It is not even a healthy organizational practice. Good communication is an admirable quality in an individual and an organization.

With accountability. the situation is similar. When someone mentions accountability, it usually comes with a hard edge and a cringe or shrug of the shoulder. It would better if we could speak honestly about issues of quality and commitment to core principles and how we hold one another other to those expectations in our organizations. Accountability is never listed as a desirable human attribute. On the other hand, a highly-principled person committed to quality is looked up to and is an asset to any organization

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Only in this case we have the wrong name for very important characteristics and principles that can guide, inspire and lift us up in our work. I cast my vote for referring to “good communication” and “a commitment to quality.” Let’s let the terms “transparency and accountability” wither and fade on the vine of vague negative concepts.

We are currently working on the theme of, yes, Accountability (how to maintain agreements and quality) for one of our next newsletters. If you have something to contribute let me know.

Stay tuned.

Michael Soule

LeadTogether

Exploring Accountability: An Introduction

This newsletter focuses on accountability. It is a topic of conversation and a concern, not only in every Waldorf School, but also in every organization today. Most of the books, articles and essays connect accountability to improving performance and outline processes to help individuals or groups become more accountable by setting clear goals, having clear roles and responsibilities, having systems to evaluate employee performance, giving people incentives, and creating clear consequences when individuals fall short of goals. All of these suggestions can be useful in certain situations, but they fall short of being helpful to those of us working in highly collaborative horizontal organizations.

The dynamics of accountability in horizontal organizations are different. Individuals have many more meaningful relationships and are expected to carry more responsibility for the whole organization and to be responsive to collegial feedback. The typical measure of accountability -- that of improving performance -- needs to be balanced with the concern for developing the capacities of individuals. In our endeavors, it is a central purpose of our work. This difference is fundamental. Ultimately, in healthy horizontal organizations, individuals become more and more capable of guiding their own development and incentives, and consequences are more intrinsic.

The collection of articles in this newsletter explores what accountability means in a collaborative organization: what is required of us as individuals; how do we need to organize and manage our organizations to support and encourage accountability; how do we find ways to assure that our organization is accountable to those it serves.

This is an ongoing exploration that hopefully can lead to individuals gaining new insights into ways to understand accountability and bring health to our organizations.

The following articles explore the realm of personal and organizational accountability.

The One World Trust report on accountability in international NGO’s offers some insightful aspects of what makes an organization accountable to its stakeholders. While its audience is organizations working in the international arena, its principles are helpful in thinking about how we as a school engage and inform those whom we serve – families and the community at large. The article is an excerpt of the full report, “Pathways to Accountability – The GAP Framework.” The full report and the excerpt are both available in our resource collection.

In an excerpt from his important book, Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux describes how organizations pioneering new horizontal forms deal with performance evaluations for groups and for individuals. It is an interesting exploration of how previous practices of control are transformed in new organizations.

“Managing Horizontal Accountability” is an article by Darrel Ray ad David Elder that shares insights about how performance-focused horizontal teams and groups achieve their goals through four basic working principles. It is a quick read and while it was written for different settings than schools, it provides some useful tips for all of us.

Accountability, the Individual and Integrity

There are two kinds of accountability in an organization – individual and organizational – and while they are related and stem from the same question of whether we are doing what we said we would do, there are fundamental differences that make it useful to explore them separately. Ultimately they are both connected to questions of congruence and integrity. For the individual, integrity is an inner question. For an organization, integrity is more of a social question that lies in the ways people in the organization treat one another and how they work together to serve the organization’s mission.

In a horizontal organization, personal integrity is essential. There are usually less outer incentives and consequences established and more dependence on the individual’s own inner strength. In a horizontal organization, one generally has more freedom and therefore more responsibility to be self-regulating. Here are some thoughts about aspects of individual accountability.

Standing in the Light

In a close-knit horizontal community or organization (like Waldorf School), it is essential to be willing to be open and exposed. As a teacher, one has daily interactions and growing relationships with students, parents and colleagues. What one does each day makes a difference in the lives of many others and can have a lasting effect. One must trust that one’s colleagues hired you because they saw in you the capacities to carry this work, and the soul flexibility to grow and develop over time. The key to standing in the light is to practice each day turning the light of one’s own consciousness upon oneself without judgment in quiet contemplation. This allows one to overcome any sensitivity to being open and exposed. It takes courage to be willing to be in the light and visible with all one’s strengths and challenges, mistakes and successes and to let others see who you are.

Living in Trust

The more horizontal an organization, the greater number of meaningful relationships one must embrace. In addition, a horizontal organization requires that individuals be more involved in carrying a feeling of responsibility and awareness of the whole. Both of these require openness to others and their way of doing things, and commitment to ongoing dialogue and sharing feedback. They also require a willingness to trust the process as it unfolds, transforms and evolves.

Practicing Self-Awareness and Commitment to Learning

Part of the genius of the horizontal organization is the recognition that every individual is important to the whole. The more individuals feel a part of the whole, the more they can be mirrors for one another’s and the organization’s progress. Every situation presents individuals and groups with an opportunity to learn and grow. To be willing to look back on events, actions and processes and see them objectively, to understand the importance of agreements, and to see the effects of one’s actions can yield insights that can help individuals grow and organizations develop.

Six Principles for Building Accountability and Agreements in an Organization, Michael Soule

In the history of Waldorf education and of organizational development in general, communities and organizations move through phases of development from the unconscious, implicit and intuitive to the more conscious, explicit and objective. In all the phases of development, the way in which people form and renew agreements is key to accountability throughout the organization.

Members of a small school just getting started, for example, do not usually have the inclination or the time to define everything in detail. In a pioneer initiative, where many things are done together and the group is finding its way, agreements are often unconscious or in response to emerging situations.

In a more mature, complex organization, the community develops a more formalized system of agreements, both about the whole and between the individuals and groups. Over time, a community grows in its understanding and attention both to agreements of all kinds and to the practice of what to do when agreements aren’t upheld.

In a young organization, the challenge is to make agreements conscious. In an established organization, the challenge is to find time to review and renew agreements, so that they are living in the consciousness of everyone involved and can be adjusted to the realities of the current situation.

How agreements are arrived at also makes a difference. For example, if individuals (as appropriate to the nature of the agreement) are involved in creating agreements, then they already feel invested and accountable to the outcome. Understanding this can help organizations build a culture where accountability is not something imposed from the outside, but is living within a group as a matter of organizational integrity.

Here are six areas where clear and shared agreements can strengthen accountability in the organization:

Common objectives, expectations

Make sure that the mission, goals and strategic plan are clear and shared and that people feel connected to it. Keep the focus on the goals more than on personal approaches.

Expectations and individual roles

Make sure that each individual knows what is expected and what their role is and that these are reviewed updated and shared annually. Really strive to live the motto of the social ethic: That every individual feels the whole and that the strengths of each person are acknowledged.

The environment of feedback

Make feedback and evaluation an everyday practice that doesn’t evoke anxiety.

Create time on every agenda and during every week that feedback can happen. Have active peer meetings and observations. Provide training to everyone in giving and receiving feedback (see articles in the resource section).

Agree on support mechanisms

Small peer groups that meet regularly are better than large ones for supporting one another, giving feedback, having meaningful dialog and stimulating creativity. Deal with problems when they arise. Welcome conflict as a path to resolution, create and utilize processes for dealing with conflicts that are safe and accessible to everyone. Put into place mechanisms for keeping track of things that are in process, even if you can’t deal with them immediately.

Reflect and share learning

Be sure to make reflection a regular part of meetings and the school year so that together you can share observations, insights and possible improvements. Make sure you record these, especially for annual events, as they can easily be forgotten over the year.

Celebrate

It is important to recognize and celebrate the things, big or small, that you accomplish. This overcomes the tendency to focus only on the things that aren’t getting done. Appreciation creates an environment that allows for people to feel recognized and connected to one another and to the whole.

Michael Soule

Managing Horizontal Accountability, Ray and Elder, IPC

To understand horizontal accountability (HA), it is easier to begin with its absence. When there is little or no horizontal accountability in an organization, people tend to engage in blame, finger pointing, passing the buck and conflict avoidance. To the degree that these are present in an organization, horizontal accountability doesn’t exist.

Most organizations have strong vertical accountability. That is, accountability to management and the chain of command, but that tends to ensure compliance rather than commitment and goal focus. It also does little to address the flow of communication and interaction between those who do the work.

Horizontal accountability can be defined as the degree to which people communicate across the organization, problem solve with all employees and teams, and build accountability for superior outcomes. Horizontal accountability creates trust between employees and management.

When people trust one another, have confidence in the leadership and have a clear goal, they can be highly productive. When people feel they have to watch their back, are unclear about the goals or see management as untrustworthy, productivity suffers.

Horizontal accountability facilitates efficient problem solving, goal achievement and less conflict and lower turnover. People feel loyalty to management, to each other and to the goals of the group. Passion, drive and high energy often characterize groups with strong horizontal accountability. Lethargy, blaming, finger pointing and conflict avoidance characterize groups low in HA.

The Problem of Under-Accountability.

Under-accountability exists in organizations where trust is low. Under-accountability is often disguised in the form of other problems. Have you heard some of these statements in your organization?

“I never see my boss so I do what I think is best and cover my rear with documentation.”

“I have been burnt by their department many times so now I cc every email I send to them and blind cc my boss.”

“We have one member who holds the rest of us back but there is nothing we can do about it so we just do their work when we have to and get along.”

“IT doesn’t listen to us. We agree to a project and scope and end up with a costly monster that doesn’t meet our needs.”

“I can’t get my project done because they can’t make a decision.”

“We have email wars between our department and marketing. They can’t get their act together but they always blame us.”

Under-accountability is most apparent in the blame game that individuals and groups play. Finger pointing and blame are the currency of accountability avoidance. Observing this, leaders may jump to the conclusion, “People just don’t want to take responsibility” but this is not necessarily true.

Under performance is costly, wastes huge amounts of resources, and is often hidden from view. Evidence of underperformance is often hidden until an emergency hits. When half of a client’s building burned, destroying a huge portion of the company’s assets, management had to rely on employees to organize themselves and get production back on line while management focused on insurance issues and retaining customers. Organized into task teams, the organization made a remarkable recovery, losing only a week’s production with continued higher productivity long after. The President of the company soon realized that the productivity of the affected groups was much higher when management was preoccupied with other issues. We interviewed the President a year later. He told us, “Until the fire, I had no idea how much our management systems were hindering performance.” The fire response demonstrated the need to organize for more horizontal accountability and less management focus.

Another client had an unexpected labor strike that lasted six weeks. Rapidly organizing management and about 25-

50% of workers who crossed the picket line, productivity jumped to levels far higher than before the strike. After the strike, the leadership looked at both management skills and horizontal accountability to maintain higher levels of productivity. While no one was laid off, many positions were not filled in the subsequent months when people retired or resigned. The strike revealed areas of significant underperformance. Implementing Horizontal Accountability allowed the organization to capitalize on this discovery. It required some changes in management behavior as well as additional training of employees, but the return in lower labor costs more than made up for the investment.

It doesn’t take an emergency to deal with underperformance. Creating Horizontal Accountability shines a spotlight on areas of underperformance. Employees know where underperformance exists. With proper training in Horizontal Accountability they will root out underperformance and create huge performance improvements.

Horizontal Accountability

Horizontal accountability (HA) is an approach that teaches team members to take high levels of responsibility for goals and performance. In sports, the coach must rely on the team to coach one another during actual play. The best teams develop constant performance feedback between players. Players get immediate, useful feedback from teammates – without the coach doing a thing.

In an HA organization, the manager still evaluates performance but day-to-day performance information comes directly from peers. A vast amount of information can be found in the observations of peers whether in sports or business, but the information must be put into a useful and non-threatening format.

An HA coach teaches team members to critique performance in a way that reduces or eliminates defensiveness and improves skill and goal focus. HA releases productive energy that was formerly locked up in conflict avoidance and manager focused behavior. Customer focused behavior increases dramatically in an HA environment. Horizontal Accountability is an untapped source of information and energy in most organizations.

Some organizations have recognized this untapped resource and implemented various processes such as rating and ranking systems and 360 evaluations. These are good foundational tools but they miss the most important component of accountability, immediate feedback. Annual 360 reviews or even 6 month Rating and Ranking does not give the team member timely and specific feedback so they can learn rapidly and be closely accountable for the team’s goals. Something more is required to achieve strong horizontal accountability.

Micro-Performance Appraisal

How do you get marketing and sales to become mutually accountable? How do you get engineering and operations to work the problem rather than fight each other? How do you get IT to be accountable for the external customer’s experience?

As our colleague, Barbara Bridger, formerly VP of HR at Butler Manufacturing used to say; “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. We are doing it because our competition can’t.” Horizontal accountability is a competitive advantage. When people learn to hold one another accountable with minimal management involvement, it liberates a good deal of management time and employee energy.

Horizontal accountability means creating practices and routines that encourage and support constant “micro performance feedback.” We define micro-performance as the hundreds of daily behaviors that an individual and/or team perform to provide a service or create a product. Micro-performance focuses primarily on the interpersonal interactions between individuals and teams. It is different and more fundamental than workflow analysis or other forms of technical work analysis. In virtually all teams we have studied, performance is undermined to some degree by individual “micro-behaviors.”

Examples we have seen:

A team member tends to word emails with terse and subtly offending language

Members of one department tend to talk disparagingly about another department.

Two team members are prone to gossiping about others in ways that create conflict in the team.

A programmer has the habit of working on the things he likes best, procrastinating on other aspects of the work.

You may think, “These are things for management to deal with.” Yes, management might deal with them – if the manager is aware of the behavior. On the other hand, the peer group often knows of these kinds of behaviors long before any manager. Some of these kinds of behaviors can remain hidden and non-productive for years, even entire careers. What if the peer group was able to handle these issues intelligently, tactfully and effectively without management involvement? What would that do to productivity? How would it affect the manager’s own performance? How would it improve coordination and customer service? How would it affect the wasted energy of interpersonal conflict?

Every high performance organization we have observed had some degree of horizontal accountability deeply embedded in the culture. It may not have been called horizontal accountability, but it was clearly present. Employees observed one another and gave micro-performance information in real time or close to it. No one waited for the annual review to talk about a missed deadline. Meetings were evaluated each time for their effectiveness and timeliness. Harmful gossip was dealt with effectively. Good performance was recognized the same day and at the next staff meeting. Management set the pace by modeling and training employees how to evaluate micro-performance and deliver the information effectively.

When micro-evaluation becomes the norm, there are no surprises at review time. Mistakes become learning opportunities for the person or team receiving the information as well as the person giving the information. The receiver learns something about their performance AND the giver learns more about how to give micro-performance information. It is a very rapid learning model that leads to a clear competitive advantage. The benefits include less internal conflict, faster learning cycles, less wasted time and energy blaming and finger pointing and quicker market and customer responsiveness.

You may notice that we use the term, “information” instead of the widely used “feedback.” Feedback is burdened with a negative connotation. In an environment of horizontal accountability, information is given in relation to a specific goal. It is non-judgmental and measured against the goal. To the degree that micro-performance is focused on goals, team performance is enhanced.

Conflict Avoidance, the Big Road Block

Conflict avoidance is the biggest roadblock to horizontal accountability. People are very reluctant to share information with others when they perceive it may lead to conflict. They are also reluctant to say anything that might be used negatively by management. One of the cardinal rules of group behavior is to get along and minimize conflict, even at the cost of performance. Conflict avoidance is very strong in most groups.

People aren’t stupid…… they know that giving feedback can come back to bite them, so they avoid it. Unfortunately, this eliminates the richest fund of information on performance – peers. Peers know more about one another’s performance than any manager.

The key to effective horizontal accountability is to teach micro-evaluation skills along with a system of positive consequences for doing it. As Dr. Edwards Deming stated fifty years ago, you must take fear out of the system. When people feel safe, they will give micro-performance information much more easily and frequently. It becomes a natural and free flowing part of the culture. Defensive behaviors dissolve and goal focused behaviors increase dramatically.

Managing the White Space

There is a space that exists between departments, teams or groups in any organization where handoffs occur. We call this the white space. Handoff failures occur when the white space was not properly managed. It happens all to often at a huge cost to many organizations.

The problem with managing the white space is that the manager does not have the time or attention to do it properly and it’s not sexy and fun. In a vertical accountability model, managing the white space takes time and attention away from other things the manager could be doing. In an organization with strong horizontal accountability, the teams take a great deal of responsibility for managing the white space. When there is a handoff between engineering and operations, engineering takes the initiative to ensure a smooth transition. The manager may have little or nothing to do in managing the process. When an IT project is developed with an internal customer, the two teams take the lead in controlling project scope creep and achieving the goals on time and on budget.

By managing the white space more effectively, organizations prevent huge amounts of wasted time and effort. Rework and conflict are reduced or eliminated and higher levels of collaboration develop as people learn the basic skills or horizontal accountability.

Four Elements of Horizontal Accountability

Here are four elements of the system we use to create horizontal accountability:

Flood the environment with four times as much positive as improvement information. This simple formula is proven effective in all forms of applied psychology from schools to sports and business. It has been taught by many leaders in the field, from Steven Covey in his Seven Habits of Successful People to Aubrey Daniels, Bringing out the Best in People, to Peter Drucker and many others.

Ensure that all information follows simple rules that eliminate attacks and defensiveness. Keep people focused on the performance to goal aspects of evaluation rather than personal preferences or less objective approaches.

Make performance information so common that people think nothing of it, “its just the way we do business day- to-day.” As with any tradition, once it is established in the culture, it is easier to perpetuate.

Focus on the goals of the team. Micro-evaluative behavior must tie to the goal. Micro-performance information can be seen as arbitrary and confusing if it is not anchored to the goal.

For each of these four elements described above, there are specific methods used to teach and support this element. The techniques focus on these critical steps: What is the goal? Which specific person’s behavior forwards that goal today? The team itself identifies this using some non-threatening methods. The focus is primarily on positive, goal directed behavior and less on the corrective. The focus is on what you want, not on what you don’t want.

In a performance culture, horizontal accountability is woven into the very fabric of the organization. Every individual, including management, receives micro-performance information from those who see his or her performance most closely. This improves performance in real time. Learning opportunities are maximized and skills improve rapidly. Newer employees learn faster and senior employees learn to transfer their skills to others.

Horizontal accountability keeps manager and team focused on goals and goal directed behavior. High performance organizations aren’t necessarily smarter, better trained or equipped, they just waste less energy on mistrust, conflict and goal confusion. Horizontal accountability frees huge amounts of time, energy and emotional power for achievement of goals.

Your organization

If you are like most leaders, you are constantly looking for the competitive edge. Whether you are a Six Sigma company, a lean manufacturing plant with a kanban system, an insurance company with one-call customer satisfaction

– horizontal accountability magnifies the effectiveness of these processes. We would argue that full benefit of these processes is only achieved when horizontal accountability is deeply embedded in your culture. When each individual and team is constantly doing micro-performance appraisal, other processes and initiatives benefit greatly – not least the customer.

Take Action

Team members and managers need training and follow-up to help learn the skill of micro-evaluation. It does not come natural or easily at first. Once established, micro-evaluation creates a continuous improvement environment that is powerfully goal focused and completes the human side of most improvement processes like Six Sigma, TQM, Lean, etc. It puts everyone on the same page. Managers and team members learn rapidly and respond to market and customer needs much faster.

Horizontal Accountability is more than a catchy phrase, it is a process for creating a performance culture. First, train management in the principles and skills of Horizontal accountability, then practice them for about three months. Organizational performance will improve almost immediately. Next, train team members in the skills. With management’s supervision, participation and modeling, teams will soon learn the process and see the benefits for themselves. Finally, do an in-course evaluation to ensure you are using the skills effectively.

Visit www.teaming-up.com for more information and training on Horizontal Accountability.

Organizational Accountability: One World Trust and GAP

Shifting the debate: new understandings of accountability

Accountability is a nebulous concept subject to multiple interpretations and understandings: it means different things to different people. According to traditional conceptions, an accountability relationship exists when a principal delegates authority to an agent to act in their interests. Central to this view is that only those with formal authority over an agent – those that have delegated authority to it – have the right to claim accountability. This approach is often used to conceptualise the accountability relationship between politicians and the electorate, or company directors and shareholders. Within this traditional view, holding an agent to account requires clearly defined roles and responsibilities, regular reporting and monitoring of behaviour against these roles, and the ability for principals to impose sanctions for breaches of responsibilities. Accountability is largely seen as an end stage activity where judgement is passed on results and actions already taken.

This understanding is too narrow; accountability needs to be more encompassing if it is to ensure organisations are truly answerable to those they affect. Given that the impacts of an organisation’s actions are often diffuse, responsibility should be so too. Accountability should not be determined by delegation of authority alone. Although an individual may not have delegated authority to an organisation to act in their interest, the activities of the latter may impact substantially on them, enough to warrant the establishment of an accountability relationship. This view of accountability emphasises that organisations have to respond to the needs of many stakeholders. This view also emphasises that accountability is more than an end-stage activity. To ensure that an organisation is responsible for its actions, relevant stakeholders need to be involved at every stage of the decision-making process. Passing judgement after a decision is made limits the extent to which an organisation can be accountable. Accountability needs to be an ongoing, changing process.

Understanding accountability in this way extends the limits of the concept beyond its role as a disciplinary mechanism and towards its use as a transformative process. An organisation that is accountable to multiple stakeholders not only ensures that decisions are effective in meeting the needs of those it affects, but also that decision-making processes are more equitable. This more open and participatory approach unlocks the potential of accountability as an agent for organisational learning. Accountability that is pursued on an ongoing basis opens up space for those affected by an organisation’s policies to input into the decision-making process. This in turn creates feedback loops that enable organisations to learn from what is effective and what is not. When understood on these terms, accountability is no longer simply a mechanism for disciplining power, but also a force for organisational change and for strengthening organisational performance. Clearly, accountability’s effects are not only beneficial to stakeholders, but also to organisations themselves.

Given that the impacts of an organisation’s actions are often diffuse, responsibility should be so too. This view of accountability emphasises that organisations have to respond to the needs of many stakeholders.

Passing judgement

after a decision is made limits the extent to which an organisation can be accountable. Accountability needs to be an ongoing, changing process.

Today’s global governance arena is not defined by unaccountable organisations, but by organisations that are either accountable to the wrong set of stake- holders or focus their accountability on one set of stakeholders at the expense of others.

2.1 The GAP definition of accountability

Based on this understanding, in the context of the GAP Framework accountability refers to

the processes through which an organisation makes a commitment to respond to and balance the needs of stakeholders in its decision-making processes and activities, and delivers against this commitment.

A key part to this definition is the notion of balance. Today’s global governance arena is not defined by unaccountable organisations, but by organisations that are either accountable to the wrong set of stakeholders or focus their accountability on one set of stakeholders at the expense of others. The key challenge is in creating a more balanced accountability, in which the voices of those most affected by an organisation’s activities are not overshadowed by the interests of the most powerful stakeholders. Accountability thus becomes a process that manages power imbalances between the organisation and its stakeholders as well as between an organisation’s various stakeholder groups.

2.2 Who are the stakeholders?

The key challenge is in creating a more balanced accountability, in which the voices of those most affected by an organisation’s activities are not overshadowed by the interests of the most powerful stakeholders. The concept of stakeholder is central to the understanding of accountability and underpins the entire GAP Framework. Stakeholders are

individuals and groups that can affect or are affected by an organisation’s policies and/or actions.26

Although this definition is similar to the traditional understanding of stakeholder (groups or individuals who have a ‘stake’ in the organisation), it contains an important nuance. It recognises that the actors who influence an organisation are often different from those who are affected by it.

Within the context of the GAP, distinctions are made between two different types of stakeholders: internal stakeholders – individuals or groups that are formally a part of the organisation, and external stakeholders – individuals or groups who are affected by an organisation’s decisions and activities but who are not formally part of the organisation. Of the internal and external stakeholders, the organisation needs to identify key stakeholders – those who significantly influence or are significantly influenced by an organisation and/or are integral to an organisation’s or project’s success or failure.

26 Note that not all individuals and groups who may have knowledge of, interest in, or views about an organisation are included in this definition of

Internal stakeholders

Members

Employees

Board of Directors

Shareholders

National members/chapters

External stakeholders

Recipients of loans, aid or grants

Contractors

Partners

Other affected groups or individuals

Peer IGOs

Suppliers Customers Contractors Financiers Partners Trade unions

Government

Peer TNCs

Funders Supporters Beneficiaries

Partners Government Peer INGOs

In seeking to balance accountability to different stakeholder groups, an organisation must recognise that stakeholders have an interest in its success or failure and each will have the ability to help or hinder its activities. In exercising their agency, each stakeholder has:

Different capacity: resources (particularly financial), knowledge and expertise

Different degrees of access to reliable information

Different needs and expectations.

These differences will manifest themselves in different levels of power and influence and give rise to the unbalanced accountabilities discussed above. They are often compounded by the fact that organisations will have vested interests in certain sets of stakeholders as well.

2.3 Accountable to whom and for what?

Organisations need to prioritise both the issues on which they engage stakeholders and the stakeholder groups that they engage. It is unrealistic to expect an organisation to be accountable to all its stakeholder groups for all issues: this would lead to accountability paralysis.

An organisation must first determine on which issues it must engage. To determine this, it needs to work from a combined understanding of who its stakeholders are, the impacts the organisation has on its stakeholders, and the impact stakeholders have on the organisation. Developing this understanding is an iterative process as the understanding of one will inform the other: looking at stakeholders will increase understanding of impacts, and looking at activities and impacts will increase understanding of stakeholders.

Organisations need to prioritise both the issues on which they engage stakeholders and the stakeholder groups that they engage.

For each engagement organisations need to prioritise their stakeholders and be clear about the ways in which they are accountable to them. The starting point of this is a stakeholder analysis, of which the purpose is to:

Identify key stakeholders and define their interests and characteristics

Assess the manner in which stakeholders might affect or be affected

Understand the relations between stakeholders, including the real or potential conflicts of interest and expectation between them

Assess the capacity of different stakeholders to participate.

The prioritisation of stakeholders should take into account influence, responsibility and

representation:

Influence

Influence is about more than how much power stakeholders have to bring about change within an organisation (those that ‘can affect’). It is also about the needs and interests of stakeholders who ‘are affected by an organisation’s policies and/or actions’ but do not have the power to influence the organisation. Ensuring that these stakeholders have influence in the process is integral to the overall accountability of an activity/organisation and ultimately its success. Failure to view influence in this way will have adverse effects by reinforcing already skewed accountability systems towards those stakeholders with power, at the expense of those less powerful but affected by an organisation.

Responsibility

An organisation has different levels and types of responsibility to different stakeholders.

regulatory responsibility to the state to comply with certain regulations

contractual or legal responsibility to other organisations or partners

The relationship between an organisation and its stakeholders is not static, but ongoing and continuously changing... [therefore] for what and to whom an organisation is accountable also evolves

financial responsibility to donors or shareholders, to ensure their money is used in the agreed way

to stakeholders, either because they are directly or indirectly dependent on the organisation and affected by it; or because they are integral to the organisation’s mission, vision and values.

ethical or moral responsibility to stakeholders, either because they are directly or indirectly dependent on the organisation and affected by it; or because they are integral to the organisation’s mission, vision and values.

Representation

This encompasses the legitimacy of a representative (i.e. the extent to which a stakeholder truly represents its constituents needs and interests), and the number of constituents that it represents.

Through engaging in this process an organisation can understand what its impacts are, who it affects and how, and use this understanding to inform the best use of resources in achieving accountability. Critically, the relationship between an organisation and its stakeholders is not static, but ongoing and continuously changing. For instance, although some stakeholders are easy to identify and remain as such for long periods of time, other groups shift depending on the work being undertaken and the stage of a project. Consequently for what and to whom an organisation is accountable also evolves.

The GAP Framework

The GAP framework unpacks accountability into four dimensions: transparency, participation, evaluation, and complaint and response mechanisms. To be accountable, an organisation needs to integrate all these dimensions into its policies, procedures and practice, at all levels and stages of decision-making and implementation, in relation to both internal and external stakeholders. The higher the quality and embeddedness of these in an organisation’s policies, processes and procedures, the more accountable the organisation will be.

Transparency

Transparency refers to an organisation’s openness about its activities, providing information on what it is doing, where and how this takes place, and how it is performing. This constitutes basic information necessary for stakeholders to monitor an organisation’s activities. It enables stakeholders to identify if an organisation is operating inside the law, whether it is conforming to relevant standards, and how its performance relates to targets. In turn, this enables stakeholders to make informed decisions and choices about the organisation.

Transparency also strengthens an organisation’s accountability indirectly. A transparent organisation provides stakeholders with the information they need to participate in the decisions that affect them. Without access to all the relevant information regarding an activity or decision

it would be difficult for stakeholders to participate meaningfully in its development.

Participation

To be accountable, an organisation needs to understand the needs and interests of its stakeholders. This is best achieved if the organisation engages with its stakeholders and develops a participatory approach to decision-making. It needs to establish mechanisms that enable stakeholders to input into decisions that affect them. This may require engagement at the operational level, the policy level and/or the strategic level. An organisation committed to accountability must enable stakeholders’ input into the broader organisational policies and strategies and not confine engagement to operational issues.

To strengthen accountability, participation must lead to change; it has to be more than acquiring approval for, or acceptance of, a decision or activity, or of including stakeholders in the implementation and evaluation of that decision. Stakeholders must have a say in how the decision is taken and what decision is made. In this regard, participation for accountability is intimately bound with issues of power. There is no escaping the fact that a degree of power needs to be ceded to stakeholders in order for an organisation to be accountable.

Evaluation

Evaluation is another essential component for achieving accountability. It ensures that an organisation is accountable for its performance, that it is achieving its goals and objectives, and meeting agreed standards. Evaluation allows organisations to indicate to stakeholders what

they have achieved and what impact they have had, but also allows stakeholders to hold organisations to account for what they said they would do.

The relationship between evaluation and accountability centres on learning. The evaluation process and the results that emerge from it can inform ongoing activities and future decision- making, providing the information that will allow an organisation to improve its performance, thus making it more accountable to its mission, goals and objectives.

The GAP framework unpacks accountability into four dimensions: transparency, participation, evaluation, and complaint and response mechanisms.

The higher the quality and embeddedness of these in an organisation’s policies, processes and procedures, the more accountable the organisation will be.

To be accountable, an organisation needs to integrate all these dimensions into its policies, procedures and practice, at all levels and stages of decision- making and implementa- tion in relation to both internal and external stakeholders.

Complaint and response mechanisms

Enabling stakeholders to seek and receive response for grievances and alleged harm is a critical aspect of accountability. This is the mechanism through which stakeholders can hold an organisation to account by querying a decision, action or policy and receiving an adequate response to their grievance. Transparency, participation and evaluation processes should be used to minimise the need for complaint mechanisms. Complaints and response mechanisms should be seen as a means of last resort for stakeholders to hold the organisation to account and for organisations to become aware of an issue that requires a response.

Each of these dimensions are necessary for accountability, while alone none are sufficient. Meaningful accountability only results when all four are effective.

Each of these dimensions are necessary for accountability, while alone none are sufficient. Meaningful accountability only results when all four are effective. For example, an organisation may be very transparent about its activities but, unless it creates the channels through which stakeholders can use the information it provides to actually input to and influence decisions, it is not fully accountable. Similarly, if an organisation provides mechanisms for stakeholders to file complaints, but then does not have evaluation processes in place that feed lessons from these mistakes into future decision-making to ensure learning, it is not fully accountable.

3.1 Proactive and reactive elements of accountability

A combination of mechanisms make an organisation accountable: some will proactively improve accountability, others will react to calls for accountability. An organisation’s commitment to accountability can be weighted depending on whether it focuses more on being proactive or reactive; for instance, if it expends considerable resources addressing problems that have occurred and dealing with adverse publicity, it is being reactive. If, on the other hand, it involves stakeholders in projects prior to and throughout their implementation, it is being proactive.

An organisation must take a proactive approach to accountability, but also have reactive mechanisms in place. The GAP Framework incorporates both proactive and reactive approaches to accountability.

Transparency and participation interlink to create a proactive approach to accountability. They shift the emphasis from accountability as an end-stage activity to an ongoing process. Organisations that embrace this approach are constantly providing stakeholders with information and engaging with them in decision-making and policy formulation before they take place. This creates a relationship between the organisation and its stakeholders that is more dynamic, receptive and responsive.

The role of evaluation in relation to the framework is more fluid. It is a mechanism for both understanding successes and failures, and for feeding lessons into future decision-making. This understanding of evaluation supports a proactive approach to accountability. It also plays a reactive role in reporting on performance.

Complaint and response mechanisms and, in some situations, evaluation reflect a reactive approach to accountability; they support an understanding of accountability in which outputs and/or decisions are assessed after they occur. A reactive organisation will only change its policies

Although important, reactive accountability is about responding to judgement after a decision is made or policy is implemented. It limits the extent to which an organisation can be responsive to stakeholders.

Although the proactive and reactive approaches are complementary, organisations need to emphasise the former to ensure a form of accountability conducive to learning. Any organisation that chooses to take a purely reactive approach will undoubtedly experience unnecessarily high costs as projects and policies progress to advanced stages before stakeholders’ concerns are heard.

3.2 The accountability web

Although each dimension – transparency, participation, evaluation, and complaint and response mechanisms – is independently important to increasing accountability, its contribution is significantly strengthened through its interaction with the others. The dimensions underpin each other in a web of mutually reinforcing linkages.

Increased accountability

Transparency

The provision of accessible and timely information to stakeholders and the opening up of organisational procedures, structures and processes to their assessment

Complaint & response mechanisms

Mechanisms through which an organisation enables stakeholders to address complaints against its decisions and actions, and ensures that these complaints are properly reviewed and acted upon

Participation

The process through which an organisation enables key stake- holders to play an active role in the decision-making processes and activities which affect them

Evaluation

The process through which an organisation monitors and reviews its progress and results against goals and objectives; feeds learning from this back into the organisation on an ongoing basis; and reports on the results of the process

Although each dimension exists independently of the others, the four overlap and intersect in multiple ways. Where there is overlap, there is strengthened accountability. For example, an evaluation process underpinned by openness and transparency is more likely to increase organisational accountability than one that is conducted in secrecy. Similarly, an evaluation that engages key stakeholders in the process of assessing performance and is open about its findings will contribute more to accountability than one that does not. The more overlap there is between the dimensions, the more accountable the organisation becomes.

For each of the four dimensions a policy needs to be in place that sets the objectives for the delivery of that dimension. How, and at what levels these are set, have a considerable impact on accountability. To ensure the objectives reflect a diversity of interests and needs, and thus are reflective of an organisation’s multiple stakeholders, they need to be developed with the participation of these stakeholders.

Likewise, to ensure meaningful accountability, an organisation’s policies and processes need to be transparent in their operation and execution. The entire evaluation process, for example, from planning, to monitoring, to communicating results, to feeding them back into decision-making; all this needs to be undertaken in an open manner to enhance the ability of stakeholders to view and input into the process. The same goes for the complaint and response mechanism. All of its elements need to be transparent. Likewise for participation: whenever a stakeholder analysis is undertaken, the results must be made available, reasons for non-engagement must be explained and outcomes of the engagement process must be reported back to stakeholders.

Elements of evaluation also need to be integrated into each dimension. The relationship between an organisation and its stakeholders is dynamic in nature. As an organisation branches out into new activities or undertakes new projects, its stakeholders will change. It is therefore crucial that accountability mechanisms evolve and adapt in parallel through evaluation and learning. For example, in identifying a new set of stakeholders, an organisation might have to change the way it discloses information, or may have to rethink its complaint and response mechanism. This continual adaptation is the key for accountability mechanisms to remain relevant to the stakeholders that use them and to the organisation that will learn from them.

An element of the complaint and response mechanism needs to be reflected in each of the other dimensions as well. Processes need to be in place that allows stakeholders to raise concerns. For example, stakeholders should be able to file a complaint if they feel they have been unfairly excluded from an engagement process or, having participated, they feel that their concerns have not affected the decision. Moreover, as part of any transparency policy, there should be a procedure in place that allows stakeholders that have been denied access to information to make an appeal.

3.3 Key conditions for accountability

What have been outlined so far are the key dimensions to organisational accountability: what an organisation needs to do to become more accountable to its stakeholders. However, for these mechanisms to be effective and for organisations and stakeholders alike to reap the full benefits of accountability, an essential condition needs to exist: organisational commitment to accountability. An organisation must want to be accountable. Although this may seem self-committed to accountability will determine the quality of the accountability mechanisms it puts in place and of the reforms it undertakes to increase its accountability.

Commitment needs to be entrenched at the highest level of an organisation, both at the Board and senior management level. Without the will of those in positions of power, there is little chance that accountability reforms will take hold; and even if they do, without high level commitment, they will only ever be piecemeal, implemented in relation to individual projects, but never integrated into organisational structures and processes. Crucially therefore, senior managers and the Board must be committed to accountability.

To be effective, accountability must also be entrenched in everything an organisation does, from its finances, to its operations, to its human resources. Commitment therefore also needs to cut across departments. If an INGO makes the decision to strengthen its accountability to beneficiaries, for example, this might require the fundraising teams changing how they report to donors, finance departments learning how to communicate financial information to people that are illiterate, and campaign teams developing mechanisms that give the poor and marginalised a direct voice in international advocacy.

For accountability to be realised, there are two concrete ways in which commitment needs to manifest itself: in the form of embeddedness and responsiveness. Firstly, accountability mechanisms need to be embedded in all an organisation’s processes and procedures, at all levels of decision-making. For accountability to be effective it cannot be just an appendage to an organisation’s core operations; it needs to be integrated into everything it does. On a practical level, this will require that the policies for each of the dimensions be disseminated at all levels of management; that there is a clear understanding within the organisation as to the benefits and importance of accountability; and that appropriate incentives and sanctions exist to ensure staff compliance with new practices and procedures. Crucially, this will also require the necessary resources being made available. Accountability is not a costless activity. It requires both money and training for reforms to be effectively implemented and sustained. Systems need to be built, for example, that enable organisations to engage with and respond to stakeholders, while staff need to be trained in how to facilitate this process. Without the necessary resources, accountability mechanisms will not be effective.

Secondly, an organisation’s commitment to accountability must be reflected in its responsiveness to stakeholders’ concerns and needs, and its willingness to adjust policies when necessary. This requires an organisation to address the power imbalance between itself and stakeholders. This should not be mistaken as a call for allowing stakeholders total power in decision-making, but as one for the need of increased respect and recognition that stakeholders also have capacity and expertise that is valuable to the organisation. There needs to be a commitment from organisations to listen to their stakeholders when making decisions, to change policies and activities when appropriate and when not, to explain why.

Commitment and success are mutually reinforcing; they interact to produce virtuous or vicious cycles. Once an organisation is committed to the accountability agenda, for example, it is more likely that the necessary resources will be made available, that accountability reforms will be widespread, that the organisation will be responsive to stakeholders’ needs and that this will lead to improved performance. Similarly, if there is a lack of commitment, the necessary resources will be lacking, reforms will be piecemeal, receptivity to stakeholders will be low and the impact on performance will be more limited.

For accountability to be realised, there are two concrete ways in which commitment needs to manifest itself: in the form of embeddedness and responsiveness.

For accountability to be effective it cannot be just an appendage to an organisation’s

core operations; it needs to be integrated into everything it does.

An organisation’s commitment to accountability must be reflected in its responsiveness to stakeholders’ concerns and needs, and its willingness to adjust policies when necessary.

Ultimately, for accountability to be realised it needs to become integrated into the culture and core practices of an organisation. It needs to become ingrained in the organisational values and norms. If an organisation has commitment at the highest levels and if this is manifested in the ways described above, there is a high likelihood that accountability will develop.

The Accountable Organisation

An accountable organisation takes proactive and reactive steps to address the needs of its key stakeholders while delivering against its mission.

It is transparent in both its activities and decision-making processes, engaging in ongoing dialogue with key stakeholders over the information they need to make informed decisions

It engages its key stakeholders in its decision-making processes related to policies and practice

It evaluates performance, policies and practice in consultation with its key stakeholders. It learns from and reports on the outputs of these evaluations

If an organisation manages to do this it will increase its accountability to key stakeholders. Yet, should it fail to deliver on any of these points,

It has channels through which stakeholders can voice their grievances and receive an appropriate response.

Faithfulness by Rudolf Steiner

Faithfulness

“Let your loyalty to another human being come about in this way: there will be moments — quickly passing by — when he will seem to you filled and illumined by the true, primal image of his spirit.

Then can come, yes, will come, long stretches of time when your fellow-being seems clouded, even darkened. But learn at these times to say to yourself: The spirit will strengthen me; I will remember the true, unchanging image that I once saw. Nothing at all — neither deception nor disguise — can take it away from me.

Struggle again and again for the true picture that you saw. The struggle itself is your faithfulness.

And in those efforts to be faithful and to trust, a human being will come close to another as if with an angel’s power of protection.”

-Rudolf Steiner

Basic Principles of a Living Organization, by Rea Gill

Leading with Spirit Summer Leadership Workshops 2017

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Redefining Accountability and Transparency: LeadTogether Highlight #15 3-15-15

Faithfulness by Rudolf Steiner

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