Is there no Boss around here? E-Book

Gert Nijland

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 92

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Living without a Boss is easy! Times have changed. Familiar ideas about organisations and their leadership no longer meet the needs and demands that society or individuals now have. The younger generation don't want to be subordinated within a leadership system, or to be tied to status and materialistic securities anymore. Instead, they are looking to make more meaningful and more mindful contributions towards the development of a sustainable society. The inspiring story of K&N will support you in making this shift. This book describes a fascinating and unusual project: It tells the story and describes the process of how one company successfully transitioned to having no boss in charge. The organisation completely removed its hierarchy, and now leads itself by understanding its original purpose and being guided by its collective impulse. Based on practical examples from outpatient psychiatry and community care, these pages describe how ordinary people created a self-directing organisation that continues to grow and thrive. Part story, part instruction, this easy-to-read little book will inspire your next step…

Leseprobe

Hans Ruijs & Gert Nijland

Is there no Boss around here?

How an organisation reinvents itself

With a foreword of Dr. Willem Lammers

2021, Hans Ruijs & Gert Nijland

Translation and lectureship:

Raya Williams

Publisher:

Knowledge & Nursing GmbH

Production and Publisher:

Tredition GmbH

Halenreie 40-44

22359, Hamburg

No part of this book may be reproduced and/or published by print, photocopy, microfilm, or any other means without prior written permission from the publisher.

Contents

FOREWORD BY DR WILLEM LAMMERS

INTRODUCTION

1. HOW IT ALL BEGAN

INGRID ALREADY KNEW

FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE & NURSING

KNOWLEDGE & NURSING IN SWITZERLAND

2. "I DON'T WANT TO BE A BOSS!"

THE BEGINNING OF A SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATION

ORGANISATIONAL REFUGEES

K&N AS A LIVING SYSTEM

"BUT YOU ARE OUR BOSS!".

3. HAT K&N DOES

A TYPICAL K&N DAY

SYSTEM STABILITY: WHAT DOES A PERSON NEED TO FUNCTION IN EVERYDAY LIFE?

SYSTEM CONNECTIVITY: WHAT DO PEOPLE NEED TO ACCESS THEMSELVES AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT?

WHAT DO CLIENTS GET OUT OF IT?

SIGNIFICANCE FOR REFERRING PHYSICIANS

THE GOLDEN RATIO.

WHAT SOCIETY GETS OUT OF HAVING K&N

4 A HOLISTIC VIEW OF CULTURE OF K&N

SPIRAL DYNAMICS INTEGRAL

K&N AND ITS VALUE SYSTEMS

5. THE MEANING OF BEING IMPULSE-ORIENTED

THE MOMENTUM AND ORIGINAL IMPULSE

RESPECT AND TRUST

COURAGE AND OPTIMISM

AS SHORT AS POSSIBLE AS LONG AS NECESSARY

RESOURCE AND SOLUTION FOCUSSED

COOPERATION WITH THE ENVIRONMENT

KEEPING THE ORIGINAL IMPULSE ALIVE

ALL ARE IMPULSE-BEARING

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AS SHARED HERITAGE

6. GROWTH AS A LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE

THE ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE OF K&N

MANDATE GROUPS

THE MANDATE GROUPS AT K&N

AN EXAMPLE MANDATE GROUP: IMPULSE & GOVERNANCE

AN EXAMPLE MANDATE GROUP: ENTRY AND EXIT

REGIONAL GROUPS

DECISION-MAKING BY CONSENT

THREE MOTIVATING FACTORS TO WORK AT K&N

Original Impulse, Task and Purpose

Internal motivation

External motivation

THE DESIGN PRINCIPLES OF K&N AT A GLANCE

7. WHERE K&N IS GOING: A FUTURE PARADOX

BOOKS THAT INSPIRED US:

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gert Nijland, www.knowledge-nursing.com

Hans Ruijs, www.tikla.world

Endnotes

TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 1: The K&N Lemniscate.

Figure 2: Initial Themes.

Figure 3: Approach and Avoidance goals.

Figure 4: Explaining Approach / Avoidance goals to clients.

Figure 5: The Ideal Self.

Figure 6: Four States.

Figure 7: Nursing Ratio

Figure 8: Psychotherapy Ratio.

Figure 9: The Spiral

Figure 10: K&N Value Systems

Figure 11: K&N Mission Statement

Figure 12: The Organisational Structure of K&N

Figure 13: Mandate Groups at K&N.

FOREWORD BY DR WILLEM LAMMERS

This book describes an unusual project, carried out by two unusual people. It shows the development of an idea whose time has come. It also shows the implementation of this idea in the context of the often strictly regulated Swiss health care system. How should a boss lead who doesn't want to be a boss?

Since 2005, when the Swiss Federal Court confirmed in a landmark ruling, the importance of putting mental illness on an equal footing with physical illness, K&N has taken off under the inspired leadership of Gert Nijland. The develop-ment of the organisation has been striking: It is completely free of hierarchical structures and encourages all members of K&N to invest their commitment and expertise in a common task.

It would have been easy to set up K&N as a classic organisation: With a boss who has the whole organisation in mind, and employees assigned tasks in the environment of a clearly defined market. Gert Nijland, however, took a radically different position in designing his organisation: A basic attitude that is far removed from most organisations. To do this, he turned to Hans Ruijs, whose broad, international experience means that he is never at a loss for a creative solution.

The two of them did not design a traditional organisational chart with vertical and horizontal lines but have developed a model based on Ken Wilber's four quadrants. However, instead of describing four quadrants, they have captured the essence of this model in a lemniscate, which depicts the dynamics of the quadrants decidedly better than the omnipresent table. The most important feature of Hans Ruijs' and Gert Nijland's interpretation is the relational orientation that weaves the thread throughout this book.

The relationship orientation comes to the fore in every aspect of the new model: the K&N has a task that is fulfilled by individuals with their skills and preferences, based on a role allocation that corresponds to these personal characteristics. The individual is not reduced to a dumb rectangle in an organisational chart. Relationships are given the priority and value that they deserve.

The work issues in this organisation are the same as in any other. However, the way the people of K&N deal with them is substantially different. Empowerment is a central con-cept, not only in the mission statement for the annual report or the desk drawer, but for everyday life. This organisational model works when everyone does what they are capable of, from the founder to the professionals to the clients, in an incomparably beautiful and elegant way.

The challenge in developing this project is to call upon this commitment and expertise on a daily basis, and to activate it in a way that goes beyond the enthusiasm generated during a workshop. This is the only way to turn an organisation into a community.

An important aspect of the development of such an organisation is the shaping of the boundaries when meeting the classically structured outside world, where terms like community and horizontal organisation are foreign words. K&N's own jargon has to be translated at the border with the outside world into a language that makes the representatives of this outside world fulfil the administrative or medical roles assigned to them. These roles relate on the one hand, to the individual customers of K&N and on the other hand, to the environment of K&N as a service provider for health insurance companies, hospitals, and other stakeholders.

The boundaries have to be redrawn on a daily basis: What is part of K&N's mission and what is not? What can K&N do for this customer and what can they not do? Who pays for what? No one can expect K&N to adopt the value system of individuals and organisations or vice versa. This starting point requires employees to have a clear awareness of boundary issues, along with a shared strategy for systematically clarifying those boundaries.

Behind the concepts of Emotional Personality (EP) and Apparent Normal Personality (ANP) presented in this book, there is a permanent tension between who we are as people and who we should be. Humans are more than biological machines with a wet computer between their ears, even if the current paradigm of science likes to reduce them to that. Humans are Essence, beings with a purpose, a personal contribution to this world. This Essence delivers this contribution in the society that we create together. I like to call this the Matrix, after the Wachowskis' 1998 film.

It is up to all of us to give form to our deepest Essence in this Matrix. We are only truly human when we do this in relationship with others in our lives. In this book, Hans Ruijs and Gert Nijland show how this task can be lived in an organisation. Their pioneering work is a contribution to a rethinking of organisations in the 21st century: A rethinking that we urgently need for the big tasks and challenges in our world.

Willem Lammers, TSTA, is a psychologist, psychotherapist and coach for individuals and organisations. For many years he led the Institute for Applied Social Sciences in Bad Ragaz, a leading training institute for work-based counselling in Switzerland.

Dr. Lammers is the founder of Logosynthesis® and is active in numerous countries. www.lammers.ch

INTRODUCTION

In these uncertain and disruptive times, many organisations have found the need to re-examine their leadership and collaboration issues. Classical and familiar organisational and leadership characteristics no longer seem to meet the changing needs and demands of either society, or individual people. The younger generation wants less and less to be subordinated within a leadership system or to be tied to status and materialistic securities. Instead, they are looking for ways to make meaningful contributions towards the development of a sustainable society. As a result, more organisations, large and small, are finding new ways and opportunities to position themselves both structurally and culturally, to form new collaborations and enterprises. Organisations, having arrived in the VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity)i era, are asking them-selves how they can adapt more efficiently and effectively to this new and unscripted zeitgeist.

The cooperation between us: Gert Nijland: pioneer of Knowledge & Nursing (henceforth K&N), and Hans Ruijs: of Tikla Consultancy Group, started with an extraordinary question in 2015 and has led to an ongoing collaboration which has been inspirational and surprising in many ways.

In this book, Hans Ruijs predominantly describes the process by which K&N grew threefold in members and in revenue within seven years. He explains how K&N members developed new self-organising working and design principles; how they follow their own free-spirited path, and how they are guided by a common task, which we call impulse or purpose.

Gert Nijland tells the story of K&N in terms of how the organisation understands its Purpose today, and how this purpose is successfully implemented among K&N members and their clientele.

There is a lot of helpful literature available regarding organi-sational development, transition management and how to guide corporate transformation. Among others, we have been inspired in various ways by the approaches of:

Theory U, Spiral Dynamics integral, Reinventing Organisations, Holocracy and Sociocracyii for the transfor-mation at K&N.

As valuable and helpful as these approaches were and still are for us, we were guided in our development work primarily by the questions and topics that came from within the K&N system itself. These questions have typically focussed on leadership issues and potential forms of collaboration.

In appreciation of their contribution to society, this book is dedicated first and foremost to all K&N members and their clientele, some of whom have been flushed out of the vertical work world and have lost their place in the meritocracy.

This book is also intended for the numerous cost-bearers (municipalities, social security institutions and health insurance companies) as well as carers, doctors, and therapists, who repeatedly express their trust in K&N and sometimes perhaps wonder how we do everything that we do at K&N.

Last but not least, we hope that you will be inspired by our story. That you will find encouragement within these pages to rethink and reinvent yourself and your world with confidence and courage.

We have made a point of using gender-neutral terms. Where this has not been possible, we have chosen to use the feminine or masculine form. We thus include all gender identities and groups.

Gert Nijland and Hans Ruijs

Marthalen and Windisch 2022.

1. HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Gert Nijland

“Professionals do not need guidance but must havean adequate framework at their disposal so that theycan devote themselves to their operational activities.”