Inner Bureaucracy

Lately, I feel like many of my conversations have revolved around the sometimes-painful disconnect that can exist between an organization's incredible goals about impacting the world, and the culture that can exist in the organizations themselves, which can, at its worst, be nothing less than soul-crushing.

So this blog post particularly resonated with me. The author writes:

I have to admit, my yearning for control often outweighs my yearning for a better world. My visions are large, but my daily interactions are laced with an urge to put things in nice orderly lines and boxes...

Struggling with my need for control -- my inner bureaucracy -- in this way makes me wonder how social purpose organizations can work on keeping their own rigid and controlling tendencies at bay. Control always involves reinforcing things as we know them, quite the opposite of the energy that is needed to craft the world anew. Social change requires a certain wildness of spirit.

She and her colleague from "Organization Unbound" will be coming to Delhi this weekend, and I'm really looking forward to having coffee with them on Monday. Her post and reading more about their organization have re-reminded me of what I came to India to learn, inspired by my work with Katzenbach: helping social enterprise organizations become more effective organizationally. This need was a hypothesis I came here with. But after working here over three years, it has become very clear that talent -- much more than money -- is the critical gap in enabling social enterprises to scale.