Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.
Malcolm Muggeridge
I was on a very interesting call yesterday morning with Grant McCracken as he talked about his new book on the Chief Culture Officer, How to Create a Living, Breathing Organization. Grant sees the role of CCO as connecting the organization into the mental currents that intertwine to form our cultural sea. As he shows clearly, from each of his stories, our organizations are currently disconnected. A book subtitled ‘How to Create a Living, Breathing Organization’ only needs to be written because that is not the way that most organizations are. They believe they can stand apart from the river and control it, rather than understanding that they are immersed. Because they believe themselves to be out of the water, they are unconsciously swept, like the dead fish, along with the stream.
Many of our organizations have put up walls around themselves, become disconnected, alienated, and out of touch. How else can we explain the finding in America’s Bailout Barons that in 2009 ‘based on rising stock prices, the top five executives at each of these banks have enjoyed a combined increase in the value of their stock options of nearly $90 million’ or that a study done in 2005 ‘found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in babies’ cord blood, including pesticides, consumer product ingredients and wastes from burning coal, gasoline and garbage‘.
I think we need to summon the Chief Shamanic Officer, to help our organizations reconnect at a deeper spiritual level, because that is the root of the wicked interconnected mess we find ourselves in, from species extinction to ocean acidification. The fundamental role of the shaman is to shift the culture of a community, to open it up and help it reconnect to the larger whole, so it can see, hear and feel what is really going on, and act in alignment with the flows of the real world. They can help it become a social organization. The Chief Shamanic Officer’s role would be to help the organization swim knowingly in the ocean, to connect into the ebb and flow; of culture, humanity, and nature.
Disconnection is not a strategy for success.
With the enormity of the potential for change on the horizon, a Chief Shamanic Officer could help your organization navigate the turbulence as we get closer to the rapids ahead.
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