Break free of the 'demonstrating organizational strength' myth

Many of you may have had an experience with a common strength demonstration activity that I first experienced when my freshman English teacher, an Aikido master, asked me to help him make a point - I honestly don’t remember what the point was…so much for that lesson - but I did walk away with an understanding of strength (hmm, maybe that was the point…)

Anyway, he asked me to stand in front of him, extend my arms out straight, rest my wrists on his shoulders, and resist his attempts to bend my elbows. Of course, my first reaction was to clench my fists, flex my muscles, and probably make an awkward anxious facial expression. He bent my arms easily once I ran out of juice and my muscles fatigued from flexing – plus it hurt. Then he said to do it again, but this time, open and relax my hands, don’t flex my arms, and just concentrate on breathing. Again, he eventually bent my arms, but I lasted a whole lot longer and nothing ever hurt.

Simple moral to long paragraph – there was greater strength and less damage when I was relaxed and didn’t try to 'act' strong.

My last post was about approaching budgeting differently in times of uncertainty – calling on all of us to release the burdens of stability and predictability when it comes to navigating an organization’s financial viability right now (well actually, whenever, but that’s a position for another post)

I worried that there would be push-back as I pulled out one of the main pillars that holds up the ‘strong organization’ myth. The belief that being able to guess at 12-month's worth of revenue and expenses and then eking yourself to the finish line each year was a sign of ‘strength.’

Yes ‘eking’ is what is rewarded.

Don’t end in a deficit because then you’re weak at raising money or understanding costs, ... but don’t run a surplus that is too big because then you are greedy and are taking money away from services you could be delivering therefore weak at mission delivery…

Since when did living paycheck-to-paycheck turn into a demonstration of ‘strength.’

In this model, we give more weight to the guess than the actual reality. We attribute ‘strength’ to being able to predict well and then decisively stick the landing as close to that spot as possible. It makes us look stable, but that might not actually be the best place to land when it comes to continuing to advance benefit in our community. We may actually land in a place of weakness.

The other place where maintaining a perception of ‘strength’ is often a GIANT weakness is crisis response & communications, where adherence to the strength myth prevents the humility, honesty, and adaptation that generally best mitigate crises.

I’ve been in too many crisis conversations that actually follow this same path.

Something goes wrong (probably because of our persistent obsession with preserving the organization’s perceived strength as opposed to actually acknowledging the reality of the weaknesses of our current circumstances) and we assume it means we will be perceived as weak (both internally and externally)

• First response, close the doors and keep it quiet
  – create opacity
  
  
• Second response, focus on looking strong so we do not lose support
  – misread why you are supported
  
  
• Third response, frantically make all kinds of assumptions and guesses about what will make the ‘outside’ world believe we are strong
  – create added anxiety and unknowns (perfect for calming crises from my experience...)
  
  
• Fourth response, further assume that asking the outside world for feedback on what would make us ‘strong’ will make us look ‘weak’ (spiral down this path for a couple days / weeks…)
  – limit availability to needed expertise and support, thereby reinforcing the group-think that likely got us here in the first place
  
  
• Fifth response, come up with an action plan and heavily vet a press release declaring with such confidence how thoughtful and decisive we were in confronting a challenge
  – play off the hubris of thinking the outside world doesn’t already know something is wrong and that we didn’t fully understand what to do (the actual reality most of the time for almost all organizations)
  
  
• Sixth … having to deal with the 6^th sense of others (cause it’s always the sixth sense you should worry about)
  – we build distrust because in being ‘strong’ we failed to acknowledge our own internal challenges that led to what happened and others suspect we are hiding something or worse, don’t fully understand the scope of our challenges to begin with

I do wish that the above was more satire (as I’ve written it) than it really is. But I have seen too many instances of ‘we need to look strong’ eventually leading to great achievements of ‘weakness’ – the most extreme being the dissolution of an organization, not because of the original crisis, but because of the confidence lost when the ‘strong’ response fell flat.

The above are just examples of the places that the strength myth tends to limit our abilities to advance meaningful change, but there are many others.

Take a listen.

Pay attention to when ‘being strong’ comes up as a rationale for a decision or action. Ask, what is the ‘strength’ we are actually trying to exhibit or maintain. Is this the ‘strength’ that actually advances our outcomes and aligns with our values? AND then, what does it really take to exhibit the kind of strength our communities really need – pause, because that answer may not be what everyone is telling you about ‘organizational strength’