A Sad And Grateful
Remembrance
On May 29, 2001 Joel Henning, a voice for all who
strive to make organizations more honest and humane,
passed away. While you may not have known Joel
personally, his thinking and his work most likely have
sent a ripple that has touched you in some way. Having
been in close contact with Joel’s ideas for
twenty years, I want to acknowledge and remember some
highlights of the trail his work has followed, for the
path he has taken is all of our paths.
Harsh Realities
The center of his ideas focused on the deeper, more
difficult and personal dimensions of our work lives.
His early work was centered on the need for us to talk
about the harsh reality of our experience. If we want
to find meaning and self expression in our work, it
begins with acknowledging that life is difficult and
that real optimism comes from a willingness to discuss
the undiscussables. Real relationships come from facing
our difficult issues, putting them into words with
those we work with and doing it in a team setting. What
follows are some of the arenas into which Joel brought
his insights.
Unstated Emotional Wants
One of the difficult issues Joel shed light on was how
unfulfillable many of our expectations of each other
truly are. This is especially true of bosses and
subordinates. We want a level of support,
acknowledgement and affirmation from our bosses that
most likely will never be there to the extent that we
seek it. The boss in turn wants a level of honor,
loyalty and compliance from his or her subordinates
that is also too much to ask. And even if bosses and
subordinates occasionally get what they want, it
won’t help. Joel believed the response to these
emotional wants has to be NO.
The same holds true for personal, family
relationships. It is too much to bear when we expect a
partner to make us feel good about ourselves. When we
realize others cannot give us the self esteem and
confidence we seek, then we are prepared to experience
our freedom and acquire them on the basis of our own
actions.
People in the Staff Function
Joel’s book, “The Future of Staff
Groups,” was another step in his commitment to
face the difficult issues. In the staff role, when we
do not get much support for our ideas, we often blame
either the line management or define the problem as our
own lack of skills. The more difficult issue is a bad
fit between who we are and what the line management
needs. Joel pushed hard for staff groups to clearly
define their unique contribution to the business. This
requires taking a firm stand and understanding that
each staff function competes in an open marketplace and
line management always has a choice about the service
they receive. This is a wake up call for staff groups
that have traditionally been protected from
competition.
Joel took an additional stance. That the
role of staff groups is to distribute power and
capacity from the centralized unit into the line
organization. This kind of thinking forces staff groups
to face their wish to be a monopoly operation. It asks
that they put themselves at risk in betting their
future on their willingness to give more power and
choice to line managers and teach managers the
competencies that previously had been reserved as the
special province of the staff specialists.
The Cause of Behavior is in the Future
Much of Joel’s thinking was based on the
existentialist writings of Martin Heidegger. In recent
years Joel returned to the writings that had formed the
basis for his doctoral dissertation. At the core, the
most difficult issue each of us has to face is the
brutal and ennobling fact that we are personally
responsible for the world around us. We decide what
exists in the world and we are accountable for creating
the world we long for.
Joel at times expressed this with the
phrase, “the cause of behavior is in the
future,” meaning that our actions are based on
the future we wish to move towards. This is in contrast
to the belief that our actions are a result of our own
personal history. We relate to people in the context of
a future we seek. If people serve that future, we
experience them as allies. If people seem in opposition
to that future, then we consider them
adversaries.
It is critical that we own our vision of
the future and accept the fact that we are constructing
our version of who other people are, in light of that
vision. This viewpoint confronts our tendency to hold
other people responsible for what we can or can not do.
Even our fundamental decisions about life, whether we
think life is a competition, life is a trail of
hardship, or life is an opportunity filled with the
possibility of grace; these are personal choices we
make, not inevitable outcomes of our experience.
Change the Culture, Change the
Conversation
This commitment to personal responsibility brought
Joel’s attention to how to use our conversations
to transform institutions. We determine, in our
conversations with each other, the kind of world within
which we live. Joel knew that traditional business
conversations, which talk of changing other people or
departments and then proceed to list goals, objectives
and measures as a way of doing it, limit our capacity
to change and grow. This kind of
“other-directed” business talk reinforces
the world we inherited.
Discussion of the human spirit will change
the world.When we explore what constitutes a life or
organization worthy of our existence or what would
bring forgiveness, compassion and authentic commitment
to our work, a more fundamental shift becomes possible.
What we discover in this kind of dialogue, is the
experience of the future which most of us desire to
live. In this way, the future is brought into the
present.
What Joel stood for is best expressed in
his own words. Here is the closing statement he made in
a recent article he wrote for my consulting
fieldbook:
“When looking at the future, each of us
will take a stance born of disappointment, the pursuit
of advantage, or creating worth. Nothing I do can
replace or substitute for the starting
place—finding myself in a world with a stance and
future to choose. No matter what we name others or am
named myself, no name, notion, or concept will rob or
relieve me of the freedom and responsibility for taking
a stance and pursuing a future. No one changes you or
me. Cultures, organizations, strategies, techniques,
programs, visions, values or leadership do not
transform us. In the end, we choose to change
ourselves.”
The Person is the Point
Any discussion of Joel’s ideas vastly understates
who he was as a person. He gave every ounce of his
energy not only to articulating these ideas, but also
to living them. He brought intensity and passion into a
room that few could defend against. When he consulted,
he made a long term commitment to the people and the
place, not caring whether he was dealing with the
emperor or the core worker. In fact, I think he liked
the core worker a little better.
Regardless of whether it was good times or
hard times, and there were plenty of both, Joel was a
friend of mine. And yours. Joel leaves us with the most
difficult issue and harsh reality of all; the thoughts
and voice that once brightened a conversation and a
filled a room, will now be replaced by silence. His
deepest wish was to be worthy of a life. Given the ways
he touched the lives of those he came in contact with
and those who were touched by his ideas, he can rest in
peace, finally.
June 2001 News for
a Change Homepage
Issue Highlight — A
Sad and Grateful Remembrance
