Tactics for Vested Engagement - Keeping it Simple

Recently, my mentor Martin Groder MD, suggested I read Bounded Choice by Janja Lalich. While the book is about True Believers and charismatic cults, it is a wonderful study in Vested Engagement and how not to lead Sustainable Organizations. While I found the book to be terribly repetitive and her theoretical “models” inflated with sociological jargon, it led me to synthesize a set of 10 tools to generate Vested Engagement. The pivotal issue that separates a cult from a potentially Sustainable Organization is that the focus of the cult is on a charismatic leader and on system of beliefs that preludes adaptive alignment. See my posting on Leadership of Sustainable Organizations for more about leadership.

Initiation – take people into the organization with ceremony and import
Ranks – insure that folks have a way of seeing up to heroes and down to newbies
Badges and Medals – develop markers or distinctions that indicate commitment or paticipation in campaigns or wars
Uniforms and Songs – have a code of conduct and/or dress and/or language that trades individuality for a sense of inclusion and membership
Enemies – identify an organization to oppose on the basis of culture or values, not merely competition
Creed and Motto – create an easily stated - out of reach ideal for members to aspire to
Confession and/or Testimony and/or Witnessing – create group events where members interpret themselves to another as failed or transformed or transforming in order to meet the ideal described in the creed or motto
Regulated Dissonance and/or Double-Binds and/or Crises – create situations where the choice to remain a member is an outcome of a conflict over irreconcilable values such as means versus ends, individuality versus conformity, faith versus works, etc.
Threat of Expulsion – periodically publicly apply standards in the creed or motto to define a member(s) as not measuring up to the ideal in the creed or motto
Merge Personal Identity With the Organization – use affinity networks to coopt familial relationships or friendships so that the member does not need to go outside the organization for intimacy or identity affirmation

Leading The Sustainable Organization – 7 Principles

Charismatic Role Rejection – The leader rejects merging of the organization with his/her person. A corollary of this is that interests and issues should trump parties. Thus the active member with aspirations to lead will define and clarify interests and issues related to the whole, rather than form a splinter group that arrogates to itself a special knowledge or relationship to the mission. (Constitutional Convention)
Detached Statesmanship – The leader makes decisions based on the organization’s canon and viability, not on personal advantage. (Public Servant)
Cooperative With External Principled Power Centers – The leader resists rejection of other power centers provided they share 5-7 below. Thus, members from different belief systems (institutions, faiths) can be members in good standing. (Doctors Without Borders)
Flexible or Non-Intrusive Process Management – The leader actively supports a separation of processes from principles, so the organization can adapt readily to changes in the context or matrix of which it is a part. (G.E.)
Contained and Constrained Set Of Principles/Standards Applied Equally To All Members – The leader adamantly supports as few principles and rules as are necessary and sufficient for the organization to maintain an identity consistent with it’s founding mission. (March of Dimes)
Permeable Membership Boundaries – The leader is inclusive of all who can subscribe to 1-5 above. (Israel’s Right of Return, Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission)
Merit Driven Distribution of Authority, Status, And Power – The leader supports open access for any member who is capable of 1-6 above. (Athens)