Creating a shared Uberwelt – How to go about it?
Contents
Creating a shared ›Uberwelt‹ – How to go about it?
Diverse top management teams often seem to be very effective in designing new strategies, e.g., in terms of developing sound responses to turbulence or increasing complexity of external and internal conditions. Changing the composition of the business model relatively increase complexity elements will therefore have the same effects as escalating diversity. That is, multiple diversity, in a systematic view, is nothing more or less than an upsurge in the sense of an intensification of the internal complexity of organisations. And, so it goes the other way round: as complexity increases, so does diversity in one way or the other – with the same effects! – And with the same requirements! The dynamics of ›Umwelt‹, ›Mitwelt‹, ›Eigenwelt‹ and ›Uberwelt‹ must always be kept in view simultaneously in order to understand what is going on. – According to what has been said before, this is a task of each individual member of the top management level and their very common mission.
The degree of congruence of meaning within multiple top teams of an organisation, and the extent to which these organisational members develop, anchor and share common constructions of meaning with each other, or experience them as enrichment, is therefore the crucial capacity of their future dynamic robustness. Top management teams rolling out some new initiatives that may have turbulent effects on the organisation (›Mitwelt‹) will be much better off in terms of competitiveness and levels of creativity and efficiency if they also devote resources to increasing the level of value congruence (›Eigenwelt‹) top‐down by striving for greater agreement and a new balance of ›Umwelt‹, ›Mitwelt‹, ›Eigenwelt‹ and learning this skill through open dialogue.
In my view, it is essential to understand that within organisational processes, a common ›Uberwelt‹ is not a factor to be decided, but rather the result of a common, constant processual struggle. Without a doubt, a unifying vision (recently ›Purpose‹) is indispensable, to which one can always refer and tie decisions back to.
But agreed strategies remain abstractions in trying to help implement a ›common cause‹ that lacks commonality as long as it has not been affirmed by each individual in the sense of a personal agreement to it. Therefore, strategies, visions and purposes are just as unsuitable as the proclamation of ›mission statements‹ within the organisation to provide a ’starting point‹ for common team behaviour at the top. (cf. Dierke, Houben p. 47). – At best, they are the a first orientation of a common path to be followed.
