Fractal Alignment v Purpose

[Dave Snowden 2023-07-21]

• Any organisational needs to be purposeful
• Purpose should be an emergent property of an organization, rather than something that is engineered or directed from the top down
• Fractal alignment where people act in coherent fashion is better than lining up behind some idealistic future state
  • But not every organization ensures that its purpose is fractal—that it shows up at every level
  • Teams should have a coherent narrative about how their efforts serve the whole, even if they're intentionally pursuing a divergent path
  • The team's purpose serves the same function as the organizational one.
  • Even individual roles have a purpose that, if properly articulated, eliminates the need for lengthy job description
    
• 3 ways to achieve coherence and "fractal purposeful behaviour" in organizations:
  • Gather experiences and fictional stories of what didn't or doesn't want to happen
  • Use semiotics and/or metaphor-based languages to convey intent
  • Present visions and descriptions of the current situation to the whole workforce for real-time signification

• 3 ways to assess whether an organization's existing purpose statement is aligned with reality:
  • Create a MassSense collector
    • Develop infographic of the purpose statement
    • Include employee and customer stories (fictional if needed) that contradict or at least question the reality of what is promised
    • Present to workforce and ask for opinions
  • Generate anti-stories, ways in which the purpose statement could be destroyed around the water cooler or the press
    • Present these anti-stories to C-level executives
    • It is a variation of the Ritual Dissent method
  • Run executive workshops using narrative templates to see how executives and staff choose to communicate the message
    • Alternative to a PowerPoint slide deck
    • Templates always involve three negative and three positive anecdotes

• Every organization has a purpose. If someone who onboards employees truly delivers "members who are informed, connected, and ready to contribute," do we really need to specify the how?