The CLM blog story of August 2024 described the proceedings of the 'Connecting Leadership has the Future' workshop at the Leadership Festival for all managers of the Dutch Ministry of Finance. Organizational development specialist Arno Musch was the initiator and organizer of this major event, which also turned out to be his farewell gift to the organization where he worked for many years. As of last week, Arno has been employed by the Dutch Ministry of Asylum and Migration. The Repatriation and Departure Service consists of 650 professionals who are responsible for assisting migrants who want to or have to leave the Netherlands, in particular to support and guide their departure in the most dignified way possible. Arno has been asked by the management to help shape and lead the organizational and cultural change of the service, focusing on the people in the change process. Arno already knows that existing differences need to be brought to the surface and that people need to reach across boundaries in order to achieve real mutual success. His CLM profile seems well suited to his role in this process.
What is Arno's expert view of his own mirror reflector?
Having established that the CLM profile has a high 'teal' content (i.e. a mixture of turquoise and yellow), Arno's first strikes were the high purple and relatively low orange. For the curious, uninitiated reader: first browse through the previous CLM stories, or better still, create your own Connecting Leadership Mirror Reflector value profile, accompanied by a brief explanation. First, please note that Arno is not in a managerial position, but rather in an advisory, supporting and facilitating role: “Ideally, I act as a roving researcher who freely enters into dialogue with everyone in the organization — and listens to them — and on the basis of this, modestly, preferably, makes wise suggestions to the leadership and those who manage the core processes,” says Arno. This means that the 'ideal CLM profile' does not apply in this case, but his ability to connect does.
Well acquainted with the value systems behind the Connecting Leadership Mirror Reflector, Arno comes up with a professional reflection on his profile: While in the past I scored lower on purple in a personal Spiral Dynamics assessment (i.e. a preference for 'tribes, traditions, subcultures, and rituals'), I think I can explain my higher purple now. This is because I have been studying organizational anthropology for the past few years, which has made me look much more closely at what and how people move and behave in certain groups (bubbles); and how important, well, their smaller or larger rituals and traditions are, where we always think the big strategic spearheads are leading. And I also like to look at my new organization with 'purple glasses' to understand what is going on there.
Commenting on his relatively low orange, Arno continues: “Partly in relation to my focus on the power of ritual and tradition, I am less and less focused on the pure achievement of results, which is always so important. And since there are a lot of fellow leaders who are focused on that, I feel more comfortable focusing on the interpersonal process.”
To borrow a phrase from the philosopher Richard Rorty, we could say: “Take care of the organization, then the organization will take care of the results.” Of course, Arno also wants to create movement and change. It is obvious — and he agrees in so many words — that he will benefit more from his green value system: involving everyone in the process in their own way. His well-developed yellow value system — that of the creative intellectual — will then be able to come up with ideas that others have not yet thought of.
Finally, Arno focuses specifically on the turquoise value system that opens us up to contact with our larger context: “Ultimately, my contribution ideally culminates in a well-connected organization; both internally, where we know how to bridge differences, and in relation to our external world, starting with the Ministry of Asylum and Migration that surrounds us, which in turn interacts with a dynamic political and complex practice. In this context, as a change agent, I have immersed myself in the theory behind cross-border change, something that can be directly linked to the verb connect and my turquoise value system.”
What links your previous role to your current new role?
Arno brings a wealth of experience from his role as an organizational developer in a 30,000-person organization. Arno: “Again, my focus was on the people side of work in a rapidly changing environment that is sometimes under the public microscope. In particular, I see all sorts of similarities in being able to include, for example, leadership development in the field of organizational development, and in the constant engagement with the wider context. Projecting this onto a relatively small service that operates in many places in the Netherlands will, I think, make my work more intense, closer to the people, and perhaps with the prospect of more impact.”
Who, or what would you like to connect with first in your new role?
Arno: “Well, first I would like to connect as well as possible with the key people in the organization. Next to me is a change manager with a much more commercial focus. I see considerable challenges in bringing our views together, and I am prepared to put a lot of energy into this. Similarly, I want to establish strong links with the people responsible for our core processes, and I will have to go out and meet them, not just in the corridors of our headquarters. Finally, I now see two service processes that could use more mutual understanding. One concerns the lion's share of our work: supporting those who are willing to leave and welcome help. These people are supported by highly trained social workers, mostly women, known in the corridor as 'the softies'. Then there is another, smaller group of leavers who do not want to do this and need to be encouraged to do so, and this is done mainly by practically trained men, again called 'the tough guys'. Without knowing the details, my intuition tells me that both 'departments' could potentially become more effective if they developed more mutual understanding. In short, lots of opportunities to make or strengthen links.”
This may be a premature question, but do you have a dream image for, say, three years from now?
Arno: “Of course, my ongoing dream of a well-connected, cohesive organization where everyone's potential is seen and used to the full applies without reservation to my new working environment. My assignment ends in three years, so it is definitely a time to work towards and try to leave something behind. How about an organizational festival called 'We Celebrate our Differences'?”
