Last weekend my sister and I went out to see what was left of Northwestern Lake after the removal of a dam on the White Salmon River in southern Washington State.  We used to play there as kids and never quite realized that it was an artificial lake held back by the small hydroelectric Condit Dam.  If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth checking out the footage of what happens when you blow a hole in a dam and let 92 acres of lake loose.  Essentially what’s left after all the excitement is shown in this photo my sister took: you can see the old waterline of the lake and the new river carving its way through the built up lake-bottom silt.

This got me thinking about some lessons on organizational change we can learn from the White Salmon River.

Lesson 1: There’s no such thing as one natural course

I found it really interesting that the new shape of the White Salmon River is slightly different from its pre-dam course.  The main constraint has been removed, but the smaller factors of silt build-up, fallen logs and sunken tires determined that the river wouldn’t return to its original form.  Just as the river’s pattern is determined by the sum of complexities in the environment – tiny pebbles, thunderstorms, a fallen tree – our organizations fall into patterns and shapes as the result of variations in the environment – personalities, market forces, competitors.  The river adjusts naturally to changes, but do our organizations?  Are our organizations as fluid as the environment they operate in?  How often do we see organizational structures that continue to reflect the personal passions and talents of a leader who is no longer around, or a competitive positioning that is no longer relevant?  Remembering that there is no one “right” shape for our organizations is a powerful lesson from nature.  Change is constant.  Nature doesn’t just declare a “reorg” and carve a new course overnight (landslides, hurricanes, etc. being exceptions) – it makes tiny adjustments over time that add up.

Graphic by Scott Matthews

Lesson 2: If you build it, someday you will have to blow it up

When the Condit Dam was built in 1911, it was built to last a very long time. In our work, we find many examples of over engineered org design rooted in a worldview of control, hierarchy, standards, and other mechanical-sounding constructs.  Maybe I’m stretching this analogy too far, but in my view there are two ways to organize people:  (1) You either build an organization that acts like a river – self regulating and adjusting over time – what we would call a connected company rooted in a human, social foundation.  Or (2) you take the more over-engineered approach to org design and build a rigid system that strongly supports your needs today but will likely change in the future.  I’m not necessarily opposed to option 2, but it’s worth noting that a constant cycle of building and blowing up on a large scale is difficult, disruptive, and expensive.  We’ve all seen organizations go through massive change of “dam exploding” proportions.  It’s not fun.  A mechanical approach to organizational design will always require more disruptive change than an organic approach to organizational design. You can do it; you just have to be prepared to blow it up once in a while.

Lesson 3: You don’t need to blow up the whole dam – you just need a small hole

If you want change – if you’re considering transforming your organization to be more connected and social – you don’t need to blow up the whole dam at the start.  As you see in the video, 99% of the dam didn’t go away that day, yet the river was entirely transformed.  Yes, the dam will be dismantled in the coming months, but the desired change was achieved just by blowing a small hole in a strategic place.  Where in your organization can a strategically designed change release the energy of your organization and allow it to reshape itself?  Perhaps org charts and steering committees can be realigned later, but you just need to start with a dramatic shift in incentivization.  Or maybe a disruptively open communication channel between employees and the CEO could achieve the same goals as your large-scale comprehensive training program.  You may find that a small explosion is more powerful than a big construction project.

I’m looking forward to visiting the old Northwestern Lake every so often to see how the river continues to change and to watch the trees and plants reclaim new land.  Even within a few days of the big explosion, huge shifts were still taking place: cliffs of decades-old mud and rock would crack off and slide into the raging water right in front of us.  I’ve never seen such a powerful display of change.