If you had to identify one human capacity that makes each of the following possible, what would it be?
- Engineering a city
- Executing a business strategy
- Producing offspring
- Running a marathon
- Playing in a jazz quartet
The answer may not be obvious. These activities seem to have little in common.
Before revealing what connects them, consider a second list. What might underlie these familiar organizational problems?
- Lack of trust
- Miscommunication
- Lack of clarity
- Lack of accountability
At first glance, the two lists appear to ask entirely different questions. The first points toward human accomplishment, and the second, toward organizational dysfunction.
Yet, the answer to both is the same.
The first list draws upon very distinct domains: engineering, leadership, biology, physical endurance, and musicality. The second seems to involve more closely related problems, yet we rarely consider whether a deeper capacity underlies them all.
Beneath both lists is the same fundamental human capacity: coordination.
Coordination is not simply another activity we perform; nor is it the logistics we plan. Coordination creates the condition that allows purposeful activity to occur, yet when it breaks down, we often attribute the resulting problems to something else.
About This Two-Part Series
Coordination is a human capacity we rely upon constantly, yet rarely examine. We notice what it produces—and certainly when it breaks down—but seldom consider coordination, itself.
More is here than we can usefully explore in one essay.
Part 1 explores the capacity for coordination: what it is, how language generates action, and six dimensions for recognizing and improving it.
Part 2 goes deeper into the being of coordination: who we are with one another as we coordinate and what is possible when it becomes more than simply a way to get things done.
Together, the two parts explore coordination not simply as something we do but as fundamental to how we create with one another.
When coordination works, it recedes into the invisible background, much like the air we breathe. When coordination fails, we can choke on its symptoms: mistrust, miscommunication, confusion.
The Hidden Capacity of Coordination
Drawing from Spinosa, Flores, and Dreyfus in Disclosing New Worlds (1997), coordination carries a threefold meaning: a way of Being through which we bring actions into relationship, disclose what matters, and transfer Being from situation to situation.
In this sense, coordination involves coordinating action, disclosing significance, and providing continuity of Being.
A brilliant engineer who cannot coordinate builds nothing. A CEO may devise an exceptional strategy, but without coordinating people, resources, and commitments, there is no execution. A jazz quartet exists only through the continuous coordination of listening, timing, interpretation, and response. Running a marathon requires the ongoing coordination of physiology, pacing, nutrition, attention, emotion, and will.
In his paper “Biology of Love,” systems theorist and biologist Humberto Maturana credits linguistic coordination as essential to humanity’s self-generating and self-maintaining structures: “Language is a manner of living together in recursive consensual coordinations. …”
Maturana emphasizes, “[W]e disappear as humans if language disappears.” For him, “our psychic existence includes the relational dimensions of our languaging being”:
Acceptance, openness, and receptivity enable the coordination of everything from love (procreation) and discovery (art and science) to society (civilizations) and adventure (space travel).
Coordination is an overlooked challenge of human history, a critical aspect of life that allows functioning (purpose) and action.
When coordination works, it recedes into the invisible background, much like the air we breathe. We rarely notice it; we simply breathe in what it makes possible. But when coordination fails, we can choke on its symptoms: mistrust, miscommunication, confusion, lack of commitment, and lack of accountability.
What we rarely examine is how this capacity may be a linchpin in the quality of our experiences, leadership, collaboration, and accomplishments, and in what futures become possible.
Humans as Linguistic Beings
More importantly, overcoming coordination’s challenges has evolved the human mind, as detailed in this thought piece by Ogi Ogas & Sai Gaddam, “How Thinking Emerged on Earth, From Bacteria to the Human Mind”:
Language is a form of shared attention that enables human minds to share highly complex experiences with one another, including stories, instructions, and directions.
Language dramatically expands our ability to coordinate, because we no longer need to act only upon what is present or even predictable. Through language, we can coordinate around what does not yet exist.
This generative quality is central to language-action theory, rooted in philosopher J. L. Austin’s work on speech acts in the early 1960s. For Austin, every speech act constitutes a performance that impacts others.
Scholar and author Fernando Flores distinguished language as “not simply a tool we use to describe a world that already exists, but rather an action that produces a world … that would otherwise not have existed.” For Flores, speech acts are generative, constituting a commitment that affects other people and their worlds.
We build organizations, create societies, sustain relationships, and shape our lives by continually tapping the generative qualities of language to bring something larger into being.
Language of Coordination
In his 2013 book, Conversations for Action and Collected Essays: Instilling a Culture of Commitment in Working Relationships, Flores develops six commonly used speech acts to listen for and work with: Assertions, Assessments, Declarations, Requests, Promises, and Offers, as detailed in the table below.
Table 1: Six Speech Acts
Consider how speech acts appear in our personal and professional lives.
EXAMPLE 1: A client requests a product. We assert that we have it in stock and promise to deliver it at a specific time to the client’s office. When the client receives it, she declares dissatisfaction with the product and assesses that it does not meet her expectations.
EXAMPLE 2: Your daughter requests permission to borrow the car to attend a party. She asserts that the party is at a specific place, promises to return at a specific time, and offers to fill the gas tank. We grant her request, and she declares her gratitude.
Coordination involves coordinating action, disclosing significance, and providing continuity of Being.
Dimensions of Coordination
Coordination is central to connection, collaboration, and commitment. Yet, when breakdowns occur, we often blame communication or understanding and miss the qualities that make coordination possible.
The following six dimensions provide a way to recognize and develop those qualities. Each includes a core outcome and two practices.
1) AWARENESS. What is happening?
The openness to attend to relevant variables and the capacity to listen as they arise while remaining present in changing conditions. Awareness enables coordination to remain responsive to reality, rather than becoming locked into assumptions, interpretations, or plans.
OUTCOME: Listening. The capacity to direct one’s attention toward what is happening, receive what is present, and remain open to what emerges.
PRACTICES
- Pause before acting. Pause long enough to notice what is actually happening. Notice how the body, sensations, and instincts respond to what’s being observed and said. Notice what’s not being said, changing, or emerging before moving to interpreting or acting.
- Listen beyond your assumptions. Deliberately look and listen for information, perspectives, and signals that challenge your existing assumptions, interpretations, or plans.
2) INTENTION. What are we authentically willing to choose and act toward?
The willingness to direct oneself toward action while remaining at choice*—granting that same choice to others as we own our intentions, agreements, and commitments. With intention, the need for organization emerges as we arrange ourselves and our worlds for action.
OUTCOME: Commitment. The expression of choice through authentic agreements and the willingness to organize oneself around their fulfillment.
PRACTICES
- Choose before committing. Before saying yes, become present to being at choice.* Genuinely explore what you intend to create. Ensure that it’s what you want and that you’re willing to see it through.
- Organize for action. Organize yourself for action, to fulfill your commitment. Ensure you possess the tools, resources, and arrangements necessary to fulfill agreements.
3) COMPETENCE. Can we coordinate what we intend?
Competence includes both technical competence (knowing) and coordination competence (being). Coordination competence requires distinguishing committed conversations that generate action from uncommitted conversations that merely talk about it—and generating the agreements and conditions of satisfaction necessary for fulfillment.
For example, a gifted strategist may perceive exactly what an organization should do (knowing), but lack the competence to coordinate people (being) around its execution.
OUTCOME: Embodiment. The ability to recognize the presence or absence of commitment in conversation and generate the action necessary to move commitments toward fulfillment.
PRACTICES
- Listen for commitment. Learn to distinguish conversations about action from committed conversations that actually generate action.
- Ensure technical knowledge: Confirm that you and those you rely on to fulfill commitments possess the technical knowledge, abilities, and skills the work requires.
4) CLARITY. What exactly are we creating?
The capacity to assess agreements and make them explicit while maintaining a sufficiently broad view of the whole. Clarity holds both what’s being created and what the future state looks like. From that view, we can discern what’s required, who is responsible, and the conditions necessary for satisfaction.
OUTCOME: Discernment. A clear understanding of what is being created, what successful completion looks like, and the ability to assess the conditions of satisfaction.
PRACTICES
- Make agreements explicit. Surface who is doing what, for whom, by when, and what conditions must be satisfied for the commitment to be considered complete.
- Hold the whole while assessing the parts. Continually relate individual actions and agreements to the larger future being created rather than optimizing isolated tasks.
5) CANDOR. What must be said?
The willingness to speak truthfully about the situation, what is changing, what isn’t working, and what is needed. Candor allows coordination to adjust to reality rather than protect appearances or avoid discomfort.
OUTCOME: Accountability. The willingness to acknowledge what is happening, own one’s contribution, and address what is needed.
PRACTICES
- Say what must be said. Surface concerns, breakdowns, changing conditions, and unmet expectations early, rather than protecting appearances or avoiding discomfort.
- Own your contribution. When coordination breaks down, begin by examining and acknowledging your own commitments, actions, assumptions, and omissions before locating the problem elsewhere.
6) TEMPORALITY. Where are we in time?
The capacity to hold the past, present, and future simultaneously when scoping and sequencing action. Temporality recognizes what has passed and what it created, remains responsive to present conditions, and anticipates what will be required for commitments to reach completion.
OUTCOME: Reliability. The ability to fulfill commitments consistently within the time and conditions that matter.
PRACTICES
- Coordinate across time. When scoping and sequencing commitments, consider what has occurred, what is happening, what conditions are required for completion, and what must happen next.
- Renegotiate before breaking agreements. When circumstances change, or fulfillment is at risk, communicate early and establish a new agreement, rather than allowing a commitment simply to lapse.
These six dimensions can be used both diagnostically to assess coordination and developmentally to strengthen our ability to coordinate.
Table 2: Six Dimensions of Coordination
Coordination, Organization, and Logistics
Coordination requires organization, but the two are not the same. Organization and coordination operate in two different, though interdependent, domains.
- Organization is how we arrange ourselves and our world into patterns that enable action.
- Coordination is a way of Being through which we bring actions into relationship, disclose what matters, and transfer Being from situation to situation.
Organization Is Key
Organization includes how we arrange and relate to information, tools, resources, roles, and relationships to enable action. We are already-always organized, often automatically and habitually, around many other concerns, such as tidiness, comfort, control, appearance. Organization in this context is specific: we organize to enable action.
But organization is not merely external. It also affects the disclosive space in which new distinctions can emerge and patterns and practices—such as reflection and recovery—can deepen. Organization expands inquiry and what we can see and understand, enabling new ways of acting within our world.
A new commitment or uncertainty may demand more than rearranging a calendar, acquiring resources, or creating a better plan. It can reveal a level of organization that is no longer adequate for the situation. We may have to reorganize ourselves and our world.
Consider someone assuming a significantly larger leadership role. The challenge is not simply organizing more meetings, people, information, and resources. The leader may need to develop entirely new patterns for attending, delegating, deciding, reflecting, communicating, and relating to others. What previously worked may no longer work. This commitment calls forth a new level of organization.
This is why organization first emerges within Intention. Authentic commitment begins organizing around fulfillment, and that organization is then carried through other dimensions. Sometimes, this requires modest adjustments; at other times, new priorities, patterns, and skills can support who we should become.
Coordination and Organization: Being Beyond Logistics
Coordination and organization are often confused with logistics: the calendars, schedules, sequencing, and handoffs that keep work moving. These matter. However, logistics represents only part of the experience, touching dimensions of coordination such as Temporality and Clarity: When must something happen, and what exactly must happen?
Consider a simple agreement: We need three people in Chicago at 9:00 a.m. Tuesday, with the equipment ready. Logistics can arrange the travel, time, place, and equipment.
Coordination asks more: Have the right people committed? Are they competent to do what is needed? Are the agreements and conditions of satisfaction clear? Are they organized to fulfill them?
Logistics supports arrangements. Coordination and organization dance to orchestrate the whole.
But organization and coordination also continually shape one another:
- New commitments, possibilities, or uncertainty can require upgraded coordination, demanding new levels of organization to support their fulfillment or navigation.
- Reorganization can change what we see and what becomes possible, calling forth new commitments and another level of coordination.
The relationship is recursive, nonlinear. Coordination calls forth organization; organization can expand what becomes possible to coordinate.
Logistics is often the visible expression of both, arranging the particulars. This is why reducing either organization or coordination to logistics misses so much.
Table 3: Organization and Coordination
The Becoming of Being a Writer
Whether teaching, running, gardening, coaching, plumbing, or cooking, we can do something without making a genuine commitment to inhabit the role.
Consider someone who shifts their commitment from writing to being a writer. The distinction sounds subtle, but the new commitment shifts how they coordinate and organize their lives.
Coordination. This commitment begins to shape how they stand in relationship to the world. Reading takes on new significance—not only novels and biographies but also essays, op-eds, analysis, poetry, and provocative ideas that challenge assumptions and generate inquiry.
They seek writers, seminars, and unfamiliar subjects that stretch their imaginations. They develop relationships with peers, request feedback, exchange ideas, and increasingly listen to experiences through the question: What is here to be noticed, explored, or uncovered? Even while watching a movie, they begin noticing the plot, character development, dialogue, and holes in the story.
Organization. That way of Being requires another level of organization to support it. Ideas become material for ideas, so notebooks and other capture tools appear throughout the world.
Time is structured for reflection, writing, editing, and peer review. Additionally, priorities are reallocated, revealing activities and patterns that no longer serve this new commitment. Even sleep, exercise, meals, and daily rhythms may be reorganized around energy, concentration, balance, and the flow of creative work.
Nothing about simply writing required these arrangements. The commitment to becoming a writer called forth a different way of coordinating. That coordination required a new way of organizing capable of supporting it.
Coordination is central to connection, collaboration, and commitment. Yet, when breakdowns occur, we often blame communication or understanding and miss the qualities that make coordination possible.
From Doing to Being
We have distinguished coordination, this hidden capacity, through six dimensions that allow us to examine how well we center coordination in leadership and life.
But knowing the dimensions of coordination does not mean we will coordinate well. We can understand requests, commitments, candor, and reliability and still approach other people as objects to manage.
This brings us to a deeper question: Who are we being with one another when we coordinate?
In Part 2, we explore how coordination becomes a way of being with one another as co-creators—not simply another technique for getting things done.
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*Being at choice describes a stance or condition: remaining present to what is while being available to choose.
Reading Time: 11.5 min. Digest Time: 15.5 min.
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