informal coalitions

The unwrapped sandwiches

I run a bimonthly network meeting for senior OD practitioners in central London. At a recent session, we were each invited to write a brief narrative on an experience that had struck us in some way and which had left some residual feelings and/or recollections that might merit further exploration. We were then asked to reflect on this personal narrative, both ourselves (as we were reading it out loud to a couple of other participants) and those others who were listening to our recollection of the event from an ‘external’ perspective. In this sort of mini learning set, we then talked about what we had heard during the retelling of our story, as part of a process that session leaders Douglas Board and Rob Warwick call "immersed reflexivity"¹.

My ‘striking moment' concerned a meeting that I had attended some weeks earlier in support of another independent consultant.  Our aim had been to secure a contract with a major organization in the UK. Although the meeting itself was an awkward affair, with the client director exhibiting some behaviour which suggested that any resulting work would be somewhat of a challenge, the initial response was positive. By that I mean that we were asked to design and deliver the first event of a number that we had proposed for the project team, line managers and the Board.  As we left, though, we shared our concerns about what, despite the outcome, had been a very unsatisfactory affair. I felt in particular that the main client didn’t ‘get’ what it was that we were proposing – and that he didn’t appear particularly interested in exploring anything beyond the mechanics (timing, attendees, reporting back, etc) of the initial workshop. These were issues that we agreed needed to be confronted sooner rather than later.

From talking in terms of systems to talking instead of systems

Much of the current writing on organizations adopts the language of systems thinking - although what this means in an organizational context differs considerably from writer to writer.  And management theorists and practitioners are not alone in viewing organizations in this way. Journalists, politicians, inquiry chairmen, and other commentators regularly refer to "the system", or "systemic failure" when pronouncing on events that hit the headlines. So seeing organizations as systems, which have the capacity to act in some way separately from the actions of ordinary people, appears natural and straightforward. But is it?

The issue

From an informal coalitions/complex social process perspective, what people think of as an organization comprises people interacting together for a purpose - or, more accurately, for a diverse range of purposes. Some of these are explicit, seen as organizationally legitimate and openly acknowledged. Others are implicit and/or covert. Some are mutually supportive. Others are in conflict. As people interact from moment to moment, both in conscious pursuit of these several purposes and habitually, various formal artefacts (such as policies, strategies, structures, processes, procedures, and the like) are constructed, named, and announced, before being interpreted, drawn upon, adapted, or ignored by others. The characteristic patterning of people’s thinking and acting (often reified as "the culture") similarly emerges from this same conversational process.

Organization (or rather the ongoing process of organiz-ing) is therefore an act of co-creation between human beings in the normal course of their everyday interactions. And this process is in constant flux. In other words, the reality of organization is being continuously (re-) constructed in the currency of people’s present-day interactions: A dynamic network of self-organizing conversations, which does not respect boundaries – whether those implicit in the notion of a formal organization or others which define the supposed limits of this or that "system".

Judging by comments made in many on-line and real-world exchanges, though, this conversational construction of organization seems to present two fundamental difficulties for those who see, think and talk of organizations in "systems" terms. 

Scientific research meets (but fails to recognize) the complex dynamics of organizations

I recently attended a brief presentation of some extensive academic research into leadership performance. Leadership here referred to the contribution of the organization's ‘top man’ or ‘top woman’.  So far as I could judge, the research had been carried out impeccably in terms of established academic rigour. But, in abstracting from the complex reality of organizational life on which the research was supposedly focused, the subsequent conclusions were, to my mind, seriously flawed.

The research sought to draw causal links between the backgrounds of those in the most senior leadership positions and the comparative success of their organizations, as defined in the research.  The central proposition was that those whose backgrounds satisfied the particular criterion identified in the research would make the best leaders. Simple.

But none of this took account of the complex social dynamics of organization through which "success" - and indeed "leadership" - emerge in practice.

“There is no such thing as society” - An informal coalitions perspective

Around 25 years ago, the then Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously said,

"There is no such thing as society."

Clarifying her view, she went on to say,

"There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves."

Women's Own magazine, October 31 1987

In an apparent contradiction of this position, her latest successor David Cameron has put what he calls "the Big Society" at the centre of his party’s political philosophy. However, according to the Conservative Party website, its aim is to help people,

"To come together to improve their own lives. The Big Society is about putting more power in people's hands - a massive transfer of power from Whitehall to local communities. We want to see people encouraged and enabled to play a more active role in society."

In ideological terms, then, there appears to be little difference between the two positions as regards the sought-after action ‘on the ground’.  In Lady Thatcher’s terms, though, this represents a denial of the very idea of society and a belief in the sovereignty of individuals. Whereas today’s Prime Minister sees it as the essence of society in action. So which of them is right?

The focus of informal coalitions is on the underlying dynamics of human interaction, rather than on the ideological stance that such interactions might reflect. And, viewed from this perspective, they are both right. And both wrong.

Ignoring the complexity and humanity of organizational life

I never expected to be writing a post in Informal Coalitions based on the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury. But yesterday morning I caught a snippet from Justin Welby’s first Easter sermon, as this was being reported upon during an early-morning radio programme.

It was the following extract that particularly caught my attention:

"I wonder how many people here think that the future will be better than the past, and all problems can be solved if we put our minds to it. There is a general sense that if that is not the case then it ought to be, and someone must be doing something to stop it. Illusion is replaced by disappointment, both wrong.

The hero leader culture has the same faults. A political party gets a new leader and three months later there is comment about disappointment. An economy suffers the worst blow in generations with a debt crisis and economic downturn, and the fact that not everything is perfect within five years is seen as total failure. Complexity and humanity are ignored and we end up unreasonably disappointed with every institution, group and policy, from politicians to NHS, education to environment [my emphasis]."

It struck me that these words of the new head of the Anglican Church provide a much needed ‘reality check’ on the widely held assumptions about how things happen in organizations and wider society. Assumptions, for example, that there is a ‘right answer’ to all of the problems that we face; that ‘doing things better and getting them right’ is all that’s needed to realize the desired future; and, most pervasive, that our fate hinges on the actions of a few ‘special’ individuals.