informal coalitions

Facts never speak for themselves

This morning, I happened to catch a brief exchange on Radio 5Live's "Your Call", hosted by Nicky Campbell.  The topic of the day was the Government's plan to change the way it deals with the funding for children who are deemed to have Special Educational Needs. The proposed approach would allow parents to choose alternative forms of expert help for their children, rather than support being restricted solely to that provided by local authorities.

One of the callers was irate at what she described as an attack on local authority funding and "a tax on our children". Campbell interrupted her to point out that, earlier in the day, Children's Minister Sarah Tether had categorically denied that the change was aimed at withdrawing support from children.

"Well she would say that, wouldn't she?" the caller responded curtly - seemingly oblivious to the ideological basis of her own comment. That is to say, it would be equally valid to state in response to the caller's own remarks, "She would say that, wouldn't she?"

Onus on Liberal Democrats to prove that coalition politics work

Following an indecisive outcome to Thursday's general Election in the UK, talks continue on the potential for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to work together in some way to deliver successful government.

It is obvious that differences exist between the two parties on many of their policies and their core ideologies.  However, it seems to me that the onus is primarily on the LIberal Democrats to demonstrate that different parties can work together effectively "in the national interest". 

It is presumed that the main 'sticking point' in the negotiations is likely to centre on electoral reform, with the Lib Dems wedded to full-blown proportional representation and the Conservatives remaining steadfastly in favour of the current, "first past the post" system.  One result of the former arrangement would be perpetual coalition or minority governments. And so, it is in the interest of the Lib Dems to show that 'strong' (in the sense of credible and workable) government can be forged by different - and otherwise competing - parties working together in partnership. 

Coalition government? We’ve never had anything else!

As election fever - or, depending on your perspective, election fatigue - grows in the UK, the prospect that no single party will have an overall majority after the 6 May General Election is dominating political discussion and media comment.

Following the first-ever televised leaders’ debate, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg won viewers’ acclaim for his performance. And, in these ‘instant fame’ times of The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, his party’s prospects rose dramatically – at least according to the post-debate opinion polls. That surge in potential support has been halted to a degree, following the second debate in the series. But the Lib Dems still appear to be running a close second to the Conservatives in voter popularity.

Overall, then, this promises to be one of the most interesting election nights of modern times. But why are politicians and commentators so exercised by the thought of the Nation waking up on 7 May to what – in UK terms – has traditionally been viewed as a weak, indecisive result?

Rogue leader or change leader?

In a recent post, When A Leader Goes ‘Rogue’, Allan Kelsey argues that what he calls “rogue leadership” occurs …

“… when a person of influence begins to cause others to follow them away from the originally agreed ideal. …a departure from the intent of the original focus or the intent of the originator.”

Kelsey maintains that this practice is destructive “… because it portrays an imbalance of power, it dilutes or even derails the corporate vision and it breaks alignment”. And he therefore calls for “swift and decisive action” to deal with it. 

At first sight, the dysfunctional nature of the sort of behaviour that Kelsey describes appears self-evident. But are things as clear cut as he suggests? Is movement “away from the originally agreed ideal” (or even the current one) necessarily a sign of trouble? Or is it instead the very way that change happens in organizations?

What is the leaders’ role in OD?

This is the penultimate post in a short series, which looks at the nature, relevance and management of OD/change during the challenging economic climate. It builds on my responses to questions posed by HRZone's Annie Hayes, which feature in her article Downturn downtime? Organisation development in a recession.

This post focuses on how leaders can increase the likelihood of achieving successful organizational change and development.

More on the psychological and emotional impacts of change

In a previous post, I commented on Stephen Billing’s interesting and informative series of posts on the work of Patricia Benner. In them, he draws insights for the leadership of organizational change from Benner’s work on patient care. This explores the practice of professionals in dealing with people’s experience of health and illness, growth and loss. And, as Billing points out, people going through change similarly experience growth and loss.

In my commentary, I suggested that I could see parallels between the dynamics of change as set out in Informal Coalitions and Benner’s four "aspects of humanness" (embodied intelligence, background meaning, concerns, and situation) that informed Billing’s posts. And I want to explore those further here.

Psychological and emotional response to change - A new perspective

In another interesting series of posts in his Changing Organisations blog, Stephen Billing introduces the work of Prof. Patricia Benner and draws implications from it for leaders of organizational change.  I haven’t previously come across Benner’s theories. So Billing’s summary of her work and his accompanying commentaries are very welcome and thought-provoking.

 

Benner is concerned with the practice of professionals dealing with health and illness, growth and loss, as these are experienced by individuals in a clinical setting.  She proposes that there are four aspects of people’s humanness that enable them to grasp situations directly in terms of their meaning for the self.  These are embodied intelligence; background meaning; concern; and situation.

 

Billing sees the principles that Benner articulates in relation to these as providing an alternative and more useful way of looking at the impact of change on people than that embodied in the characteristic grief cycle, as identified by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

Employee engagement - With what?

Stephen Billing's post Leadership and Management Matter, Not Engagement Scores is the fourth in a series that he's 'penned' on what he sees as the ''cult of engagement''. In it, he summarises his main points as follows:

• high employee engagement does not cause high productivity
• engagement is becoming a cult and wise leaders will not pay much attention to it
• leaders should concentrate on business results and employee engagement is not a business result, it is an input.

The goal of raising employee engagement has become one of the 'taken-for-granteds' of organizational management - fuelled in large part by the ready availability of a multitude of questionnaires and surveys that purport to be able to measure it. But, as Billing argues, does this really make sense?

Is Kotter on song with his latest offering on organizational change: A Sense of Urgency?

John Kotter has just released what you might say is the first 'single' from his highly successful eight-track 'album', Leading Change and its 'unplugged' version, The Heart of Change.

In a previous post, I have challenged what I see as the mismatch between the complex social realities of everyday organizational life and the theme that runs through these two 'concept' albums. That is, Kotter's claim that successful organizational change can be brought about in a neatly-packaged, one-step-at-a-time, predictable way.

So how does this extended rendition of Track 1 from the album, A Sense of Urgency, stack up?

The nature and dynamics of organizational coalitions

A colleague recently drew my attention to an excellent article on the nature and dynamics of organizational coalitions that I had not come across before. It was written by three senior academics at the University of California (Stevenson, Pearce and Porter) and published in 1985 by the Academy of Management Review.

Its title, The Concept of ‘Coalition’ in Organization Theory and Research, hardly sets the pulse racing! But it has some important things to say about the characteristics of coalitions, which resonate strongly with those discussed in Informal Coalitions. In particular, the authors challenge many of the ways in which the term has been misused in the past. They argue that this has led to "… great confusion as to whether it applies to collections of individuals, to collections of subgroups, or even to the entire organization."

I see this article as adding value in two ways. Firstly, the authors offer a definition of the term "coalition", which provides a useful framework for thinking about their nature and dynamics. Secondly, they offer a number of hypotheses about the process of coalition formation. This post considers the first of these.