informal coalitions

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.

The 'vision thing' in organizational leadership

In his latest blog post, You Don’t Need A Vision, Stephen Billing questions the popular belief that crafting an organizational vision is an essential leadership task. Indeed, he goes further by suggesting that "a clearly articulated vision … can actually get in the way of the change you want to achieve".

I take a similarly sceptical view of the value of organizations spending time and effort on creating what in Informal Coalitions I have called an end-state vision. That is, a Vision with a capital ‘V’.

The felt need to create a Vision Statement (and, often, an accompanying set of Values) has become the clichéd response whenever a formal change programme is put together. Even if it were possible to express a Vision in terms that remained meaningful and compelling into the longer term, the challenge of turning this into operational reality would still remain. Too often such Visions and Values are greeted with scepticism or cynicism, as the idealised statements come 'face-to-face' with the tangible reality of people’s everyday experience of organizational life. 

But what, if anything, should leaders do instead?

Solutions Focus and the dynamics of organizational change

Andy Smith’s “Practical EQ” weblog, provides an interesting and useful overview of the latest edition of Jackson and McKergow’s book, Solutions Focus. As someone who has used the Solutions Focus (SF) approach in individual and team coaching interventions, I share Andy’s attraction to the method. The shift in focus that it facilitates – from what needs fixing to what’s already going well that can be built upon – can provide a powerful form of reframing during performance improvement conversations of one form or another.

Mobilizing commitment - The motive, means and opportunity to excel

As a youngster, I used to play a card game called "I Commit" (opposite), which was originally devised in the 1930s. During the game, players competed to collect sets of three cards which would enable them to ‘commit a crime’. I should add that, to redress the moral balance, they also strove to collect 'policemen' to thwart the criminal activities of their opponents!  In essence, before a player could say “I commit ...”, they needed to show that they had the motive, the means and the opportunity to do so.

So what has a 1930s parlour game got to do with mobilizing commitment in 21st century organizations? Well, if people are (figuratively speaking) to say "I commit" in relation to their everyday roles and relationships at work, then they too need the motive, means and opportunity to do so. 

Gareth Morgan's 'plantpot solutions'

Picture the scene. A man is on his knees, arms spread wide and eyes cast skyward. People are seated in front of him, looking on attentively and listening intently to his words. A book lies open by his side.

This was the picture presented to us by Gareth Morgan, at a workshop on metaphor, paradox and change that he ran in London around ten years ago. "What is the man," he asked, "and what is he doing?"

Gianfranco Zola and some thoughts on organizational vision

I've just returned from speaking about Informal Coalitions to a group of London-based management consultants.  The event was held at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium. When I arrived, I was directed to the Zola Suite, nestled in the upper reaches of the West Stand. The walls were decked out with pictures of Gianfranco Zola in action. One sequence showed the past-master turning West Ham United's Julian Dicks 'inside out', before scoring another of his spectacular goals.  Zola had vision. And providing vision is an important element of the change-leadership agenda set out in Informal Coalitions.

Building commitment -v- rewarding performance

Many organizations retain an almost messianic belief in the power of performance-related pay and bonus targets to generate commitment and deliver high-quality performance. This is most evident in the approach to executive pay, which is rarely out of the headlines. But the same thinking often penetrates much more deeply into organizations - whether translated into formal pay systems or simply governing the organization's general approach to managing performance. Unfortunately, commitment can't be gained simply by setting up a process of formal target setting or arranging periodic 'performance review' meetings. People might comply - for a time and in a fashion - with externally imposed routines and targets. But commitment is an inner drive. It arises naturally where people feel that they have the motive, means and opportunity to excel at what they are doing.

Managing performance through informal conversations

Performance management is usually thought of almost exclusively in terms of formal, structured processes through which managers are expected to control the performance of their staff. These include formal target setting procedures; routine progress checking and performance monitoring; programmed feedback sessions; and end-of-year reviews. Often these elements are driven more by the requirements of an organization’s pay structures and the felt need for managers to get to grips with ‘poor performers’, than by the wider considerations of business performance and staff engagement.

While leaders are focusing their attention on getting these formal systems and processes ‘right’, though, they need to recognize that other, more powerful forces are at play which unavoidably impact upon organizational performance. The everyday conversations and interactions that they have with their staff – and that staff have with each other - are particularly influential in this.

Re-focusing performance management

During my years as an engineer and then manager, I experienced many attempts by HR and OD departments to introduce what they saw as the ultimate answer to the performance management ‘problem’. The systems that they put in place were invariably well crafted, in terms both of the procedural disciplines that they sought to instil and the quality of materials provided for line managers, to facilitate their central role in the process. Despite these valiant efforts, the impact on results – if any - was invariably short-lived.

Key influence #5 - Gareth Morgan

Gareth Morgan is Distinguished Research Professor at the Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto. He is a writer and management consultant, who places particular emphasis on the use of metaphor and paradox to understand the dynamics of organizations and the challenges of change. I first saw Morgan in action at a full-day session of the Independent Change Management Forum in 1997, in which he explored various aspects of metaphor and paradox in relation to organizational change. This reinforced my attraction to the use of metaphor and analogy as language and thinking tools. His discussion of the paradoxical nature of organizations also re-ignited my interest in this important but under-explored and misunderstood aspect of organizational dynamics.