informal coalitions

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.

Little Britain and the paradox of team working

If today's Mail on Sunday is to be believed, tensions have surfaced in the relationship between the two co-creators and presenters of award-winning BBC comedy Little Britain. Allegedly, Matt Lucas and David Walliams have disagreed on the future direction that the show should take and on how their partnership should develop. These disagreements have, the paper claims, extended to the question of who should be credited with the show's success.

Whether or not there is any truth in the specifics of this story is not the issue here. What this story highlights, though, is the paradoxical nature of all team-based relationships, which most conventional discussions of the subject ignore.

Target setting

Is it WISE to be SMART?

For many years, managers have been urged to set "SMART" targets for their staff, where the SMART acronym stands for some variant of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based. This seems like common sense advice; and yet most organizations still find it difficult to make this common sense work! The dynamics of informal coalitions suggests that managers need to ask themselves if the use of SMART targets to manage performance is wise, in a complex, uncertain and rapidly changing world.