informal coalitions

Leadership communication in organizational change

In Lessons in Communicating Change, on her Body Talk blog, Dr Carol Kinsey Goman, challenges conventional wisdom on leadership communication in organizational change.

In particular, she stresses the critical importance of informal communication - the "complex web of social interactions and informal networks" as she puts it – which accounts for upwards of 70% of all organizational communication. Her post goes on to underline the powerful role that she sees non-verbal signals playing in the communication process.

Continuity, creativity and change in conversation

I returned to the UK from a 'long weekend' break in Brussels yesterday.  On the train from London to our local station, my wife said that there would be a lot of females waiting for me when I got home! 

Storytelling and informal coalitions

The Cognitive Edge weblog contains an interesting exchange on the nature and role of storytelling in organizations. It was prompted by blog author Dave Snowden's reading of an article by Gabrielle Dolan of One Thousand and One, an Australian consultancy specialising in storytelling as a tool for organisational development. Dave Snowden is well known for his work on the role of narrative and complexity theory in organizational sensemaking.

My comment on the discussion from an informal coalitions perspective is reproduced below.

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.

Changing the conversations - Patricia Shaw

In his personal weblog (On conversations ... 4 December 2006), Johnnie Moore sets out some of his early thoughts on re-reading Patricia Shaw's book Changing Conversations in Organizations. The book is one of the series published in 2002 by members of the faculty and students on the University of Hertfordshire's Doctoral Programme in Organizational Change, which are referred to elsewhere in this blog.

I had the pleasure of participating in a workshop run by Patricia Shaw at the university in May 2002, timed to coincide with the launch of the book series. Some of Shaw's concluding remarks and my own thoughts on what she said are set out below. 

Communication - what's missing?

Several years ago, I was walking through the centre of Derby when I passed a sign that was prominently displayed outside St Peter's church. It read,

"CH__CH What's missing?"

The answer, of course, was "UR".

This simple but effective play on words appealed to my sense of humour; and I recall thinking at the time that I would have been pleased to have come up wth that myself!