Management models and frameworks - facilitating sensemaking conversations

The Challenge

"Since we agree that change occurs through everyday conversations and interactions, why do you feel it is necessary to include references to grids, frameworks and toolkits in Informal Coalitions?"  This reasonable challenge was put to me recently, when I was discussing the contents of the book with a leading UK academic who lectures and consults in organizational change from a complexity perspective (see Chapter Summaries, for example).

Sensemaking frameworks

I agreed that the many methodologies, tools and techniques that offer a 'one best way' or step-by-step approach to the leadership of organizational change have no part to play in engaging with the dynamics of informal coalitions. The main thesis of the book is that organizations are best viewed as networks of conversations; and that change takes place through these conversations.

The few 'frameworks' that are introduced in various parts of Informal Coalitions are simply intended to raise managers' awareness of the powerful impact of everyday conversations and interactions on organizational outcomes. And/or they aim to facilitate the conversations that managers might wish to engage in as a result of this insight. None of them are prescriptive. I see this facilitative role as being no different, say, to the way in which awareness of the gestalt cycle helps to guide the interventions that a manager or consultant might make within an organization. The key thing for me is whether or not a model or framework helps someone to make better sense of something than they might otherwise have done and/or better use of the sense they've made.

Starting where managers currently are

I think it's fair to say that most managers still see change as being brought about by the step-by-step implementation of formal, structured interventions - underpinned by a large dose of 'up front' leadership (see Kotter's Leading Change, for example). From this perspective, far from helping the cause, informal talk and interactions are just viewed as getting in the way of manager-led change and organizational performance.

Because the idea of models and frameworks fits with where most managers currently are, I have found that – paradoxically perhaps - these help them more readily accept the idea that 'it's all in the conversations'. With this raised level of awareness, they can move more easily into this conversational space, because it then makes more sense for them to do so.

Comments

[Paula Thornton]

Aren't there several fundamental principles at play here: synthesis, self-reference, grounding? The fact that the same thing that causes the problems is also the same thing that can undo the problems is simply an illustration of the dichotomy (paradox) that you so astutely identify.

The concept of 'middles' -- the dynamically moving 'optimal' between poles on a continuum (chaos and order, water and ice), is a fundamental principle that you provide yet another example to reinforce.

[Chris Rodgers]

Hi Paula,

Thank you for your thoughtful comment.

One of the concerns of those who argue against the use of management models and frameworks is that they can take on a life of their own. If attention is directed towards an abstract model, they would contend that this inevitably diverts attention away from what’s happening in the here-and-now of everyday experience. Many models also offer overly simplified views of a complex ‘reality’; lulling managers who use them mechanistically into a false sense of security about their level of understanding.

I broadly agree with these concerns, especially where the models prescribe solutions rather than facilitate further sense-making conversations. At the same time, if appropriate ‘tools’ are used insightfully and with a healthy degree of scepticism, they can help managers and others to make progress that might otherwise prove difficult.

I am reminded of the story told by Karl Weick, in his book "Sensemaking in Organisations", about a group of Hungarian soldiers who had been missing for a number of days in the Alps. When they eventually returned, they pointed to a map that one of their number had chanced upon. On closer inspection, it proved to be a map of the Pyrenees, not the Alps. Weick uses this story to suggest that, when sensemaking takes hold, ‘any map will do’. The fact that the map was not the right map was irrelevant. It was good enough. It spurred them into action, and gave them confidence that they could make progress. In particular, it enabled them to ask useful questions of themselves. They were then able to make sense of where they were, and make use of that understanding to get to where they needed to be.

Management models and frameworks can serve a similarly useful purpose; provided that managers use these to “ask useful questions of themselves” rather than relying on them to do their thinking for them.

[Paula Thornton]

All good. Here's a reality...in the many years I've been attending conferences, it bears out this thought: there are thinkers and doers. Business models reinforce behaviors of doers not thinkers.

The people at specialized practitioner conferences are often not 'specialists' in the field, but are simply the resource that the organization has 'tapped' to become a specialist in the field. They're facing insurmountable odds against issues they know nothing about. They come to the events to gorge on as much as they can about the topic so they can go back and 'do' the practice.

I'm a thinker. My presentations are models for 'thinking'. I always get feedback to the effect of 'that was nice...but it didn't tell me how to do it'.

Ground Control, we have a disconnect.