In a recent post, I referred to an eye-catching report by Katzenbach Partners on the informal organization. Although the report helpfully and creatively highlights the pervasiveness and power of the informal organization, I believe that many of the stories and commentaries continue to reflect conventional assumptions about how organizations work and outcomes are achieved.
This follow-on post looks at the ability - or otherwise - of managers to choose whether the formal processes of the organization or its informal arrangements and practices should take precedence in particular circumstances.
It is implied in the report that managers can choose the extent to which the informal organization has an impact on outcomes. For example, one article advocates using “command and control” as the preferred way of managing an organization at certain times, with managers relying on the informal organization in different circumstances. However, from an informal coalitions perspective, managers cannot choose the extent to which the informal organization comes into play. Even when they adopt an unalloyed “command and control” approach, ultimate outcomes will still be unpredictable, self-organizing and emergent.
For example, the formal imposition of new structures, systems and procedures might well lead to their double-quick implementation, in terms of establishing the visible, surface-level changes. And these might well carry with them immediate ‘gains’, such as direct cost savings or other short-term efficiencies. However, the ultimate effect of such changes on organizational performance will always depend on the ways in which people, individually and collectively, perceive, interpret, evaluate and decide to act upon their understanding of these changes. And this sense-making about specific initiatives will not be isolated in time or space from sense-making about the wealth of other events that are preoccupying those who are wrapped up in them.
Managers cannot control this sense-making and use-making process in any meaningful way. All they can aim to do is to influence its dynamics - and the outcomes that emerge - by participating in it actively and with raised awareness. Most obviously, they can do this through their own, everyday conversations with individuals and small gatherings of their staff. Importantly though, they can also seek to do it indirectly, by tapping into the informal influence networks that exist naturally throughout the organization.
The Katzenbach report recognises the power of informal relationships and cautions managers against dismissing social interactions as an unproductive waste of time. At the same time, the implied ability for managers to pick and choose which bits of these informal interactions they want and which they don’t could leave their fundamental assumptions about organanizational dynamics and management control largely intact.
More information on the Katzenbach report can be found here.
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