informal coalitions

Praise for informal coalitions – and positive organizational politics!

In her Squidoo ‘lens’ on organizational politics, Prof. Bonni Stachowiak of Southern California’s Vanguard University describes Informal Coalitions as "a fantastic book on organizational change with two relevant chapters on organizational politics."

Prof. Stachowiak, who lectures and consults on business leadership, adopts a refreshingly positive view of the role that politics can play in organizational leadership:

The 'wiggly' world of organizational dynamics

Over 30 years ago, in The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, philosopher Alan Watts illustrated the world as a “wiggly” line.  On top of this he drew a net, which “… ‘cut’ the big wiggle into little wiggles.”  In this way, he argued, man has sought to impose order on chaos.   But the net, he cautions, is only an image and

“… the real world slips like water through our imaginary nets.  However much we divide, count, sort, or classify this wiggling into particular things and events, this is no more than a way of thinking about the world: it is never actually divided.”

And so it is with the dynamics of organizations.

The informal organization in action

This is the fourth post in my ‘mini series’ of commentaries on the report about the informal organization published by respected US-based consultancy Katzenbach Partners.  In the earlier posts, having welcomed the authors’ recognition of the power of the informal organization, I have raised a number of issues with the report arising from an informal coalitions view of organizational dynamics.  To date, I have looked at:

• whether or not this represents a radical challenge to conventional management thinking and practice (#1);
• the extent to which managers can control the impact that the informal organization has on organizational outcomes (#2); and
• whether the notion of “managing” the informal organization is a credible aspiration (#3). 

Here, I draw attention to the strong inclination in the report to equate the “informal organization in action” with such things as empowerment strategies; an emphasis on personalized customer service; and the adoption of other semi-structured, people-centric approaches (such as the use of communities of practice), rather than to see it in terms of the natural, underlying dynamics of all organizations.

Managing the informal organization

This post continues my informal coalitions commentary on the report by Katzenbach Partners about the importance for managers to pay attention to the informal organization. 

In two earlier posts, I have questioned whether or not the report represents a fundamental challenge to management orthodoxy (#1); and the extent to which managers can control the impact that the informal organization has on organizational outcomes (#2). 

Here, I want to build on Post #2 by looking further at the ability of managers to manage the informal organization. In simple terms, can the informal organization be managed at all?

Viral change and informal coalitions

I’ve just finished reading an excellent book on organizational change, Viral Change, written by Leandro Herrero.  The cover of the book states:

"Lasting change in the modern organization has less to do with massive ‘communication to all’ programmes and more with the creation of an internal epidemic of success led by a small number of non-negotiable behaviours."

The book was easy and enjoyable to read. And it was like a breath of fresh air to come across an approach to change that doesn’t advocate the top-down, project-based, all-singing-all-dancing methodologies that tend to dominate current management thinking and practice.  Although Viral Change is not written from an informal coalitions perspective, much of Herrero’s commentary on how organizations work and how leaders need to act to bring change about is consistent with the ‘complex social process’ view of organizational dynamics which underpins the informal coalitions approach.