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?
Whilst recognizing that “managing” the informal organization is difficult, the report nevertheless suggests that this is both desirable and achievable. The authors argue that managers need to maintain “a necessary balance between the formal and informal”. The perceived difficulty in satisfying this need is underlined by statements such as:
- “informal organizations can be intractable and difficult to manage”; and
- “you can never be 100% certain about what the informal organization is going to turn out.”
At the same time, this recognition is mitigated by assertions such as “… great leadership is about continually re-calibrating a balance between the two [formal and informal]”.
The problem here is that the informal organization (i.e. people interacting with each other) can’t be “managed” at all. It is a self-organizing process and whatever outcomes emerge, emerge! This is as much the case under a formal command and control regime as it is in a visibly more empowering and participatory set-up (see Post #2).
Even when managers are carrying out their formal roles, they are unavoidably participating in this process – for better or worse. They are not objective observers and controllers of other people’s actions – ‘sitting in the stands’ so to speak and ‘pulling levers’ that can guarantee particular outcomes, they are ‘on the pitch’, playing.
Also, the informal does not exist as some form of separate entity from the formal. Even though it can often be useful to draw particular attention to the informal, shadow-side dynamics of the organization or to its formal manifestations (structures, systems, processes, etc), the ‘two’ arise and are maintained simultaneously through the same conversational process.
The leadership challenge, therefore, is not to try to “manage the informal”. Instead, it is to engage purposefully in the dynamic network of conversations and interactions through which outcomes emerge - both formal/’legitimate’ designs and informal/’shadow-side’ effects.
This requires managers to:
- actively participate in the ongoing conversational exchanges;
- reflect on the themes that are emerging from – and at the same time patterning - these interactions; and
- act in ways which ‘tap into’ the natural “credibility paths” (DeLuca, Political Savvy, 1999), through which influence is exerted locally throughout the organization.
The aim of this is to help shift the patterns of interaction and outcomes in organizationally beneficial ways.
More information on the Katzenbach report can be found here.
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