In this final commentary on Katzenbach’s report on the informal organization, I want to underline why I see it both as an important endorsement of the need for managers to engage with the informal organization and, at the same time, an opportunity missed.
Informal Coalitions highlights the critical role played by the hidden, messy and informal dynamics of organizations in bringing about change and determining performance. The report similarly draws attention to the powerful impact of the informal organization. And it does so in an attractive and accessible way.
To add most value, though, it is necessary to provoke a radical shift in leaders’ thinking and practice. This means acknowledging, amongst other things, the unavoidably complex, paradoxical and political (i.e. ‘messy’) nature of organizations. It is not enough simply to advocate greater people involvement and other ‘safe’ conceptions of the informal organization, which leave managers’ fundamental assumptions intact. Unfortunately, despite its engaging style and imaginative presentation, I feel that the report falls into this trap.
My frustration is perhaps best illustrated by the final piece in the report. Although this similarly focuses solely on the informal dimension of organizations and ignores other aspects of organizational ‘messiness’, it takes a surprisingly different tack to the extracts that I have referred to in earlier posts. In particular, it draws an analogy between the “in-between stuff” that makes poetry poetic – that is, that gives it life beyond the formally constructed words on the page – and the dynamics of the informal organization:
“The informal organization is fuzzier, perhaps even invisible, because it is everything else [other than the formal]: the negative space on the x-ray, the invisible part of the organization that accounts for motivation, communication, pride, purpose and trust; the guts of your organization that make it work. It’s the magic that brings the skeleton of your organization to life. It’s the origin of change.”
The last sentence is particularly important. It is, perhaps, the most significant reason why attention to this topic is so vital. Informal interactions are the origin of change. As it happens, they are also the source of continuity. Continuity and change both originate through the same everyday process of conversational interaction. This process is self-organizing in the sense that it is not controlled by anyone outside those interactions. It is organized instead by:
- the particular themes that emerge in the give-and-take of everyday conversation, and
- the ways in which these themes are influenced by the in-the-moment enacting of the more generalized (cultural) patterns of understanding that reflect earlier sense making.
This self-organizing, patterning process has a tendency to flow into and along existing ‘channels of understanding’, in the same way that rain tends to follow patterns in the landscape sculpted by earlier rainfall. In so doing, it metaphorically deepens these sense-making ‘pathways’ even further; reinforcing established patterns of thinking and acting.
At the same time, though, the capacity exists for new patterns to form and change to arise, as sense making breaks out of existing channels and novel conversational themes emerge. If a sufficiently powerful coalition of support grows up informally around themes that run counter to established practice, these are likely to surface from the shadows as formal propositions and find their way into formal change strategies, plans and programmes. This truly is the ‘magic’ that brings the organization to life. But, continuing the metaphor, it is analogous to everyday, informal ‘street magic’, not the extravagant, precisely designed and formally orchestrated ‘stage magic’ that provides the basis of most organizations’ approaches to change.
Earlier posts in this ‘mini series’ include: #1 - Taking the informal organization seriously; #2 – The informal organization and management control; #3 – Managing the informal organization; #4 – The informal organization in action; and #5 – Mechanistic metaphors and organizational dynamics.
More information on the Katzenbach report can be found here.
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