informal coalitions

Leadership – Passing the baton?

In his post Doing by Not Doing, Johnnie Moore draws attention to an intriguing session by Israeli conductor Itay Talgam at this year’s DLD (Digital, Life, Design) Conference in Munich. In it, Talgam uses the role of the orchestra conductor as a metaphor for organizational leadership.

He contrasts a range of styles, from the rigid control of Riccado Muti to the ‘hands-off’ approach of Leonard Bernstein, and invites us to draw lessons from the contrasting relationships that the various conductors develop with the musicians.

The “What You Will Learn” trap in learning and development`

It has become almost obligatory for descriptions of management courses, development workshops, training programmes and the like to include a section headed "what participants will learn". This seems like common sense. After all, if we don’t know what people will learn, how can we know that the investment has been worth it?

Some training and development providers eagerly rise to the challenge. They produce detailed lists of the new knowledge, skills and attitudes that learners will acquire as a result of their participation. And they take confidence from the belief that clearly defined outcomes, coupled with the packaged ‘transfer of knowledge’, will ensure the desired learning. The anxiety-reducing promise of structure, predictability and control acts as a further incentive to follow this route.

Unfortunately, this is the same trap that designers of formal change programmes fall into when they assume that their well crafted strategies, plans and projects will guarantee particular organizational outcomes. The reality is that they won’t.

Informal coalitions expressed as a de Bono “bonto poem”

On a couple of occasions, I have posted a poem to the blog. These were meant to provide some light relief from my more serious musings about informal coalitions and all things organizational. This post adds a third. It is based on Edward de Bono’s notion of a "bonto poem", which I came across a couple of days ago.

If you fancy a break from the usual ‘thinking’ diversions of crosswords, sudoku or whatever, the bonto offers a potential escape route. It challenges the writer to create a poem that ‘makes a point’ within a strict set of rules – and using just four lines of verse.

How does informal coalitions differ from participative management?

I am often asked how my informal coalitions view of organizational dynamics differs from established approaches to participative management and organizational change. The latter aim to involve people more fully and directly in the decison-making and action-taking life of an organization and to adopt a more collaborative stance to problem solving and implementation.

This post sets out to explain the fundamental difference that I see between the two, and the implications that this has for consulting and, more importantly, leadership practice.

Joint Problem Solving is the generic term that I use to describe a deliberate management strategy aimed at involving people formally in the organization's problem-solving, decision-making and/or sense-making processes. It includes such things as working groups, task forces, structured dialogue sessions, large-group change methodologies, team workshops, and so on. It sits at the ‘flexible’ end of a spectrum of formal, rational and ‘legitimate’ approaches to organizational change. This ranges from what I call Management Edict at the ‘tight’ end (imposed, directed and programmed) to Joint Problem Solving (involving rather than imposed, facilitated rather than directed and ad hoc rather than programmed).

Although Joint Problem Solving is a more participative approach than Management Edict, it still sits within the conventional management paradigm. Amongst other things, this assumes that: 

• managers can design, plan and build the future;
• identifying and using other organizations' 'best practices' will assure success;
• linear cause-and effect relationships can be identified and leveraged to achieve predictable outcomes; and
• intended outcomes will be achieved if plans are implemented as designed.

In the book, I mentioned that some managers might pay lip service to Joint Problem Solving, by using one or other of the above examples of this approach but constraining this to such an extent that it becomes little more than Management Edict in disguise. However, even where it is used as a genuine attempt to involve and empower people, it still doesn’t address the complex social dynamics of organizations. Which is where informal coalitions comes in.

Who are the main players in organizational communication?

Who are the most significant people when it comes to communicating in organizations? Is it the Internal Comms department? Or line managers? Or is it, perhaps, those influential, ‘tuned-in’ and/or well-linked individuals, who have no formal comms role but who seem to be highly active informally?

Well, all of these have a part to play. And the last two are particularly important contributors to the sense-making process that sits at the heart of the informal coalitions view of organizations. But to leave it at that would be to miss the crucial role that others play in the dynamics of organizational change and business performance.