During a workshop that I ran with a new management team, we set out to try to identify some of the taken-for-granted assumptions (within their part of the wider organization) that were tending to channel everyday sense making and action taking down familiar, culturally-acceptable ‘pathways’. I felt that the raised awareness of these ‘global’ patterns would help the managers to reflect more insightfully on their own behaviours, and the impact that these might have in reinforcing and/or potentially changing ‘unhelpful’ patterns.
Interestingly, most of the common themes that emerged were expressed in negative language. That is, the stories that were told, and the underlying themes that these were thought to reflect, were stated in terms of characteristics or behaviours that it was considered best to avoid.
The senior manager present enthusiastically took away the outputs and emailed me soon afterwards with his version of the assumptions that had surfaced during the workshop. In it, he said that he “felt it was important to express these in positive terms”. I found this particularly interesting, given Assumption #4 in the list that he had produced (see below)!
Six main themes had been identified during the session. The manager’s restatement of these in positive terms is set out below, together with the original ‘source data’ in parentheses.
The statements
What matters in this company is:
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#1 - Being seen to deliver and being associated with success. (deliverer, associated with failure)
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#2 - Being politically astute, with the right connections and able to present information in the most effective way. (political, connected, spin, stay on right side of people, upsetting top people)
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#3 - Being a team player (maverick, conformity)
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#4 - Having a confident, positive, can-do attitude. (self-confident, no negatives, no problems just challenges, not saying no)
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#5 - Being recognised as a key player in the company's business (status, in the know, comparisons)
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#6 - Putting business success first ('hard' v 'soft').
Taken out of context, these six statements read well. And they conform to the dominant management discourse about the sort of attributes that are needed to succeed - attributes to which the management team and wider organization might aspire.
However, these don't accurately reflect the substance and tenor of the underlying assumptions that were then felt to be patterning relationships and tending to channel everyday sense making in particular directions. If assumptions such as these are never exposed and challenged, they can blind the organisation to alternative ways of seeing and acting, undermining performance or even increasing the likelihood of failure.
Conclusions
To treat anything in a “taken-for-granted” way can, at worst, be terminal and, at best, stifle creativity and innovation. This is not a matter of trying to ‘do away with’ these assumptions or to ‘design them out’ in some way. They are a natural dynamic of organization - formed, reinforced and potentially changed through the ongoing conversational process of shared sense making. But it is important for managers to raise their awareness of the patterning process. And to take responsibility for their own contribution to the patterns that emerge, as role models (good or bad!) and 'organizational symbols'.
Finally, for now, the senior manager’s felt need to express the underlying themes in positive terms itself reflected the taken-for-granted assumption about the need to avoid negativity etc. That is, managers are part of ‘the culture’ too, not external, objective observers and controllers of other people’s actions.
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