Facilitating change #4 – Expanding the view of organizational resources

On setting out on this quest, to compare my 1980 thoughts on specialist planning with the dynamics of informal coalitions (see Footnote), I suggested that it would be a voyage of discovery. I hadn’t yet reacquainted myself with the original text!  This point was brought home when I first read the source chapter for this post, entitled Acquisition, Deployment and Management of Resources.  

At first sight, there didn't appear to be any extracts that drew attention to the underlying dynamics of organizations by way of analogy with the planning task.  However, on re-reading the text, I discovered three important areas in which parallels can be drawn between the paper's comments on specialist planning and the informal coalitions perspective of organizational dynamics.

First of all, in talking about the nature of organizational resources, I’m pleased to see that the paper adopts a much broader definition than that which is typical of classical planning. 

• Extract #19 – Surfacing the underlying themes and patterns that are organizing interactions, activities and outcomes.

 “The term ‘resource’ alludes to any means through which [the organisation] derives benefit. In this sense, every factor – actual or potential, tangible or intangible – can be a resource.” 

The paper uses a quotation by Hicks H (1972, The Management of Organisation) to underline this point:

“… the definition of resource stated above recognises a much broader scope and includes,

‘every thing, every person, every, concept, and every condition that an organisation has to work with’.”

“Whilst functional expertise is an obvious focal point for the planner’s attention, Ewing notes that the abilities that count most for planning may not be on the surface at all but may instead run across and through various operations and activities:

‘Although subtle, they are unmistakably in evidence and have a persuasive influence on performance.  They can be developed (or damaged) just as surely and systematically as can any functional ability’. (Ewing, D.W.,1968, The Practice of Planning).”

In a similar vein, it is important for those leading and facilitating change to look beyond the surface-level manifestations of what’s going on and to look for wider – and more hidden - patterns of thinking and behaviour.  These both significantly affect, and are affected by, the activities and outcomes that emerge.

• Extract #20 – Seeing all organizations as unique – even those that appear to be identical.

Interestingly here, Ewing seems to be talking about what – some 20 years later – Hamel and Prahalad referred to as the “core competence of the corporation” in their 1990 HBR article of that same title. The paper identifies a few of these abilities relating to power station management (which was the focus of the paper), before going on to say:

“Whilst not necessarily unique when taken separately, such abilities might combine
to produce a profile unlike that of other locations and enable the station to achieve what, in similar circumstances, might be impossible for others.”

Viewing organizations as complex social processes also recognizes this uniqueness. As such, it rejects the notion that generalized principles and practices can be successfully transferred between organizations, in the ‘plug and play’ way that is usually adopted. 

In Informal Coalitions, I describe organizations as dynamic networks of self-organizing conversations. And so, notwithstanding the patterning processes that are referred to in Extract #19, above, this uniqueness also applies to the in-the-moment interactions that make up everyday organizational life. 

Since the characteristics reflected in these last two - seemingly contradictory - extracts apply simultaneously, this draws attention to the inherently paradoxical nature of organizations:

• Extract #21 – Embracing the paradoxes of organizational life.

Although, not referred to directly in the original text, these separate extracts implicitly recognize that behaviour in organizations is, at one and the same time, both patterned and unique; structured and emergent; predictable and unpredictable; and so on. 

This chapter in the paper once again returned to the themes of power and influence, which we looked at in an earlier post.

• Extract #22 – Building coalitions of support for ideas, perspectives and actions.

This discussion of resources recognized “the ability … to influence the behaviour of others” as “a further class of resource” and saw power and influence as “recurring themes throughout this examination of [the] planning [task].”

Although, as mentioned before, this reflects a more instrumental view of power (as something that can be acquired, deployed and managed, for example), the centrality of power to organizational dynamics comes through loud and clear.  

What resonates most strongly here is the use of a further extract from Charles Handy’s seminal work, Understanding Organisations – at that time in its first edition:

‘Power and influence make up the fine texture of organisations, and indeed of all its interactions… Organisations can be looked at as a fine weave of influence patterns whereby individuals or groups seek to influence others to think or act in particular ways.’ (Handy, C., 1976, Understanding Organisations).

A central thesis of Informal Coalitions is that such 'groupings' are forming and reforming continuously, as people coalesce informally around particular ideas, viewpoints and actions (or “conversational themes”).  This occurs, as Handy suggests, as a result of individuals or groups seeking to influence others to think or act in particular ways.  Building active coalitions of support for what are perceived to be organizationally beneficial changes is the essence of the change-leadership task.  Other 'players' will, of course, be seeking to build coalitions of support for positions that run counter to, or which seek to modify, the currently dominant line. 

Although not using this language, the paper recognizes that “the deployment and management of the organisation’s resources can be significantly distorted” by these “political realities of organisational life”.

So, despite my initial fears that this chapter had little to say on the dynamics of organizational change, three very important aspects of these dynamics have come to the surface.  On our next stop on the 'journey' we will revisit the issue of control in organizations.

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This is one of a series of posts that draws extracts from a 1980 paper on the nature of the specialist planning task in organizations.  The challenge is to see if and how this might relate to the view of organizational dynamics that is embodied in informal coalitions.  More of the background can be found in the initial, context-setting post: Re-membering the past – The seeds of informal coalitions?  Extract numbers follow on from those in earlier posts in the series.

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Earlier posts in the series include:

#1 - A continuous process

#2 - A question of influence?

#3 - Who are the organizations' decision makers?

 

Comments

[Tom Gibbons]

Hello Chris,

It’s been interesting to read your posts and follow your ‘journey’. It prompted me to search out an old paper on strategy I wrote about 15 years ago and look at it in a similar way to what you have done.

What I find perhaps most interesting is that over the years, it seems that you have stayed consistent with, and developed ideas from earlier thinking that, to me, are quite subtle in the original work and could have easily been developed into typical and mainstream concepts. For example - Extract #20 – Seeing all organizations as unique – even those that appear to be identical - even though this seems pretty straightforward, the current thinking in organizations would turn this idea into ‘best practices’ and work very hard to perfect implementation tools and techniques to eliminate what “…might be impossible for others.”

I think that extract is a good one to illustrate within this context. I really think many, many people could have written a paper like yours 30 years ago and now be doing very typical, strategic planning work, change management work etc. and have interpreted that paper right into the mainstream way of thinking about organizations today. I believe your own uniqueness shines through…. : )

I think it also illustrates how challenging it can be to really try and ‘live’ differently than the dominant way of thinking about organizations.

[Chris Rodgers]

Hi Tom,

Many thanks for your comment. I'm pleased that you're finding the series of posts interesting - and that it has stimulated you to dip into your own past writing. I was a bit concerned that it might all seem too self-indulgent. But I'm finding it a useful tool for self-reflection. Can we look forward to some reflections on complex responsive processes based on your strategy paper?

As I think back to 1980, I definitely recall railing against the heavily rational approach to planning that was prevalent at the time - and still is. I think this comes through in the original text, even if subtly. And so, from that point of view at least, I remain comfortable with what I've read so far.

As you say, of course, I'm viewing the text from the point of view of ‘Chris Rodgers, vintage 2010’. If my thinking had not followed the course that it has since 1980, then I might conceivably have read the original text differently, and still been able to construct some threads of continuity with a radically different perspective than that which has found its way into informal coalitions.

I prefer to think that my current line of thinking was indeed seeded in these early challenges to what Ralph Stacey would today call "the dominant management discourse". My recent post on a zero-base budgeting process, also relating a story from the early 1980s, echoes this point:

I had originally suggested to the Plant Manager – only half jokingly – that I would have been happy to have compiled the preliminary [budgetary] listing by drawing the proposals out of a hat! ... But, in an industry based on technical precision and (outwardly) rational decision-making, something was required which at least had face validity with engineers and other professionals."

Your final point, about the difficulties and frustrations of constantly ‘banging your head against the brick wall’ of conventional management wisdom, rings true. In a paper I wrote as part of my MSc on Managing Change in the late 1990s, I drew attention to Wallace and Ridgeway’s point about the importance of “marginality”. In Leadership for Strategic Change (1996), they argue:

"['Marginal men' have] . . . in an ambiguous environment . . . the capability to spot differences, to determine the patterns in unconnected data, and thus to perceive the factors that are relevant. ... They spot ideas that others do not and then they make public the ideas that others might not understand or appreciate…”

As I went on to say, though:

“The trick here is to become a "marginal man" without becoming a ‘nowhere man - sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody’ (Lennon-McCartney)!”

This remains a challenge!

Cheers, Chris