In the previous post, we looked at how business planners (and, by extension, those leading and facilitating change) set out to affect the future in organizationally beneficial ways. The definition of the specialist planning role in my 1980 paper, which triggered this series of posts (see footnote), included the intention to "… affect the future of the [power] station in a consistent and realistic manner and in line with the organisation’s objectives".
Here, I want to focus on the stated aim of achieving consistency. As in previous posts in the series, I’m looking to see if any parallels exist between the points I made back then and the informal coalitions view of organizational dynamics.
"One of the most crucial jobs in the entire decision-making process is to ensure that decisions reached in various parts of the business and on various levels of management are compatible with each other, and consonant with the goals of the whole business." (Drucker, P.F. 1970, Technology, Management and Society).
This is a perfectly reasonable ambition for planners to hold; especially in a world which presumes the ability of managers to determine outcomes, ensure compatibility, and so on. As suggested in the paper, this goal might be pursued through:
"… the formal articulation of a ‘station-wide’ strategy, the development of various mechanisms to support the co-ordination process, and by the intervention of the planner in individual and group decision making".
However, the general implication here seems to be that doing these things ‘better’ and getting them ‘right’ will enable the inherent messiness of organizational life to be overcome and the desired outcomes to be realized. Interestingly, though, the paper describes quite well what is actually going on in the organization whilst planners are engaged in their consistency-seeking tasks. So, in looking for pointers to the change facilitation role in the 1980 paper, it’s these presumed dysfunctional practices that I want to draw on initially, rather than the expressed need for consistency.
- Extract #36 – Helping individuals to explore and exploit the specific local circumstances and differing perspectives that provide the context for ongoing sense making and action taking.
"There is a natural tendency for individuals, sections and departments to concentrate on their own immediate problems, isolate them from other of the station’s problems and develop piecemeal solutions. The decisions reached will tend to be based on the conventional wisdom associated with each functional specialty and will also be influenced by the perceptions and objectives of the key people in the department. These functional strategies will usually be more tangible than the broad objectives and policies which reflect senior management’s intentions and will thus be easier for the functional managers and engineers to relate to. Hence a patchwork of conflicting long-term and short-term consequences develops between different groups and departments."
Today, I would say "that’s life!" The challenge from an informal coalitions perspective is for line managers and others (such as change facilitators) to accept and work with these natural dynamics, seeking to facilitate connections; challenge assumptions; (re-) frame actions and events; and so on. And all of this takes place from the perspective of an active and involved participant, not an objective observer and controller of other people’s actions. This is what I mean in Informal Coalitions by managers "providing vision". It is about them helping people (including themselves) to see ‘better’ (or at least to see things differently) – whether this is in relation to the apparent "consistency" of organization-wide actions or any other factor that comes to be seen as relevant.
A nod towards systems thinking
Almost inevitably, a search for consistency assumes a ‘whole’ to which such consistency is presumed to apply. This is reflected in the expressed need for consistency between the actions taken by each ‘part’ of the whole; consistency of specific actions with an ‘overall’ strategy or plan; and consistency with the ‘external environment’ which is presumed to exist outside the whole. This essentially reflects a systems perspective of organization. And this general theme is evident in a number of places in the 1980 paper, such as:
"According to Ewing, The Practice of Planning (1968), the ideal planning process:
‘Would give (a manager) a framework or perspective for viewing the questions and decisions that confront him so that he could see them not as isolated issues but as parts of a whole.’
In a well-conceived strategy, therefore, each policy will fit into an integrated pattern which will channel relationships, activities and decisions towards the desired objectives."
As I’ve discussed in many earlier posts on this blog (see here, for example), the informal coalitions perspective views organizations as complex social processes, not as bounded systems or integrated "wholes" made up of interdependent "parts".
Embracing paradox
One of the earlier extracts (#21 - Embracing the in-built paradoxes of organizational life) highlighted the essentially paradoxical nature of organizational dynamics. An echo of this appears at the end of this chapter of the 1980 paper:
"One final comment which must be made is that consistency should not be confused with conformity or regimentality … Lawrence and Lorsch, Organisation and Environment (1967), found that effective organisations are characterized by interdepartmental differences, whereas less effective organisations tend to consist of people and structures that are more or less homogeneous across the organisation. This is an important insight for the planner when he (sic) is designing planning systems and mechanisms."
Interestingly, the unquestioned assumption is that the planner has the ability to "design systems and mechanisms" that can in some way ‘optimize’ these conflicting states of consistency and diversity, rather than these being recognized as self-organizing and emergent dynamics of everyday organizational life.
__________
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.
_________
Earlier posts in the series include:
#3 - Who are the organizations' decision makers?
#4 - Expanding the view of organizational resources
#6 - On uncertainty and complexity
Comments