informal coalitions

Thirty years on - "Open, classless and more equal ..."

Thirty years ago today, I rang a hotel near Birmingham Airport, paid a few pounds by credit card and became a founder member of the new Social Democratic Party (or SDP).

The party was launched on 26 March 1981 by the so-called “gang of four” – Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams, following their breakaway from the Labour Party. They were eventually joined by around 24 other ex-Labour MPs, one Conservative MP and several Peers.  Most significantly, perhaps, many of us who joined the party had not had any formal political affiliation before the birth of the SDP. 

Public sector pay review - Off target

The government-commissioned Fair Pay Review, was published earlier today. Led by the Work Foundation's Will Hutton, the review team recommend a new performance-related pay deal for senior executives that might eventually be extended to middle managers.  The proposals include a suggestion that managers should have to "earn back" a proportion of their pay (say 10-15% of it) by meeting personal performance targets. Provision would then exist for "excellent performers" to earn an additional, bonus sum.

According to an article in HRZone, Hutton maintains that no pay system can be fair if it fails to reflect individual performance.  And there's the rub. The whole pay-for-performance approach - whether in the public or private sector - rests on the proposition that organizational outcomes can be related, in a simple cause-and-effect way, to the 'performance' of individuals.  They can't.

A common sense approach?

It might seem like common sense to pay people according to their perceived performance.  But it is a version of common sense which still sees the business world as ordered, predictable and ultimately controllable.  So where is the flaw in this widely used practice?  And is there an alternative?

Facilitating change #11 – Pursuing organizational objectives

This marks the end of the series of posts themed around the topic of facilitating change. It focuses on the final phrase in the definition of specialist planning that prompted the series (see footnote). This suggested, uncontroversially perhaps, that the aim of planning is to help bring about results that are “in line with the organisation’s objectives.” 

The phrase was meant to underline the normative purpose of planning, which I saw to be to “contribute purposefully” to the management of the organization by “increas[ing] the probability” that the desired objectives would be achieved.  In a footnote, “objectives” were described as “the desired future conditions which the organisation strives to achieve”. To offer further clarification, these future conditions were said to include “mission, purpose, ethos, strategy, charter, goal, policy, target, quota, programme, deadline, etc.” 

Today, I would try to avoid any implication which might suggest that an imaginary construct (“the organisation”) can in some way “strive to achieve” things. But that apart, how (if at all) does this focus on organizational objectives stack up with my current, informal coalitions view of organizational dynamics?  And what pointers might it offer to the facilitation of change?