informal coalitions

Self-organization and emergence as natural dynamics of organization

I’ve just been directed to a post entitled Self-organization vs Emergence on Jurgen Appelo’s Noop.nl blog. This was the third of a trilogy of posts on self-organization that I enjoyed reading – albeit belatedly. However, there are a couple of points with which I would take issue, as set out below.  My particular take on the topic is based on my informal coalitions view of organizational dynamics, which looks at organizations as dynamic networks of self-organizing conversations.

Reframing leadership – Seven would-be shifts in how we think and talk about leadership practice

In the previous post I suggested that a wide gap exists between popular conceptions of organizational leadership and how people experience it day-to-day. I also suggested that this is due, in large part, to the continuing dominance of a view of organizational dynamics based on scientific rationality, control and predictability.

This deep-seated belief that there is 'one best way' – if only we can find it - is reflected in the ongoing search for pre-packaged ‘best practice’ solutions; universally applicable ‘n-step’ models; and so on. And the problem is compounded by the taken-for-granted assumption that leadership is exercised and performance delivered through the exception-al actions of individual leaders – the supposed heroes (and occasionally villains) of the organizational world.

Mismatch between rhetoric and reality

The fact that this framing of organizational leadership fails to accord with people’s everyday, practical experience of life in organizations (including managers’ own) makes it no less powerful in influencing their perceptions, interpretations and evaluations of what’s going on and how they are supposed to respond. The theory must be ok (one might think) – otherwise why would it persist? We just need to do things better and get them right next time and all will be well. In this way, unhelpful patterns of thought and behaviour become ever-more-firmly embedded.

Leadership practice and development – Mind the gap!

There is a wide gap between the currently dominant view of organizational leadership - as supposedly practised by those in formal leadership positions - and the complex social dynamics of organizational life, as discussed in this Blog.

Although leadership is supposed to be about creativity, innovation and change, and about enabling staff to pursue the leader’s assumed-to-be-far-sighted and inspiring vision, the reality tends to be much more mundane. And, despite what might be suggested by the formal trappings of organization, decisions arising wholly from rational analysis of ‘the facts’ and step-by-step decision-making are rare – if they exist at all. In practice, people tend to make progress through informal interactions, ad hoc sense-making conversations, ongoing political accommodations, and plain, common-or-garden ‘muddling through’. Most significantly, perhaps, whilst leaders might be formally ‘in charge’, they are not – indeed cannot be – in control of the outcomes that emerge from the complex interplay of the myriad local interactions that constitute everyday organizational life.

This is not a matter of incompetence. Far from it. But it might be portrayed as such, were it not to be covered over by the superficial gloss of management speak and formal process rituals that maintain the illusion of rationality, predictability and control.  Or if there was no post-hoc rationalization of actual outcomes that savvy political behaviour demands.