informal coalitions

Has criticism of football referees crossed the line?

Another weekend, another chance for commentators and fans to vilify the country's football referees.

“The referee was a disgrace. How he failed to see the incident [which was patently obvious to me, having viewed it three or four times from a number of different camera angles] is beyond me.”

Comments such as this (minus the bit in parenthesis, of course!) increasingly dominate live commentaries of football matches and post-match phone-in programmes. Intoxicated by the heady mix of multiple camera angles, slow-motion replays and computer-generated virtual images, TV and radio pundits increasingly call for this same technology to be used to prevent the so-called ‘errors’ made by the game’s officials.

But this seemingly unquenchable thirst to get to the ‘truth’ of what actually happened is based on a false premise.  That is, that technology can prove whether or not a referee has made ‘the right decision’. It actually does no such thing.  The superficial gloss of apparent objectivity provided by technology’s ever more sophisticated bag of tricks is an illusion.

You can't put an organization in a test tube - challenging evidence-based practice

In the previous post, I suggested that the idea of "evidence-based practice" is severely limited in the context of organizational dynamics. Organizations are complex social processes, not rational scientific endeavours. As such, they are not amenable to the research and testing protocols needed to provide rigorous 'evidence' of the merit of a particular practice. Or to justify claims that what is perceived to be successful practice in one context can be generalized to others.

In short, you can't put an organization in a test tube. 

The notion of evidence also presupposes the ability to link cause and effect, in an "if you do this, you'll get that" sort of way. But, as I've argued many times in this blog (see here and here, for example), the complex social dynamics of organization make it impossible to establish the links between observed outcomes and specific actions in all but a limited set of conditions.

Against this background, I've set out below what I see as some of the characteristics of so-called "evidence-based practice" (EBP), as this is applied to organizations. And I've contrasted these with others that reflect an informal coalitions understanding of organizational dynamics.

Evidence arises in the midst of practice

From an informal coalitions perspective, 'evidence' of the worthwhileness (or otherwise) of a particular practice arises from people's mindful participation in the ongoing conversational life of an organization. It is through people's everyday interactions that the meaning and value of their individual and collective practice emerges. That is to say...

... all of the 'evidence' needed to support the continuity and change of people's practice is embodied within the detail and patterning of their current interactions.

I'm calling this here, "practice-based evidence," since it arises in the midst of practice.  For ease, I've abbreviated this to PBE in the relevant statements below.

From evidence-based practice to practice-based evidence

Throughout this blog, I have sought to challenge conventional management 'wisdom' and the assumptions of rationality, predictability and control on which it is based. Over the past few years, this taken-for-granted view of the nature of the organizational world has led to increasing calls for management practice and consulting interventions to be "evidence-based".

From that perspective, the validity of a proposed new strategy, structure, system, process or whatever is assumed to arise from objective evidence of its successful use in other settings or from generalized principles arising from research. Often, such supposed evidence is codified in the form of, for example:

• case-based 'success stories'
• ‘best practice’ guidelines; and/or
• diagnostic predictors of successful outcomes.

But, as Phil Rosenweig sets out in his book, The Halo Effect: How Managers Let Themselves Be Deceived, there are many common flaws in the arguments put forward to support these claims. He also exposes the pseudo-scientific nature of much of the ‘research’ on which they are based.

Informal Coalitions - Six years on

I've just realized that Informal Coalitions was first published six years ago today!

The book was my attempt at challenging established management 'wisdom' - so much of which was at odds with my own, practical experience of working in and around organizations. In it, I offered practitioners an alternative set of assumptions, arising from a radically different perspective on the dynamics of organizational change and performance.

My hope was that those reading the book might use it to reflect on their own experience. And, through this, to recognize that the 'unmentionables' of mainstream management - such as informal conversations, power relationships and political action - are, in fact, fundamental aspects of everyday organizational life. And, contrary to popular belief, the essence of leadership practice.

Six years on, approaches rooted in management orthodoxy remain as stubbornly ingrained as ever.