Getting to grips with organizational paradox

... using both 'ands at the same time

 

Dean and Professor of Management at Cass Business School, Marianne Lewis, recently published an important article in Global Focus about the need for managers to, “adopt a ‘paradox’ approach towards the tensions involved in managing a business school.

Although positioning her comments in relation to her work as Dean of a leading educational establishment in the UK, she rightly points out that these same dynamics apply in all organizational contexts. Indeed, in everyday life more generally. Recognizing the paradoxical nature of organizational life is fundamental to an understanding of the challenges of leadership that more properly reflects the complex reality of managers’ everyday lived experience. I wrote about this in a post on my blog in 2010¹, elements of which I’ve reproduced below.

In Informal Coalitions, I similarly argue that managers need to "embrace paradox" as part of a complexity-aware, change-leadership agenda. By that I mean that it is important for them to recognize the irresolvable tensions that exist in every aspect of organizational life. To do so opens the door to quite a different understanding of organizational dynamics and management practice from that which dominates established thinking. And it further exposes the flaws in those approaches that see the search for clarity, predictability, and control as the essence of strategic management and organizational performance.