A few months ago, in a post on LinkedIn, Donald Davies referred to one of the guiding principles offered by his mentor: "If you can't draw it," she told him, "You don't understand it". I used to tell myself exactly the same thing, whenever I was trying to make sense of a specific aspect of organization and management practice, or speculating more broadly. And this has formed a central part of my writing and practice, throughout my in-house management career and latterly as a consultant.
IAt the time, I was trying to make sense of the work management process, which was then central to my new role. When the head of the Mechanical Maintenance Department saw it, his response was clear and to the point: "You read too many books, m'lad". Fair enough!
Nevertheless, his initial reaction didn't put me off attempting to draw (out) what I saw as the essential aspects of whatever it was I was trying to make sense of at any particular time. Alongside this, my observation of his and others' experience-rich approach to their work was a valuable addition to my sense-making and practice over the following few years; both as a member of his team and, later, as a peer manager.
As time progressed, I began to draw on more of these, as part of my personal practice theory; both to aid my own sensemaking and to provide support to others.
Taking Complexity Seriously
By the mid-'90s, my growing interest in organizational complexity brought to the fore the potential dangers of trying to represent the in-the-moment, complex social reality in an abstract form of one sort or another. In particular, I was (and am) keen to avoid any suggestion that the resulting representations might offer a comprehensive description of what's going on; or a linear and/or stepwise, 'if you do this, you'll get that' basis for action. Any increased understanding, and growing sense of mastery that might be sparked and/or reinforced by a particular sense-making framework, say, continues to be interwoven with the ever-present mystery of not knowing..
At the same time, I continued to believe that the appropriate and informed use of illustrative diagrams and sense-making frameworks (as opposed to descriptive models and prescriptive procedures) can - paradoxically, perhaps - graphically expose some of the flaws in management orthodoxy and help people to take complexity seriously . My experience continues to support the view that, applied pragmatically and selectively, these can help people to relate the underlying dynamics of organization more readily to their everyday experience and practice.
Starting from where people 'are'
For years, people have been schooled in the use of models, maps, step-wise procedures, and so on, which are rooted in assumptions of order, predictability and control. Whilst seeking to expose this as a fantasy, it can nevertheless be helpful to begin where people typically 'are' in their thinking, expectations and practice, rather than where we might like them to be. And so, since producing that crude (and essentially descriptive} example from 1975, I have drawn many explanatory diagrams and developed several sense-making frameworks, with the aim of helping people (including myself!) to make sense of what's going on, provoke new insights, and inform their ongoing practice. For the same reason, I've also included a number of explanatory figures in my two, practitioner-oriented books: Informal Coalitions and The Wiggly World of Organization. In doing so, I have tried to blend together a sound understanding of organizational dynamics with the practical realities of everyday human interaction; offering an explanation of what's going on to which practising managers and others can more readily relate, and which can help them to 'operationalize' the challenge of taking complexity seriously.
As always, though, it's the sense-making conversations, personal reflections and in-the-moment practical judgements that flow from the use of such frameworks that matter, not the frameworks as such.
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