informal coalitions

Escaping the merry-go-round of management fads and fashions

Several years ago, as an in-company OD manager, I attended a series of inter-company meetings in central London. These had been set up to enable practitioners to share their experience of dealing with a range of common issues relating to organizational design, management development, leadership practice, and so on. 

Climbing aboard

We began each session by summarizing what we were doing in our own organizations to address the particular topic under review.  Without fail, and regardless of the theme being discussed, a picture emerged of people either doing, about to do, or having done and given up, what everyone else was doing, about to do, or had done and given up. 

Facilitating change # 7 - Decisions and actions

After a long but unavoidable gap, this post returns to the review of my 1980 paper on the planning task in organizations. The aim of the series is to establish to what extent – if at all – the view of organizational dynamics embodied in the paper reflects that contained in Informal Coalitions. And, if so, what inferences might be drawn from it in relation to the facilitation of organizational change (see Footnote).

Here the focus moves to the nature of decision making and action taking in organizations.