informal coalitions

Don't give clients what they want!

It's interesting how incidental remarks and observations about one field of activity can stimulate new ideas, fresh perspectives and useful insights in another. I was remined recently of one such incident that occurred several years ago.

The context

As I was driving to the local rail station one morning, on route to a client meeting in London, I happened to catch part of a radio 'phone-in programme. The topic centred on how best to raise children, given the concerns that had resurfaced in the previous day's news about the detrimental effects of youngsters' growing attraction to fast food, computer games and activities that offer instant gratification.  At one point, it struck me that a comment made by one of the listeners neatly encapsulated a key aspect of my view on how consultants need to operate, if they are to add real value through their work.

Organizational complexity – it’s not rocket science

When American astronauts first set foot on the Moon, in July 1969, tribute was quite rightly paid to the advances that NASA scientists had made in aerospace engineering and astrodynamics, which had enabled them to make the “giant leap for mankind”, as Commander Neil Armstrong described it. Landing on the Moon, and returning the crew safely to Earth was a complicated technical challenge of the highest order. It was enabled by multiple systems and procedures that were designed to facilitate the safe and effective organization and control of all aspects of the design, development and delivery of “the mission”. As such, success was seen as having arisen from the availability of appropriate scientific and technological expertise; coupled with the development and skilled application of structured approaches to direct and control the practice and performance of those involved. In short, this appeared to 'tick all of the boxes' of a well-designed, and expertly executed, response to a highly complicated management challenge.

Rewiggling Organization

Given my description of organization - and life more generally - as “wiggly”, I was attracted by an article in The Times (15 February, 2023) entitled, “Why ‘rewiggling’ rivers could solve Britain’s water crisis”.

Rather than meandering naturally across the land - in a self-organizing and emergent way, of course (!) - many rivers have been straightened out and deepened over the years, with the aim of releasing the surrounding marshland for grazing. This, though, has adversely affected water quality and wildlife habitats, and reduced the diversity and wellbeing of fish. It has also increased the risk of flooding, and had other detrimental effects on land- and water-management. Action is therefore being taken to “rewiggle” a number of rivers; allowing these to re-establish their natural pathways and flow patterns, and helping to deal with the “water crisis”.

Collaborating with AI

 

Is anyone else concerned about the increasingly pervasive notion of humans “collaborating” with AI? 

Relationship of mutuality

Collaboration - whatever its diverse motivations and means of expression - is a relationship of mutuality between living and breathing human beings. Properly perceived and applied, so-called “artificial intelligence” undoubtedly has a lot to offer us in support of the living of our lives. But it needs to be seen as a technological aid to our human being, doing and becoming; not as in any way equivalent to it.

The U ’n I at the heart of communication

We can probably all agree that communication is a fundamental aspect of organizational practice and performance. At the same time, it is important not to view this simply as an act of message-passing from those who are formally in charge, and supposedly “in the know”, to other participants. 

 

However well-crafted, information-rich, and skilfully presented such messages might be, these communicate nothing. Instead, they serve as an invitation for those on the receiving end to communicate amongst themselves. And this is something that they do informally, in small-group and one-to-one interactions; seeking to make sense of what they’ve heard and deciding how, if at all, they’re going to respond. Communication takes place only in real-world; U ‘n I interactions - with all of the informality, messiness and ‘hidden agendas’, etc. that these entail. And this applies equally well, of course, to those in formal management roles as it does to everyone else.

Practice-based evidence

In a recent LinkedIn post and related article, Mike Cardus argued strongly in favour of organizational consultants basing their work with clients on the use of evidence-based practice.  I’m afraid that, in the context of organization and management practice, I disagree equally strongly with this line of argument.  This post outlines some of the reasons why I advocated the use instead of what I call "practice-based evidence".

Mastery, mystery and muddling through - 2

Through the widespread interplay of our own and everyone else’s ongoing interactions, we are perpetually creating the future together.

Within this, and in our diverse ways, we each desire to be masters of our own destiny. At the same time, we have to find our way through what the poet John Keats once described as the “uncertainties, mysteries and doubts” of life. As such, we have no option but to muddle through the twists and turns that emerge along the way. But we can – if we so choose - seek to do so with purpose, courage and skill.

The language of organization

Some years ago, whilst working with a client in Germany, I thought it would be interesting to learn a little of the language. I opted to use a CD-based course on German, by the linguist Michel Thomas. Throughout this, he spends very little time on vocabulary; emphasising instead the process of sentence formation and how this is affected, in particular, by verb usage. At the end of the introductory module, he argues that if you understand the verbs, you understand the language. “The rest,” he says, “is just vocabulary”. As we all learnt way back at junior school, verbs are ‘doing’ words. They relate to process. The ways in which these are used define the pattern of the language. Other aspects of vocabulary add in the ‘content’ – the who, what, when, where, how and why, etc. of the doing.

Organizational consulting – Taking complexity seriously

To what extent do your offerings as an organizational consultant, or those that you receive as a prospective client, foreground the complex social dynamics of organization and the implications of these for management practice and performance? Or are these framed instead in neatly packaged, ‘if you do this, you’ll get that’, terms?

Self-organization and emergence

Too often, comments are made about organization and management practice - supposedly offered from a complexity perspective - that position self-organization and emergence as the opposite of so-called “command and control”. The resulting prescriptions then present these as superior design, development and delivery options to those top-down approaches that have come to dominate mainstream management thinking and practice.