informal coalitions

MMObilizing commitment

As a youngster, I used to play a card game called "I Commit" (above), which was originally devised in the 1930s. During the game, players competed to collect sets of three cards which would enable them to ‘commit a crime’. I should add that, to redress the moral balance, they also strove to collect 'policemen' to thwart the criminal activities of their opponents!　In essence, before a player could say "I commit ...", they needed to show that they had the motive, the means and the opportunity to do so.

So, what has a 1930s parlour game got to do with 21st century organizational life? Well, if people are – figuratively speaking – to say "I commit", in relation to their everyday roles, relationships and results at work, they similarly need the motive, means and opportunity to do so. From this perspective, the task for managers – from CEO to the front line – becomes one of helping to foster a work climate in which people have the motive, means and opportunity to excel. That is, one in which they are encouraged, assisted and enabled to contribute their time and talents to the full. 

'Corridor conversations'

In the middle of a chat about all things organizational, a client once told me that the Company’s CEO had said to him and other senior colleagues, “We’ve got to stop the corridor conversations.”  Leaving aside the naivety of the CEO’s comment, in the pre-COVID days when the possibility of in-person exchanges was ever-present, his remark also betrayed a basic lack of understanding of how organization works. In particular, it failed to recognise the fundamental role that informal conversations such as these play in determining the overall nature and quality of people’s individual and collective perspectives, practices and performance.  Ironically, of course, informal conversations would have been just as much a part of the CEO’s own practice as they were of everyone else's.

If you can't draw it...

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.

Playing skilfully into the moment

Guest blog by Majken Askeland¹

Why are we looking for alternative ways of understanding change in organizations? Because we are noticing that what we are doing is not working well enough. The big question then becomes – why is it not working and what can we do differently? This has been explored thoroughly from many different angles for a long time.

Ralph Stacey and his fellow researchers and students at the Doctor of Management Program (DMan) at the University of Hertfordshire have explored this question over a period of more than twenty years. In this, they use complexity theories from science as an analogy for understanding how change actually occurs in organizations.

What is complexity and leadership about and why is it important in understanding change in organizations?

As a DMan student, I have investigated this for quite some time. And to me an experience I had a year ago helped me make sense of this question. I will share it with you because of a conversation I had this weekend at the Complexity and Management Conference just south of London. I was talking at the time with Chris Rodgers. His response to my sharing this experience was enthusiasm and delight; much like my own original experience. He encouraged me to put it down in writing and has later worked with me on the article. 

The story goes…

Muddling through – with purpose, courage, and skill

Several months ago, I spoke briefly with a manager during the lunch break in a senior management workshop. This followed a presentation by the Divisional MD, in which he had comprehensively overturned the performance projections that had been presented only a few minutes earlier by the local finance managers. This sudden 'about turn' had taken managers by surprise and sparked many such informal conversations during the break.

I suggested to the manager that, despite outward appearances, what he and his colleagues were actually doing, day-in-day-out, was "muddling through"¹. And that this latest intervention was just another example of the messy reality of real-world organizational life - both a product and producer of that ongoing messiness.  Muddling through, I suggested, is simply the best that we can do, if we are to take seriously the complex and uncertain dynamics of organization in which we are all participating.

I was not meaning to suggest by this that managers can't make a difference by their actions. Clearly they can. Less still was I arguing that they should throw up their hands in despair. But I did remind him of what we'd discussed on many previous occasions: That is, that managers need to pay attention to what they actually find themselves doing in practice, rather than being overly fixated by the formal structures, rituals and routines of organization. This was, after all, the essence of our many previous discussions on what I call "the wiggly world of organization".

Mystic Megaproject – Predicting the future with Big Science and Big Data (or not)

I was struck by the following headline in last weekend’s Sunday Times,

"Virtual ‘mirror’ of world to help predict future".

I see the future as being perpetually constructed in the complex reality of people's present-day interactions. So the claim that it will be possible to make meaningful predictions by 'mirroring' these complex dynamics clearly merited attention. 

Digging a little deeper into the FuturICT project to which the article refers, it appears that a wealth of top-level European universities and other scientific institutions are participating in the project. So the enterprise carries a vast weight of academic credibility, based on participants’ expertise and methodological rigour. However, despite recognizing the complex and uncertain nature of human interaction, statements on the related website still make confident claims about the benefits that the project will deliver. For example,

"FuturICT will integrate different scientific areas and activities into a FuturICT platform that will enable participatory science and technology to manage our complex world in a sustainable and resilient manner (my emphasis)"

This prediction (as with others on the site) seems quite a bold one to make, given the inherent complexity and uncertainty of the process that the sponsors are seeking to model – and the absence of the very ‘tools’ of predictability and control that they are setting out to develop!

Making the most of "the leader as host"

Mark McKergow who is perhaps best known for his work on the Solutions Focus approach to organizational change and coaching, has just launched a new website to explore and promote the metaphor of "Leader as Host". This is an interesting concept. It offers an alternative way of looking at leadership in organizations. And, in doing so, it might provoke some new insights into its process and practice.

In an accompanying working paper, McKergow sets out six aspects of “hosting” that he maintains apply equally well to the practice of leadership in organizations. Hosts (and hence leaders), he argues:

• Create great spaces (physical and psychological) – and are active in them.
• Use the ‘soft power’ of invitation (rather than the ‘hard power’ of coercion).
• Have ‘Response-ability’ (Balancing defining the event AND responding to what happens).
• Use Co-participation (Balancing providing for everyone AND joining in alongside everyone else).
• Ensure judicious Gate-opening (Balancing defending boundaries AND making new connections).
• Spend time front stage, on the balcony (taking an overview) and back stage (developing their capabilities).

McKergow positions the notion of Leader as Host in relation to what he describes as the established polar opposites of Leader as Hero and Leader as Servant (after Robert Greenleaf). He argues,

“This new metaphor could be viewed as a Hegelian synthesis – it not only includes both of the others, but offers a new perspective with many creative possibilities.”

Why escaping the chains of the dominant management discourse is proving difficult

Ralph Stacey has argued that a fundamental factor in the global financial crisis has been widespread adherence to a management discourse that bears little relationship to people's everyday experience of organizational life (see here). Despite a continuing gap between theory and practice, the view persists that a generalized set of rational, scientific principles can be identified and applied to organizations. As a result, the expectation that organizational outcomes can be predicted and controlled, based on rational analysis and formal processes, continues to dominate managers’ practice, consultants’ offerings and mainstream management publications.

So why does this unhelpful pattern persist?

As I’ve suggested elsewhere, when the sought-after benefits fail to materialize this is most often blamed on poor implementation rather than unsound thinking. That is, the above discourse contains within it the expectation that shortfalls will occur during implementation.  Perversely, then, failure confirms its validity. It is part of what managers take for granted and ‘know’ to be true. By adopting a “do it better and get it right” stance to implementation, failure is rationalized as a problem with execution and the flawed assumptions remain to fight another day.

But there is also a further characteristic of the complex dynamics of social interaction that, paradoxically, tends to reinforce the dominant management discourse. This is the ability – and often the motivation - that exists post-event to explain outcomes in ways that imply the existence of rationality, predictability and control.  Below, I’ve set out three contrasting examples of organizational dynamics, all of which fall foul of this tendency.

Humour in organizations - Taking it seriously!

In the previous post, I spoke about the parallels between humour and creative thinking, drawing on the insights of Edward de Bono. Here, I want to shift the emphasis to the important roles that humour plays in other aspects of organizational dynamics.

As I suggested earlier, humour works by ‘switching channels’, abruptly and unexpectedly, from a familiar pattern of thought to another, previously unseen or unacknowledged one. Patterns create expectancy. And it is the sudden emergence of a new pattern of understanding (“I wasn’t expecting that”) which triggers the laughter (or discomfort).

When this channel-switching process is interwoven into the ongoing conversations and interactions that comprise everyday organizational life, it serves a number of other important purposes. Using it ‘deliberately’ (whether by conscious intent or as the spontaneous expression of subconscious feelings) invites people to look at their situation in a different light, to challenge some of their taken-for-granted assumptions and, perhaps, to change their perspective.

The significance of humour – pattern switching and lateral thinking

In a number of his books, Edward de Bono argues that humour is the most significant behaviour of the human mind. This is because humour, like lateral thinking, is a pattern-switching process. It works by causing what de Bono would call an "insight switchover" from a familiar pattern to a new, unexpected one. It is this moment of surprise and realization that triggers the laughter (and the new insights).

As I'll suggest in a later post, this pattern-switching characteristic of humour also has important implications for organizational dynamics. However, for now, I'll stick with its significnce in relation to the way in which new ideas are created and novelty emerges. 

So how does humour work?