informal coalitions

12Ps worth on the wiggly world of organization

Earlier, I posted a simple, "What does this make possible?" story about the wiggliness of organization and the muddling-through nature of real-world management practice.  Building on this, the 12 ‘P-words’ listed opposite describe key aspects of organization that are at play in all human contexts.

Each of these is summarized below, and the ideas discussed in depth in my new book, The Wiggly World of Organization  Taken together, these present a fundamental challenge to conventional thinking about the dynamics of organization, and they have important practical implications for managers and other practitioners - from CEO to the front line.

From a wiggly world perspective then, organization is…

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. 

Mastery, mystery, and muddling through - 1

In a recent article, the Financial Times' political columnist, Janan Ganesh, argues that Theresa May's government is "stronger for its weakness".  In agreeing with this, Deborah Rowland comments briefly (here) that the accompanying uncertainty and 'not knowing', arising from the lack of a Commons majority, is likely to demand more collective decision-making and result in more creative solutions. She uses Keats's notion of "negative capability" to illustrate her point.

I very much support her view that strength can come from the capacity to survive and thrive in conditions of 'unknowability'. Indeed, the need and ability to do so flows directly from the complex social dynamics of human interaction, in which 'not knowing' is the norm, not the exception.

Sadly, Deborah then ends her post with a disappointingly dismissive reference to "muddling through", when talking about the required leadership response to these conditions. On this point, I disagree fundamentally. And it is this aspect of organizational dynamics and leadership practice that I want to say more about here.

Silos R Us - A natural dynamic of human interaction

An email recently arrived in my inbox pointing to an article that argued,

"Functional, operational and professional silos and mental ‘walls’ need to be demolished."

This is a perennial cry. Managers. consultants, and others have complained for years about this so-called "silo mentality". Yet still it persists. Why might that be?

To begin with, the tendency for people to act in this way is designed-in during formal organizationsal design projects. People are brought together to achieve things that they couldn't achieve alone. And, to enable them to do so, they are divided up (or divide themselves up) into separate divisions, departments, teams, roles, etc. This requires them both to strive to excel in terms of their specialist role contributions and, at the same time, to collaborate for 'the greater good' - however this might be constructed.

More significantly, though, 'silo behaviour' is a natural dynamic of the complex social process of everyday interaction. People seek to go on together in the midst of competing demands, needs and expectations. And they aim to do this in ways that preserve their sense of identity and self-worth; sustain their important relationships; enable them to be seen as competent in the eyes of significant others; and so on.

So 'silo behaviour' is one expression of the normal politics of everyday organizational life.

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.

Trigger’s broom – A question of identity

I was recently reminded of that fabulous sketch from the classic TV series Only Fools and Horses, known affectionately as "Trigger's Broom". It seems to me that Trigger's insistence that his present broom is the same one as that shown in a 20-year old photograph - despite having had "17 new heads and 14 new handles" - provides a neat metaphor for the relational view of identity that I've spoken about in earlier posts.

Below is a short YouTube clip of the scene and a brief commentary (from 2 minutes 13 secs into the video).

Facilitating change #5 – Who’s in control?

This chapter of my 1980 paper on the planning task in organizations looks at the issue of control.  The question here is 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 we might draw from it in relation to the 'parallel' task of facilitating organizational change (see Footnote).

This chapter repeated one of the primary themes of the original paper; that is, that planning and control are the responsibility of line managers, not of the planner.  In this respect, as reflected in extracts from the paper in earlier posts, it echoes the point made in the book that change leadership is a line management task.

However, when looking at an organization as a complex social process, the issue of control is seen to be paradoxical. That is, managers are both ‘in control’ and ‘not in control’ at the same time.  In Informal Coalitions, I call this “the leadership paradox”.  Philip Streatfield describes this same notion as “the paradox of control”, in his book of the same title.  So, when the original paper talks of managers as being in control of the organization’s resources, this is only partially the case. 

Paradox, complexity and organizational dynamics

Or, if you want to get to grips with organizations you need to use both ‘ands at the same time!

In Informal Coalitions, I 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 from that which dominates conventional management thinking. And it further exposes the flaws in those approaches that view the search for clarity, predictability and control  as the essence of  orgnizational leadership.

However, earlier this week, a friend (@rotkapchen) related a Twitter conversation that she had had with someone who is well known in the complexity field.  It seems that they had dismissed the notion of paradox in organizations, seeing it as a "mystical concept" that is unrelated to organizational complexity.

I felt that I couldn’t let this pass without comment.  So here's why I think that paradox is a fundmental dynamic of all organizations.

Ralph Stacey and Etienne Wenger #4: On organizational paradox

This is the fourth part of my exploration of the parallels that I see between Ralph Stacey’s complexity-based view of the dynamics of organizations and the ideas expressed by Etienne Wenger in his book, Communities of Practice.  This has been sparked by Stacey’s critique of Wenger’s perspective, in the 5th Edition of his textbook, Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics (reviewed here).

My view is that there is merit in emphasizing the similarities between these perspectives – if and where it's agreed that these exist, of course. In doing so, this strengthens the notional ‘coalition of support’ for a view of organizational dynamics which challenges the mainstream consensus.  That is, one that highlights the centrality of everyday, local interactions in determining organizational outcomes. 

This post focuses on what Stacey sees as Wenger’s failure to recognize and address the inherently paradoxical nature of organizations. This view of Wenger's work arises from the ways in which he discusses the concepts of “participation” and “reification” (below), which sit at the core of his theory.

“All human interactions are complex but some are more complex than others” – Discuss

In the previous post, I commented briefly on Ralph Stacey’s explanation of why he no longer sees his Certainty-Agreement matrix as a valuable framework for thinking about the complex dynamics of organizations. This same line of thinking underpins his criticism of systems thinking and of the related notion that there are different ‘levels’ of complexity.

Despite agreeing with the core of Stacey’s analysis and conclusions, I speculated that there might still be some value in recognizing both that complexity is inherent in every human interaction – however mundane – and, at the same time, that some of these interactions take place within a more complex context than others. Indeed, Stacey himself appeared to acknowledge that it might be possible to differentiate between situations of high and low complexity – if only with the benefit of hindsight.

So, does differentiating in this way make sense? And, if so, what would be the value in doing so?