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. 

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.

Cultivating marginality

In a paper I wrote in the late-1990s, I drew attention to Wallace and Ridgeway’s point about the importance of "marginality" in the dynamics of organizational change and innovation. In Leadership for Strategic Change (1996), they argue:

"['Marginal men' (sic) have] . . . in an ambiguous environment . . . the capability to spot differences, to determine the patterns in unconnected data, and thus to perceive the factors that are relevant. ... They spot ideas that others do not and then they make public the ideas that others might not understand or appreciate…".

It seems to me that this remains an important characteristics of leadership in practice – whether exercised by those in formal management roles or others who are not.  It recognizes the complex social (pattern-forming and pattern-shifting) dynamics of organization.  And it veers away from the ‘if you do this, you’ll get that’ prescriptions that continue to dominate management orthodoxy - increasingly reinforced, it seems, by the apparent promise of ever more sophisticated analytical tools that will ‘cut through complexity’ to deliver the sought-after certainty, predictability, and control.

The unwrapped sandwiches

I run a bimonthly network meeting for senior OD practitioners in central London. At a recent session, we were each invited to write a brief narrative on an experience that had struck us in some way and which had left some residual feelings and/or recollections that might merit further exploration. We were then asked to reflect on this personal narrative, both ourselves (as we were reading it out loud to a couple of other participants) and those others who were listening to our recollection of the event from an ‘external’ perspective. In this sort of mini learning set, we then talked about what we had heard during the retelling of our story, as part of a process that session leaders Douglas Board and Rob Warwick call "immersed reflexivity"¹.

My ‘striking moment' concerned a meeting that I had attended some weeks earlier in support of another independent consultant.  Our aim had been to secure a contract with a major organization in the UK. Although the meeting itself was an awkward affair, with the client director exhibiting some behaviour which suggested that any resulting work would be somewhat of a challenge, the initial response was positive. By that I mean that we were asked to design and deliver the first event of a number that we had proposed for the project team, line managers and the Board.  As we left, though, we shared our concerns about what, despite the outcome, had been a very unsatisfactory affair. I felt in particular that the main client didn’t ‘get’ what it was that we were proposing – and that he didn’t appear particularly interested in exploring anything beyond the mechanics (timing, attendees, reporting back, etc) of the initial workshop. These were issues that we agreed needed to be confronted sooner rather than later.

Facilitating change #11 – Pursuing organizational objectives

This marks the end of the series of posts themed around the topic of facilitating change. It focuses on the final phrase in the definition of specialist planning that prompted the series (see footnote). This suggested, uncontroversially perhaps, that the aim of planning is to help bring about results that are “in line with the organisation’s objectives.” 

The phrase was meant to underline the normative purpose of planning, which I saw to be to “contribute purposefully” to the management of the organization by “increas[ing] the probability” that the desired objectives would be achieved.  In a footnote, “objectives” were described as “the desired future conditions which the organisation strives to achieve”. To offer further clarification, these future conditions were said to include “mission, purpose, ethos, strategy, charter, goal, policy, target, quota, programme, deadline, etc.” 

Today, I would try to avoid any implication which might suggest that an imaginary construct (“the organisation”) can in some way “strive to achieve” things. But that apart, how (if at all) does this focus on organizational objectives stack up with my current, informal coalitions view of organizational dynamics?  And what pointers might it offer to the facilitation of change? 

Facilitating change #8 - Affecting the future

Planners in organizations set out with the intention of affecting the future in ways that are organizationally beneficial.  The same can be said about those leading and facilitating change. And it is the comments on "affecting the future" in my 1980 paper on organizational planning that I want to focus on here -comparing and contrasting these with my current thinking on the dynamics and facilitation of organizational change (see footnote).

On many occasions in this blog I have referred to the writing of Peter Drucker, much of it stretching back to the 1950s and 1960s. Many of his remarks still resonate strongly today. And Drucker's insights feature prominently in what is a relatively short chapter in the 1980 dissertation.  Interestingly, I used Drucker to illustrate my current thinking on 'time' and change - and its relationship to Ralph Stacey's notion of the "living present", in a mid-2008 post on this blog (The time machine of organizational decision making).

Pleasingly, then, there were few surprises when I re-acquainted myself with this section of the earlier paper.

Facilitating change #6 – Dealing with uncertainty and complexity

As we arrive at the latest stop on our ‘back to the future’ journey to the land of organizational planning, we come face-to-face with the issues of uncertainty and complexity (see Footnote).

These topics were dealt with in separate chapters in the 1980 paper.  But the two are so intimately interwoven in my present-day understanding of organizational dynamics that I’ve chosen to wrap them together for the purposes of this post.

In his latest treatise on organizational dynamics, Complexity and Organizational Reality, Ralph Stacey discusses these concepts in some depth. There he argues that analogies drawn from the sciences of uncertainty and complexity offer a more resonant view of organisational reality than that offered by the science of certainty that underpins the dominant management discourse.

He later goes on to suggest that it’s perhaps best not to think of management and leadership as sciences at all but rather to recognize that these are social phenomena. Despite this, uncertainty and complexity feature heavily in his particular take on organizational dynamics and in the social complexity perspective embodied in informal coalitions. 

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. 

Facilitating change #4 – Expanding the view of organizational resources

On setting out on this quest, to compare my 1980 thoughts on specialist planning with the dynamics of informal coalitions (see Footnote), I suggested that it would be a voyage of discovery. I hadn’t yet reacquainted myself with the original text!  This point was brought home when I first read the source chapter for this post, entitled Acquisition, Deployment and Management of Resources.  

At first sight, there didn't appear to be any extracts that drew attention to the underlying dynamics of organizations by way of analogy with the planning task.  However, on re-reading the text, I discovered three important areas in which parallels can be drawn between the paper's comments on specialist planning and the informal coalitions perspective of organizational dynamics.

Facilitating change #3 – Who are the organization’s decision makers?

Previous posts in the series (see Footnote) have highlighted the need for the change facilitator to influence the organization’s ongoing decision-making and action-taking process. But who are these decision makers? Is it the Senior Management Team? Or line managers?  Or is it members of the organization at large?  This post addresses this question; drawing inferences from my 30-year-old paper on the analogous role of the specialist planner and ‘testing’ these against the informal coalitions view of organizational dynamics.