When you think about it, it is fairly obvious that there can be no "I" without we, you (singular), he, she, you (plural) and they. "I" can only be thought of as "I and relationships with others." "I" cannot be thought of as a stand alone individual in isolation from others. You could think of "I" as meaning "interdependent I."

You can distinguish between interdependent I and others, but you cannot separate them – interdependent I only exists in relationship to other people.

The language of speaking about "I" tends to mean that you forget about the interdependent nature of "I" and it seems that maybe there is an "I" that is separate. For example, we come to take for granted that the "I" is resident inside the individual person, quite secluded from other people.

Think about the relationship between two people, A and B. This relationship actually consists of two relationships – AB = A’s perspective of the relationship and BA = B’s perspective of the relationship. In the world of mathematics AB=BA, but not in the human world.

Here’s another way of saying it. Everyone that I think of in the third person as "she", e.g. my friend Robyn, thinks of herself in the first person as "I", and she in turn thinks of me in the third person as "he" or sometimes as "you." So Robyn’s perspective of our relationship is different just in the quality alone that her "I" is different from my "I." It’s all a matter of perspective.

I have found it useful to bear this in mind in any corporate or business situation, especially when you are involved in change.

There are always at least two perspectives in every relationship, the perspectives of each party to the relationship, and both of them are valid.

So, as a leader of change, it is helpful if you remember that. Remembering that there are two perspectives will lead you to first seek out the different perspectives, and secondly to find a way to hold both perspectives at the same time, even if they are contradictory.

The most common response to being faced with contradictory perspectives is to become anxious. And then to try and resolve the two points of view so that the "right" perspective, or the "facts" can be found. The problem with this is that one perspective then is labelled "right" and one labelled "wrong." Usually the "right" perspective is the one that is closest to that of the most powerful people.

It is very helpful to have the capacity to hold contradictory points of view without becoming anxious. Apart from keeping a relatively calm atmosphere for others, it also helps you to facilitate the parties to see the other’s point of view and this allows the possibility for each point of view to be transformed, into something new. And this is at the very heart of leading change in organisations – the ability to assist others to transform their point of view.

This post is based on the ideas of Norbert Elias, in What is Sociology, 1978.

Photography by Ruby Cumming

Bas Reus is exploring what it means to say that humans are self-organising, over at http://basreus.nl/2009/07/27/self-organization-defined/#comment-51. His post outlines the development of his thinking in attempting to define self-orgnisation.

Arising from the study of complexity, the important thing about self-organisation is that the ordering of society (or people in organisations) occurs through local interaction in the absence of an overall blueprint or plan. As any top manager will tell you, you can’t just make a plan, tell others and then confidently expect that the plan will be followed. Instead, all sorts of unexpected things happen – people interpret things differently, they react to things in surprising ways and there are unintended consequences. This is what is meant by saying there is no overall blueprint or plan.

Many people, including me, when they first learn of this idea of self-organisation, immediately think of questions like "How can we empower employees to be self-organising?" or "How can we manage our people so that the emergence can take place?"

In attempting to answer these questions during my doctoral thesis, thanks to my supervisor Ralph Stacey’s empathetic guidance, I came to realise that it doesn’t make much sense to talk in this way because humans already always are self organising, even when they work in organisations with top down management approaches. If they are working in an organisation with restrictive management approaches, then they are still self-organising, with a given mix of constraints, power relations and so on that is determined in part by the management approach. This is because top down or highly directive management approaches give a certain combination of constraints and power relations.

A more useful question might be something like "How can we change the constraints and power relating so that different patterns will emerge from the self-organisation?"

The challenge with thinking about self-organisation for people in organisations is to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that self-organisation means random – or that just anything can happen. Obviously, in an organisation, people cannot just do what they like. And it doesn’t make much sense to me for a manager to allow people just to do anything to respond to the environment – the chances of achieving management goals would be very low.

So self-organisation means something much more subtle than "anything goes." The challenge for managers that is presented by the concept of self-organisation is not "How can I empower my people to be self organising?" They are already self organising (in spite of management directives). The challenge is "How can I influence the constraints and power relationships so that different (hopefully more desirable) patterns of social interaction emerge." If different patterns of social interaction emerge, then along will come innovation and different results – the actions of the manager will play a big part in whether those results are more desirable or less desirable – so we cannot just say "anything goes."

The big insights of self-organisation are 1) the recognition that managers have a lot less control than the dominant managerial literature would have you believe, and 2) that managers themselves are also part of this self-organising dynamic of local interaction.

This means that as a manager you can only influence your organisation from within your own local interaction with others. So you must pay attention to your own interaction, observe what results and adjust as you go along.

There is another, less obvious way in which this view of thinking is radically social. It is in the make up of the participants in the silent conversation that consitutes thinking.

Who is talking to whom in this silent conversation I am having with myself? Who is doing the talking, and who are they talking to? Please bear with me and see if I can answer this question, drawing on George Herbert Mead and Ralph Stacey.

The answer is that different aspects of the self are talking to each other. "I" am talking to "me." The aspect doing the talking is "I" as the subject, doer or initiator of action.

The aspect being spoken to is "me" as the object, the recipient of the action.

The "I" as the subject doing the talking is the individual in the present moment responding to the "me."

Mead pointed out that as humans we have the capacity to take on the attitude of the other person. In other words, you can perform an imaginative feat in which you experience what it would be like to be in the other person’s place. Mead said that it is because we can imagine ourselves in the other person’s shoes that we have human consciousness.

You imagine yourself in the other person’s shoes based on your experience of many social interactions over time – the results you received from these interactions and what they meant to you. These imaginings are therefore socially based because of the social experience you have had. For example, I moved around a lot when I was growing up and so would often have to leave my friends behind and make new ones. If you were brought up by different parents or in a different culture you would have different experiences and so your view of what the other person would be making of you would be different.

Humans also have a tendency to generalise.

The "me" taking part in the silent conversation of thinking is a generalisation that represents your generalised view of what society thinks of you. Society in this case is that group of people whom you identify with.

In a process that utilises both our human tendency to generalise and also our capacity to take on the attitude of the other, we imagine what others think of us. Our imagining of what others think of us is the "me" that is participating in our silent conversation.

This conversation between "I" and "me" is never resolved. It is a conversation in which "I" am constantly responding, in the present moment, to "me." In other words I am constantly responding to the generalised view that I think others have of me.

There, simple eh?

It makes you more effective when thinking about organisational change to be able to articulate what you think it means to be a person and to think. Why? Because how you think about what people are doing in organisations when they are thinking affects what you do to help influence the course of change. This is so in many subtle ways, whether or not you are aware of your assumptions about human consciousness. If you are aware of your assumptions about what it is to be human, you can be more deliberate in your effectiveness in organisational change.

Most people think of the mind as being something that lives inside a person’s head, something separate from the brain, that controls the actions of the body.

George Herbert Mead talked instead about a conversation of gesture and response in which meaning arises from the gesture and response taken together.

He proposed that thinking was the process of engaging in silent conversation with oneself. This makes sense in terms of our experience in which we do talk to ourselves. As a tennis player I tell myself to do things like hit up through the ball. And I hear other players admonishing themselves to "Concentrate" or "hit it" or "move." The silent conversation is then spoken aloud and in some cases becomes an exasperated shout!

So, this highlights one way in which the process of thinking, because it consists of silent interaction, is a social process.

Instad of thinking about thinking as a property of the individual, think of the mind and its process of thinking as silent conversation. This silent conversation is what constitutes human consciousness, and one of the great benefites of this view is that it means that cognitive processes do not need to remain a mystery as properties of individuals that we can never reveal or become aware of.

Instead, if you realise that thinking is a process of silent conversation, you can become aware of it and engage with others in their process of silent conversation. This will make you more effective as a facilitator of change in your organisation.

A theme of a number of presentations at the Control or Care of the Self conference in Hamburg in July 2008 was precarious working arrangements, and the impact these are having on society. I had to ask what the term precarious working arrangements was referring to, because I had not heard it before.

I assumed it was referring to people who gained income through working at the margins of society, at the edges of legality, such as burglars or sex workers.

But no! The concept of precarious working arrangements means the shift to contract working and self employment. This seems to be happening on a large scale in Europe and academics are now writing about it extensively.

I was struck by the thought that at this academic conference of 60 people, all of them were employed by universities or tertiary institutions. I was the one person there who was self-employed, I was a part of the group that was being described as "precarious."

There is no doubt that in addition to your technical skills you do need to have the additional ability to generate work if you are self employed. And yet I have never felt less precarious in my working life.

It was ironic that I was seen as in a precarious group as I had been talking to several people who were on fixed term employment contracts with their universities, and I could sense their concern about what their next job would be.

I had to wonder which was the precarious group – the self employed or the academics.

Informalisation of our relations with each other is accompanied by expectations of increased self control. And watch out if you make a mistake of self control.

I had the privilege of hearing Cas Wouters speak at the Hamburg conference Control or Care of the Self in July 2008. He pointed out that the informalisation of social controls (e.g. in the form of mufti days or casual Fridays) is accompanied by an increase in self-control.

In organisations, people are also expected to informalise their relations with each other, but at the same time (and this is not so obvious) they are also expected to have more self-control, more self-regulation.

For example, as Jason Hughes pointed out in his presentation at the same conference, casual Fridays ostensibly give employees the freedom to wear any clothes they like, within the constraints of decency. It seems like a move from corporate uniform to corporate mufti. And yet are people really free to wear anything they like? Thinking of how people comment on each other’s clothes, it is obvious that there is plenty of judgment going on about what people are wearing.

It is a move to informalisation of what people wear to work on a Friday, and it is accompanied by a need for increased self-restraint. The company does not prescribe what you wear on a Friday, you decide yourself. But you need to exercise self control. And beware if you get it wrong!