Self-organisation is in no way a bottom up process. All humans are involved in interaction, and the results that emerge are the results of self-organising processes, whether you are a top manager or lower in the hierarchical ranks.

It is not very accurate to call self-organising a "bottom up" approach or process. To me, a bottom up process is where there is activity amongst those lower in the hierarchy or closer to the front line who feed ideas or a new process up through the hierarchy. A bottom up process can happen because it’s been designed by the top managers e.g. a series of facilitated focus groups, or it can happen more informally e.g. where a problem is solved or a new process is established at one site and then the results are seen by those higher in the hierarchy and the new process is implemented at other sites. (more…)

"Approaches to leadership and management are still dominated by prescriptions – usually claimed as scientific – for top executives to choose the future direction of their organization. The global financial recession and the collapse of investment capitalism (surely not planned by anyone) make it quite clear that top executives are simply not able to choose future directions. Despite this, current management literature mostly continues to avoid the obvious – management’s inability to predict or control what will happen in the future. The key question now must be how we are to think about management if we take the uncertainty of organizational life seriously" – Ralph Stacey

The above lines from Ralph highlight a major disconnect between management literature’s formulaic attempts to provide prescriptions and recipes for controlling the future, and the reality that this is actually an impossible and fruitless pursuit. This blog is an attempt to help us to understand how to act when the future is uncertain and unpredictable. Acknowledging the unpredictability of the future is not a signal to be depressed. Rather it is a provocation to become aware of how you are thinking about the tasks of management and leadership in organisations so that your approaches and ways of thinking are more congruent with this reality.

Recipe attempts to control the future prevent you from seeing clearly what is going on around you, and mean that your responses to the uncertain world in which you work and live will be less effective.

Footnote: The quote above is taken from the "blurb" for the paperback version of Ralph Stacey’s latest book which has just been released. The book is called Complexity and Organizational Reality: Uncertainty and the Need to Rethink Management after the Collapse of Investment Capitalism. It’s not available on Amazon yet but you can get more info or the book itself here (thanks to Chris Rodgers for alerting me to this).

I am speaking at the HRINZ Wellington Organisation Development Special Interest Group on Organisation Development on Tuesday 17 Feb at 5.30pm – 7pm. Here is the information. Please feel free to come along.

What is OD? The roots of OD stretch back to Lewin’s unfreeze / change / refreeze model of the 50s, the T groups of the 70s, downsizing of the 80s and TQM, BPR and culture change of the 90s. More recently, social movements, social media and social networking are influencing the frontiers of OD practice. Throughout these changing fashions, leadership has remained a constant fascination with OD practitioners, CEOs and General Managers alike.

Chaos theory and its progeny complexity science were also fads of the 90s. And yet there is no doubt that organisations are complex. What can the insights of complexity teach us about OD now that the first flush of enthusiasm and rose-tinted spectacles are both dimmed?

There are only two key properties of complexity that are useful to OD practitioners and CEOs:

• Emergence – global patterns emerge from local interaction without the overall control of a central designer. Any CEO will attest to the lack of control they have over those who work in their organisation

• Novelty emerges only when those interacting are diverse. Without diversity of people interacting, the patterns of interaction remain the same and innovation and creativity are stifled

If our OD initiatives are to be effective, then our thinking about organisations and their development must be relatively congruent with our experience of working in organisations. Unfortunately, for most of us it is not. For all our awareness of informal networks our initiatives concentrate too much on formal lines of communications that take place in staged events, (i.e. the much-maligned ‘cascades’) and not enough on the multitudes of ’shadow’ interactions that take place each and every day, at which the CEO and OD practitioner are not present.

Join us on 17 February to explore an alternative view of OD that takes into account these two key insights of complexity, a radical perspective on human interaction, and recognition of the power relations that are at the heart of all human relating.

Expand your thinking, expand your OD effectiveness!

Level aimed at: All OD practitioners.

Venue:

HRINZ National Office
Level One
11 Chews Lane
Wellington

It is not that helpful to think of organisational change as a move from one equilibrium state to another.

To say that "Change is constant" is pretty much a meaningless bromide, a platitude. It is such a common saying that it has lost its meaning. Most people would agree with it and think nothing of it.

We say that change is constant without giving it another thought. But most of us think about our organisations as normally being in a state of equilibrium. And if your organisation is not in equilibrium, no doubt that is because it is in the process of moving from a current (equilibrium) state to a desired (new equilibrium) state.

If your change projects are based on a gap analysis, then you are thinking of your organisation as moving to a new equilibrium. Of course, we don’t think too much about this equilibrium way of thinking, because we take it so much for granted. So much so that it almost seems to be a default way of thinking.

But consider this for a moment. A state of equilibrium is a state where change is not happening, where stability is constant. By definition, in a state of equilibrium, change is not constant.

So if your people are talking about change in terms of a desired state and a current state, and how to move from one to another, they are inherently talking about moving from one equilibrium state to another. If they are also saying ‘change is constant,’ they are contradicting themselves.

Consider your own thoughts about this. Is your organisation currently in your desired state? No doubt it is not, because I am sure there are changes you want to make, things you want to improve. Are you thinking of how you can move from your current state to your desired state? Is the desired state some kind of resting place before working out what the next desired state is? I think most of us would say yes, this seems very natural.

This is a very seductive way of thinking that most of us take for granted. However, we also know from our own experience that change is constant. This just does not go with the idea of moving your organisation to a new state.

Organisations being in equilibrium is an analogy taken from chemistry, where a chemical reaction can be contained in a state of equilibrium, and in physics where opposing forces can cancel each other out, leading to equilibrium. These analogies have been imported directly into our thinking about organisations. Kurt Lewin is the acknowledged father of this way of thinking back in the 1950s, and his contribution to the field is undoubtedly significant.

But our organisations are not chemicals reacting in a test tube. And they are certainly not predictable mechanical forces of the kind that Newton described so well. Our organisations are made up of people who have consciousness, the ability to relate to each other and highly developed ability to learn and change as a result of those interactions.

This equilibrium thinking simply does not serve us well. Nor do the associated tools (I want to call it illusory baggage) – gap analysis, well documented steps and predictable change stages.

Related post – here.

Your change efforts are inherently political, whether you intend them to be or not

The poor regard in which politics is held, and the view that it is bad to engage in politics are both indicative of a way of thinking in which it is implicit that people can either choose to engage in politics and therefore be labelled “bad” or they can choose not to engage in politics and be “good”.

Politics are also commonly seen as part of conflict, uncertainty and situations where the formal channels break down or are not effective.

However, I think that politics are an inevitable aspect of the social nature of being human and working in organisations.

I often hear people say "I don’t get involved in the politics." While this seems like an admirable aspiration, all humans are involved in politics because we all have intentions that we are trying to manifest in our organisational lives. The results of what happens in your organisation is a result of the interweaving of all the different intentions of the many people who are involved in the organisation. 

Hidden in the view of politics as the result of conflict, uncertainty and lack of effective formal communication channels, is the implication that people would not need to engage in political behaviour if there were no conflict, if the environment were predictable or if formal means of resolution were working effectively.

Like it or not, conflict, uncertainty and formal channels that break down are a part of human existence in organisations. It ain’t going to go away. Everything is political (or interpreted in a political way), including the actions of people who are not interested in organisational politics, or who think they are not being political.

These ten myths about strategy, leadership and control are drawn from the complex responsive processes theory of Ralph Stacey and his colleagues. The myths are assumptions that are taken for granted in the predominant ways of thinking about organisations.

Drawing on complexity theory, the reality is that leaders and managers have a lot less control over what happens in their organisations than is commonly assumed in most managerial discourse. But organisational results and outcomes are not random. So do not despair. Leaders and managers do have an impact on their organisations. However, their impact is often not for the reasons they think!

Strategy

Myth 1

Results occur through strategic planning and execution of the plan

Reality 1

Results in organisations occur through the interplay of the numerous intentions of those in the organisation and are therefore unpredictable

Myth 2

Actions are either strategic or operational / tactical depending on whether they have a broad or contained focus

Reality 2

There will always be unintended, unpredictable consequences as a result of the interplay of local interactions therefore only hindsight can tell if an action was strategic or tactical

Leadership

Myth 3

A leader is a masterful individual with a vision for the organisation

Reality 3

Leadership emerges from interaction as a social process of mutual recognition

Myth 4

The organisation is a whole that can be designed and managed by a coalition of the most powerful

Reality 4

The organisation consists of many interactions amongst combinations of individuals, over time. From these myriad interactions emerge patterns of stability and novelty as propositional and narrative themes. The most powerful people (i.e. the leaders) can interact with many others, but they cannot control the responses they receive, and so they cannot design and manage the whole organisation

Myth 5

To provide good leadership, look at the big picture

Reality 5

To provide good leadership, take your experience seriously – look at the detail of what is going on and what we actually do to achieve results. No one else is! They are too busy being future oriented, thinking of solutions and what we ‘ought’ to do to notice what is really going on around us

Myth 6

Power is something an individual holds over another person

Reality 6

Power is an intrinsic part of all human relating and changes according to the relative need one individual has for the other. Power balances can shift. Power enables you to do what you would not be able to do otherwise, but you cannot just do anything if you want to maintain relationships with others. Power paradoxically enables and constrains us in our relationships with others

Myth 7

Patterns across the organisation are identified and managed by senior managers or organisational experts. Leaders set the vision and direction for the overall patterns of the organisation.

Reality 7

Patterns emerge from local interactions in the absence of any blue print or master plan – they are not managed or controlled by anyone, no matter how powerful. Leaders engage in local interaction and they cannot predict the outcomes of their actions for the organisation. If it were so, no leader would ever fail!

Myth 8

Personality is an attribute an individual has and with sufficiently sophisticated instruments, it can be measured

Reality 8

Identity and personality are formed in interaction with others. They are not intrinsic to the individual – they are not properties held inside the individual and so they cannot be measured

Control

Myth 9

Breaking elements of the organisation into parts, setting targets and measuring results will enable leaders to have more control of the organisation

Reality 9

Leaders are paradoxically in control (of their own actions, speeches and so on), but not in control of how people will respond. Leaders act with intention and so do employees. No one person is in control of the outcome, which is the result of the interplay of all the various intentions of those involved.

Myth 10

Increasingly stronger targets, rules, laws or procedures give increased levels of managerial control in organisations

Reality 10

The strongest controls come from the constraints we put on each other

More about complexity in organisations is available on this website or refer to:

Stacey R. 2007 Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics, fifth edition, UK: Prentice Hall

Stacey R., Griffin D., and Shaw P. 2000 Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge to Systems Thinking, UK: Routledge