Stephen Billing’s Blog

Holding contradictory points of view without getting anxious – could this be a core competency for leaders of change?

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. (more…)

If you have come to this blog after coming to the HRINZ session last night, here is a bonus extra for you. I mentioned a few authors and here are the references if you would like to do further reading.

There is also plenty to explore on this blog, there are about 90 articles (or posts) on here now. Please feel free to comment, or you can contact me through the contact page.

French W and Bell C (1995) Organization Development, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

This is the "bible" on Organisation Development that I mentioned. It has an excellent potted history of the field written by people who knew famous figures like Lewin, Likert, McGregor, Argyris, Blake and Mouton, many others.

Elias N (1978) What is Sociology New York: Columbia University Press

I mentioned the sociologist Norbert Elias whose writings about power, interdependence, involvement and detachment have played a big influence on my thinking. This is a good introduction to his thinking.

Shaw P (2002) Changing Conversations in Organizations London: Routledge

I’ve introduced Patricia’s book to several people interested in Organisation Development and it has proved a fascinating read for every single one. She gives narrative accounts of her OD consultingn practice and contrasts her way of approaching organisations with others such as living systems, open space technology, communities of practice.

Stacey R (2001) Complex Responsive Processes in Organizations London: Routledge

Ralph was the supervisor of my doctoral thesis and has written extensively on complexity in organisations. This book outlines his radical theory of complex responsive processes that has made such a difference in my own consulting.

Taptiklis T (2007) Unmanaging London: Palgrave McMillan

I have written about this book here. A very engaging book by a New Zealander, Theodore puts together ideas from a range of sources in an insightful way.

Lots of change management rhetoric exhorts managers to have a clear vision of the future. But what if you don’t have a clear vision? Having been a strong aficionado of visions in the past, I have come to see that you can still move forward successfully with change initiatives, even without a clear vision.

In fact, being the contrary person that I am, I contend that a clearly articulated vision is not important, and can actually get in the way of the change you want to achieve. You do not need a clear vision to lead and implement change effectively.

My perspective is that first of all, as a leader of change, it is important to be comfortable with NOT knowing ‘the vision’. Second, it is important to be clear about your intentions at the present time, and to listen for the intentions of those around you. Your listening to those around you who have different intentions, different backgrounds or come from different disciplines will surely lead to a new, spontaneous or unexpected outcome, one that leads you all forward. 

The change projects I’m now involved in are much more complex than those in my early days when I was discovering the concept of vision and working to articulate the vision clearly. Nowadays no one seems to be clear about what the vision is – that’s one of the key reasons I get hired. My clients are, however, able to articulate in some way what it is that they want to change. But this is not in the form of a vision. And spending time ‘word smithing,’ trying to turn it into a vision is a waste of time. 

Any vision is only an intention by a manager or a project team. Furthermore it is often their intention for what someone else will do, such as front line staff.  Managers in change projects, and middle-level line managers often find themselves in the unenviable position of having to wrestle with telling front line staff how senior managers want them to change.  

If you don’t do this by communicating a vision, what should you communicate? 

The results of any change initiative are actually the outcome of the interweaving of intentions of those driving the change and those who they are trying to change, according to Norbert Elias. So as a leader or facilitator of change, all you can communicate is what your intentions are. Then it pays to listen carefully to the responses, and make your own response. 

I began to despair a little when I first started to understand that we are a lot less in control than change management rhetoric would have us believe. But our actions as leaders and facilitators of change are still important and make a difference. 

Don’t waste time on "vision". Tell people what your intentions are, what you want to achieve. And then observe and listen closely to their responses. Your change efforts will be much more effective. 

What do you think?  

*Elias N, (1994) The Civilizing Process, Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

It is both practical and interesting to think about power if you are trying to change your organisation. Instead of seeing power as being like an amulet, that one person holds over another, Norbert Elias had a very different way of thinking about power.

Elias saw power as an inevitable characteristic of all human relating. He saw power as a function related to the need that one person has for another. If I need you more than you need me, then at that time, the balance of power will be tilted towards you and away from me.

In this way of thinking, power exists only in relationship between people. Power is not a thing in itself that can exist outside of human relationships. Rather it is relational in nature.

To illustrate, Elias gives extreme examples where the power seems to be weighted completely in favour of one party, such as a baby and its parents, and a master/slave relationship.

Elias points out that a baby has power over its parents, just as much as the parents have power over the baby. At least, the baby has power over the parents for as long as the parents attach value to the baby. The parents may abandon the baby if it cries too much. Through the socialisation process the baby eventually learns what the limits of its power are, through interaction with its parents.

In the case of the master and the slave, another seemingly lopsided power relationship, Elias acknowledges that the master has power over the slave, but that the slave also has power over the master in proportion to his or her function for master and the master’s dependence on the slave.

How is this talk of babies and slaves relevant for organisations?

Consider the example of a manager / subordinate relationship in terms of the argument above. It is readily evident that the manager has power over the subordinate. What is less evident is that the subordinate also has power by dint of the subordinate’s functionality for the manager. In any change initiative, the staff have the ability to exert power by going along with the change or not going along with it. The manager and those reporting to the manager are interdependent – they rely on each other. They are not isolates bumping up against each other. Power is in an ever-changing balance between the two, depending on the relative need each feels for the other at the time.

Thinking of power in this relational way that Elias proposed shifts the attention away from the manager as an individual possessed of powerful characteristics by dint of position power and influencing power, to thinking of specific relationships between specific managers and specific subordinates.

It is then possible to see that the power balance is always shifting – it is not a static thing. With this way of thinking it becomes possible to identify shifting power balances between manager and direct report. And it also becomes possible to identify shifting power balances across an organisation.

And this is a very valuable perspective to have when leading organisational change.

Power is a topic that is not much talked about in organisations, at least not overtly in my experience. And yet it is a fundamental component of our organisational relationships as human beings within an explicit hierarchical structure. Hierarchies of management mean that some people have more power than others. I am referring to power as the ability to make certain things happen that would not otherwise happen.

Why is it that such a pervasive feature of organisational life is so little written about in the organisational literature, or discussed in every day organisational life? Especially considering that power is such an important part of the CEO or senior manager’s ability to get things done.

Norbert Elias suggests in his 1984 book What is Sociology, that one reason power is not a fit subject for discussion is because of the numerous examples of abuse of power and the harm done by powerful people to others.

No person is an island, we are all linked together and dependent on each other. As a leader you cannot control how others will respond to you.

Norbert Elias was a German sociologist who fled Germany in the 1930s and made his home in England. His work starts from consideration of us as interdependent human beings. This is different from our commonsense view of ourselves as humans surrounded by social groupings.

The diagram to the left is taken from Elias’s 1978 book What is Sociology, and shows how we see human beings as autonomous individuals surrounded by social structures, bumping up against others in social interaction. And it seems to make common sense that our experience is that we are at the centre of our world, with other groupings like family, organisation and country surrounding us. It has the individual at the centre of it, surrounded by other, progressively larger and more encompassing groupings. But although this view is extremely commonplace to the degree that it is taken for granted, this is actually only one potential way of looking at the world.

And when you think about it, it is actually quite an egocentric view of the world with the individual at the centre. The philosopher Charles Taylor describes this way of seeing the world as ‘individualism’, and is the basis of much of the personal development / self help / authenticity movements of the 80s, 90s and today.

Elias argued that societies, and organisations, are made up of interdependent beings, including you and me. Because we are interdependent, we rely on each other and are in relationship with each other. Therefore, in order to understand organisations we should seek to understand the nature of the relationships we have with each other.

We make up webs of interdependence, what Elias called figurations, of many kinds. The figurations are characterized by power balances, and this applies to all figurations, such as families, schools, organisations, towns or countries.

The significance of understanding humans in relationship to each other, rather than as each of us being the centre of an autonomous world, is the foundation on which I follow Ralph Stacey in arguing that organisations are emergent patterns of continuously iterated interaction which arise from myriad relationships amongst those in the organisation.

This way of thinking has important implications for how you view leadership because it changes what you actually think an organisation is. Changing your view of what an organisation is means that you also change how you think you should lead it.

If organisations are patterns of interaction, then as a leader you cannot control those patterns – you can only control what you say and do, but you cannot control how people respond to what you say and do.

Follow and participate in this blog to explore further the radical implications and the extraordinary potential for leadership success that is offered by taking this view of organisations comprising interdependent individuals.