Stephen Billing’s Blog

I have had more than one situation recently in client organisations where a person "Angelica"  has had a problem with person "Boris" or something they have done. Angelica then emails or talks to Boris’s boss "Charlie," (and sometimes a range of other people) explaining the situation and seeking resolution.

It seems that this "dynamic of three people" frequently occurs in organisations, at all levels of seniority.

It is interesting to consider the effects of this in relationship terms. Angelica may have reached the point where she is so frustrated that this is the only option she can see to resolve an important organisational issue. "I am just being honest" or "I am saying what I honestly think" are common aspects of Angelica’s perspective in this situation.

Angelica’s boss Charlie has an opportunity to put a problem right. Angelica has contacted him, complaining about Boris or his actions. Charlie gets the chance to take some action with Boris to resolve the situation.

What action should Charlie the manager take?

One option for Charlie is to go to Boris, inform him of his transgression and work with Boris to remedy the situation. This is a very tempting option for many managers, as it enables them to be directly involved in solving an issue that perhaps could not otherwise be resolved. The manager is then very clear of his or her own contribution to resolving an issue that otherwise might not have a resolution.

I feel for all three participants in this situation. Consider Boris, who all too often is unaware that Angelica even has a problem with him. Seemingly out of the blue, Charlie is discussing an issue with Boris that Boris did not have any opportunity to attempt to resolve.

Another option for Charlie is to respond to Angelica by asking her to talk to Boris and see if they can resolve the issue prior to Charlie getting involved.

Then, at least Charlie only gets involved when Boris is aware that there is an issue and that Angelica and Boris have not been able to resolve the issue together.

And for Angelica, she would have reinforcement of the lesson that the first step in resolving an issue is with the person concerned, and then to go to the manager if resolution is not possible.

From a relationship perspective, I am interested in two aspects – the actions of Charlie the manager and the relationship between Angelica and Boris.

To me, Charlie the manager has to consider the relationship between Angelica and Boris and ensure they have made attempts to resolve the situation before becoming involved. Anything other response will make working with Angelica and Boris difficult in future, regardless of who is "at fault" in this situation.

Angelica’s very act of going to her manager Charlie will sour the relationship with Boris. So Angelica must be on very sure ground prior to approaching Charlie. Although by the time she has raised the issue with Charlie Angelica is so annoyed by what Boris has done that she is not thinking about the longer term relationship with Boris.

Now, Boris may (or may not) have been to blame for the original incident, but from the information provided by Angelica, Charlie wouldn’t be able to tell for certain, and this is commonly the case for managers like Charlie who are approached by staff members like Angelica – Charlie just doesn’t know how much of what he is told that he can reliably take action on.

So, if you are Angelica, try to resolve the issue with Boris before escalating to Charlie.

If you are Boris approaoched by Angelica, be grateful that Angelica has approached you before going to your boss, and work hard to resolve the issue. If you are Boris approached by Charlie, ask Charlie if he can give you some time to tlak to Angelica to attempt to resolve the issue (this happened to me once with a good result although Charlie was initially quite surprised at my request but quickly saw the logic of it).

If you are Charlie approached by Angelica, then encourage Angelica to discuss and resolve the issue with Charlie. If this is not possible from Angelica’s point of view  (i.e she thinks the situation is too far gone to raise it with Boris hersefl directly), offer to faciltate a discussion between tbe two.

Do not say that you’ll take it on and resolve it for her. If you do, you are not demonstrating that you are taking all the points of view seriously. That way lie monsters…

And that’s as prescriptive as I get!

In Kenneth Gergen’s The Saturated Self, he notes that the Western concept of the "self" has developed in three stages and I have been thinking that we can see these three stages in our current views of leadership. These stages he labels as:

• Romantic
• Modern
• Post-Modern

This post considers the Romantic stage and the residue it has left on our current thinking about leadership.

Gergen is not using the term "romantic" in the way we think of romantic love. Rather he is referring to a view of the world that prevailed at its height in the late 1700s and on into the 1800s, which is known as the Romantic period. During that period, the view was that what was important about people was their personal depth – passion, soul, creativity and moral fibre.

An early exemplar of the romantic period was Goethe’s "The Sufferings of Young Werther." This is the story of a young man, Werther, who is hopelessly in love with a young woman who is married to an older man. His love goes unrequited and Werther has months of agonising over the conflict between passion and morality.

This conflict summarises in a nutshell the elements of the concerns of the Romantic period – the conflict deep inside the person, between the passions of the spirit, and what it is right to do. (more…)

In which I consider that even though it is much debated what leadership actually consists of or whether it actually exists at all, the language of leadership has certainly given rise to to many ways to describe deficits of personal characteristics in those who manage and lead organisations. 

I am currently reading The Saturated Self by Kenneth Gergen. In it, he discusses the impacts of burgeoning technology on our identity – i.e. how we experience who we are. He says that through technology we are now bombarded by many disparate voices of humanity – both harmonious and alien.

He demonstrates how the scientisation of human behaviour has led to an explosion of terms to describe mental health deficits in the 20th century. Terms such as low self esteem, repressed, authoritarian, obsessive-compulsive, bulimic, sadomasochistic and post-traumatic stress disorder have only come into being relatively recently, and they all refer to problems, shortcomings or incapacities – mental deficits. (more…)

 What you are comfortable to discuss legitimates topics for your people. Those things you are uncomfortable with quickly go into the "undiscussable" pile.

As regular readers will be aware, I have been advocating that conversations are the means by which change takes place in organisations. This is because organisations can be seen as themes of consistency and novelty that emerge from the myriad conversations that take place amongst many people over periods of time. So, organisations remain the same (and sometimes stay stuck), due to recurrent themes that predominate in the conversations that take place over the course of many interactions. Each of these interactions individually holds the potential for novelty. Think of regular team meetings, project meetings, coffee conversations, board meetings, informal meetings to explore certain topics, progress meetings, and presentation of proposals. Each has the potential for something new, but also has potential to reinforce existing patterns. "It depends." (more…)

Do you suffer from the same problems social researchers do – being an outsider in your own business?

Much of what we "know" about leadership is based on research conducted according to social research methodology. The movement towards qualitative research has often been the basis of leadership research, which often involves participants responding to the questions of social researchers. The social researchers are by definition, outsiders. (more…)

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…)

Sports are like business only in certain superficial ways. The differences are far greater than the similarities, and bear strong warning for any leader of change.

The other day I participated in a group discussing leadership. It was apparent that to many people, that lessons from sport were highly applicable to leadership and business, and further, that it was taken for granted that there are strong similarities between business and sports.

I think that the use of "lessons" from sport highlights certain apparent similarities, such as having winners and losers, a game plan, tactics, coach and so on.

At the same, the highlighting of these similarities disguises some very crucial differences between sport and business: (more…)

What is reification and why on earth should I care?

You may or may not have come across this term before, and if not, then welcome to the arcane aspects of complexity science and organisation theory.

However, as a leader it is important to understand the tendency we have to treat organisations and other abstract concepts like culture or organisations as though they were actual physical things that respond to natural laws. Why? Because it affects how you approach making changes to your culture or wider organisation.

Organisations and other social objects respond to processes of human interaction, but they do not respond to universal laws the way that physical objects such as balls (speed, direction) or pot plants (colour, mass). Even though pot plants are living, and organisations are dynamic and so seem to have some qualities of living things, organisations are not living systems like pot plants. (By the way, do you like the pot plants shown in our front entrance? I am quite proud of them.) (more…)

Four dimensions of change that are considered in the mainstream literature on change.

According to Alvesson and Sveningsson’s excellent new book Changing Organizational Culture, key dimensions of change that are common in the literature include:

1. The scale of change
2. The sources of change
3. The content of change
4. The politics of change

The Scale of Change

Change is often characterised in terms of two extremes as revolutionary or evolutionary. Revolutionary change refers to changes that affect several aspects of the organisation simultaneously, such as culture, resources, performance management systems, strategy, technology, market positioning. Evolutionary change refers to operational change that affects part of the organisation within existing strategy and resources.

The following scales are also used to characterise organisational change:

• revolutionary vs evolutionary
• discontinuous vs continuous
• episodic vs continuing flow
• transformational vs transactional
• strategic vs operational
• total system vs local option

Alvesson and Sveningsson point out that these labels and distinctions often mean roughly the same. (more…)

In which I seek to shed some light on the early history of organisational culture so that we can see where our ideas about the problematic concept of culture have come from.

Changing your organisation is often thought of as meaning changing organisational culture. The term "organizational cultures" first was used by Pettigrew in 1979 in an article titled "On Studying Organizational Cultures" in the scholarly journal Administrative Science Quarterly.

To me it is quite significant that he used the plural, denoting that there are many cultures within an organisation. It is a more recent thing to talk about an organisation as having one culture only (a "corporate culture"). I think it is more accurate to think of there being multiple cultures within an organisation, as there are many groups that people in your organisation belong to, and people are included and excluded from these groups as they are in all social groupings. (more…)