Why good people behave badly in organisations

We behave badly because we’ve been trained to behave badly from about age 11 in industrial education processes for industrial work. We’re imprinted with that classroom model of authority, hierarchy, knowledge, expertise, compliance, manipulation, control and work, right from when we leave the nursery school for the conventional school classroom.

That imprint is then reinforced at every level of education and on into employment. No wonder we find it difficult to conceptualise, let alone be anything else. We perpetuate the model unthinkingly. There is a saying that education is what’s left after you forget all that you (explicitly) learned. Entrepreneurs typically leave formal education early.

That industrial concept of organisation is very sticky and there’s little reason to challenge or change it unless the world changes and innovation becomes the key to survival. Then it becomes imperative to access and maximise individual and collaborative potential that is unwittingly squandered, eroded and destroyed by industrial organisation and management.

To survive we need to dispel the climates of fear, cynicism and disengagement that so often prevail; break the cycle of bad behaviour that is so toxic for emotional and mental health and sabotages engagement and productivity.

We need to resolve our double lives: break the spell of industrial age thinking and open our work and institutional life to what we know from that life beyond work.

Since the industrial revolution, when work arguably became seriously separated from the rest of life, most working adults live second lives at church, school, or home.

The question isn’t so much whether we lead double lives but how can we translate our knowledge of that ‘other life’ into our work and institutional behaviour? That’s difficult because much of our organisational behaviour is driven by unconscious assumptions and reflex behaviours tacitly learned during ‘industrial’ schooling and tacitly confirmed by our experience since.

The roots of industrial age production and education are in the thinking and practices that became prominent in the 1940s through 60s and still dominate many business improvement books. Industrial organisations had many characteristics of machines. They were formed around machines. Machines have since replaced many of the jobs in those organisations.

The machine model of organisation, still appropriate in some contexts, is characterised by structures; job breakdowns; lines of communication, job delineation; objectification; linear causal thinking. There is a sense of un-emotional rigidity and inexorability about it. Performance failures are fixed by replacing parts (people) or in extreme, restructuring. The ‘system’ reigns supreme.

In the 70s a new image of organisation emerged: organisations as intelligent organisms with interdependent functions and organs, striving to survive, responding to stimuli, adapting to changing environment, evolving to fit niche environments, the fittest surviving.

In the 80s people became the focus in the notion of organisation as culture comprised of cultures. Values, attitudes, beliefs, rituals, artefacts, normalised and normative behaviours became the centre of attention.

The 90s saw a return to the machine metaphor but this time the machine is a computer and computer networks: a hi-tech version of the earlier industrial machine. “Process re-engineering” was all the rage. People were mysterious, unreliable repositories of knowledge which is best extracted, digitised, then stored and managed in computerised files and networked information systems. Restructuring resurges, sometime dressed as process re-engineering. People are nodes in networks.

In the new millennium the World Wide Web enabled an explosion in relationships, shaking knowledge structures. The notion of knowledge and organisations as webs of relationships takes form. Hierarchy dissolves in the web and industrial style surveillance and control is impossible (Contractor, 2002).

The image of organisation as a web of relationships begins to make sense. But still the sticky industrial structures and controlling behaviours persist. People see the seeming ambiguity, openness, absence of command structures, and reliance on relationships as risky.

Leaders must risk openness, admit not knowing, focus on the detail of interpersonal relationships, build trust in long term relationships for mutual learning and growth.

Most bosses would claim that they do this already. Ask their reports. Most reports would claim that they can be trusted with responsibility. Ask their managers. It’s time we all stopped blaming, shaming and justifying and collaborated to change -bosses first.

Start by seeking honest, open feedback about your own behaviour. Talk to people other than your direct reports. Then deliberately and openly attempt to change your behaviour. Invite observations of your progress. Then expect your reports to do the same. Help and encourage them. They will be sure that this is managerial suicide.

For more in this radical vein go to Steve Denning: Does asking smart questions make you a radical manager?

Contractor, N. S. 2002. New media and organising. In L. Lievrow & S. Livingstone (Eds.). The Handbook of New Media (pp. 203-205). London: Sage.

Tse, S. & Barnett, S. 2009. Recovery Oriented Services. In Chris Lloyd, Robert King, Frank Deane, and Kevin Gournay (Eds.). Clinical Management in Mental Health Services. Chapter 7, (pp. 94 -114). Blackwell: London.

Slow motion serendipity

Several weeks ago in Poetry at Work I contemplated  the  jolting transition from profoundly poetic to harshly prosaic.

Then suddenly I plunge into turbid work-waters, seeking uncontrived rhyme, rhythm, and reunion. Instead jolted by proudly, profoundly prosaic hard harsh habits, I struggle to rescue the dream from resigned remembrance and to surface, to breathe.

Now thankfully buoyed by miraculously new-found and re-found relationships, carried by the tidal flows that touch and disturb even dammed work-waters, I find poetry resurgent enough for shade and sustenance.

That abstract painting  uncannily resolved, unfolded in time since: change and challenge in photographic clarity. Doors closing and doors opening in slow motion serendipity; results crystallised in retrospect.

Therein lies a riddle clear to some, resolved for others in weeks to come.

Truth is some dammed work-waters can drown even a buoyant psyche. 

Salvation lies in the deep tidal flows that despite our plans and protestations lead us resurgent to unexpected places.  .  .  .  .  .

Will 2010 Be As You Like It?

‘All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players” says Bill Shakespeare’s character Jacques in As You Like It, Act II Sc vii,

To what story, what climax, what denouement have you renewed your commitment, passion and determination this year?

The evidence is clear that if you set your goal then commit to it by focusing on completing specific actions towards that goal, then you have a very high probability of achieving it. It gets messier if you can’t do it on your own; if you need others to commit and focus on it too.

How can you get those others to want what you want? How can you get them to “buy into” it; to play your game, run your race, act in your theatre; accept your rules and judgement?

Typically you cast yourself as the master puppeteer: as lord of the dance; you pull the strings. A lot depends on your skill and alacrity at manipulating strings: at management.

No wonder then that managers have such a major influence on businesses: by some reports over 70% of employee behaviour is determined by the actions of managers (I wonder who determines managers’ behaviour).

So if your marionettes are not responding as planned, do you become an even better puppeteer: do you contrive with the latest tools, systems and processes to increase control by adding more ‘invisible’ strings?

Or do you seek to breathe life into your marionettes; into their wooden minds, hearts and limbs; risk letting them influence the dance, the narrative, and the score? Do you risk letting them be the stars?

Will they want to stay with your small show? Will they perform like you? Will they covet your role?

Do they understand the play? Does it speak to them? Do they relate emotionally to their roles and to each other. Are the roles shallow, 2 dimensional or are they ‘character’ roles.

Does the play have a universal quality that appeals on multiple levels to different players and its audience? Or is it a cheap circus that abuses its talent?

What are you playing at?

Poetry at Work.

Last week lone-sailing Seascape, my 12 foot, clinker-style dinghy; hushed breeze rushing, bow splashing and wake boiling, I slipped and sliced, suspended on chrome-smooth sky-tinted surfaces, ruffled, disturbed, even annoyed by mercurially agitated warm humid breezes. Mind in neutral, senses wired for sudden shifts, body and boat commune, response-merged pursuing purpose.

Then suddenly I plunge into turbid work-waters, seeking uncontrived rhyme, rhythm, and reunion. Instead jolted by proudly, profoundly prosaic hard harsh habits, I struggle to rescue the dream from resigned remembrance and to surface, to breathe.

Now thankfully buoyed by miraculously new-found and re-found relationships, carried by the tidal flows that touch and disturb even dammed work-waters, I find poetry resurgent enough for shade and sustenance.

Bicycle or Frog? Kiss . . . . .

Did the pricess kiss a frog to get her prince, or was it a bicycle?

To borrow Alistair Mant’s bicycle/frog analogy: we continue to treat organisations as if they are bicycles when these days they are more likely frogs.

You can take a bicycle apart, lay out and polish all the bits, modify and replace them, and when you put it back together and oil it, you have a bicycle. If you do that to a frog, when you put it back together you don’t have a frog. There’s something missing: life. A bicycle is a machine. A frog is a living thing.

Ever come out of a management team meeting feeling disappointed, flat; not excited, but can’t quite put your finger on why. Sure the usual personalities were there, the usual predictable behaviours and perspectives, but you know you can rise above that if there’s something really worth doing together, everyone’s working to their strengths, and the results are blowing you and your clients away.

It’s not that you were intentionally being negative or difficult. You actually wanted to be energised and inspired; to energise and inspire. But the usually effective process of reviewing progress and performance against the various KPIs, reviewing priorities then agreeing who, what and when for the next period somehow lacked life.

Ever felt like that? I have.

Maybe you’re tired and depressed by energy sapping stuff happening in the rest of your life. Maybe some wandering virus is having a go at you. Maybe you lost your sense of purpose. Maybe its just been a long hard year. Whatever, life seems to have gone out of work. It seems mechanical; a job.

Work’s like this for about 55% of the workforce (Marcus Buckingham): The Disengaged. They’d much rather be in high performing teams (if they could imagine what it’d be like). They and/or their managers may even be into the paraphernalia, tactics and techniques of “high performing teams”: but it’s just not sparking.

There’s a good chance that’s because the paraphernalia is little more than a set of managerial tools used mechanically and dutifully in the belief that tools magically transform disengaged workers into engaged ones; even into high performing teams.

I won’t work. Partly because “everyone knows” that these tools are just more management bullshit: for over a century managers have been using systems and structures to get things done as expected; "to control people and play on their fears; systems and processes that suppress rather than reveal and ignite the emotions that energise and inspire" (Steve Denning, see below); that achieve machine like predictability and reliability.

With a frog approach we would use those same tools differently. As the saying goes: it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. So instead of using the tools to increase predictability and mechanical reliability we could use them to delightfully surprise ourselves and our clients: to energise and inspire continual, iterative learning to delight; with each delight revealing new possibilities. Kiss the frog to get a transformation.

If you want the real oil on achieving such a radically different approach to management; such delightfully inspiring and energising workplaces and people, be sure to grab a copy of Steve Denning’s new book when it comes out around November 2010. I’ve had a peek. It’s good! Radical, with it’s roots in his previous work.

Leading learning for change feels risky.

You may understand, even know how destructive defensive communication (blaming, shaming and justifying) is for learning to behave differently as an organisation. If you do and you’re an enlightened manager, you may exhort others to cease blaming, shaming and justifying; to express perspectives openly; to have the courage to tell the truth as they see it. But that doesn’t work.

Someone, a leader, has to noticeably; outrageously do it: dare to openly speak the unspoken, discuss the un-discussable; be deliberately, robustly candid; and genuinely encourage others to be the same by actively listening and acknowledging their perspectives.

Usually this doesn’t happen until there’s some sort of crisis: the stock answers and standard procedures clearly aren’t effective; apparently no-one really knows. Then individuals are more likely to speak out. And they are more likely to be heard.

Last week, for perhaps the 1st time in several years, I dared do it in my “own” organisation: the one that’s my main employer. Believe me; it’s very different from advising or coaching someone else to do it, or doing it in someone else’s organisation.

It was with some trepidation that I published my frustration at a recent incident. Once I’d published in the group discussion forum there was nothing I could do to influence the response. I had given away control. That’s scary! I waited anxiously.

I suspected that some would be pleased I’d spoken; some would take it as personal criticism; some would wonder what I was trying to say and some would think I was an idiot.

I guessed that some would respond to me privately; a few publically, but that most, if they responded at all, would limit their response to off-line private conversations within their various groups.

At one point after some personal off-line response from senior managers, I was considering killing the initiative. But it was too late. The “cat was out of the bag and amongst the pigeons”.

On reflection I remembered my purpose and my previous experiences and observations of how the best learning opportunities can be found in critical incidents and the heightened emotions that follow; when norms are disturbed; when individuals are perturbed.

So I girded my loins and continued with my communication strategy. I framed my frustration as the opening phase of a story: the brutal facts; the bad news. Then I painted the vision: the glorious envisaged future. Finally I pointed to our strengths and opportunities and proposed my strategy to get there: by risking open communication; speaking the unspoken, discussing the un-discussable; participating in robust, candid conversations about the guts of what we do.

I used our real-time actual shared experience as the basis for learning and change; I risked open communication; I encouraged others to candidly contribute their perspectives and acknowledged them when they did. I’ll look for more opportunities to continue the story, new incidents, new feedback, and new perspectives.

That, in my knowledge and experience is leading learning for change.

Easter reflection

““And God created the Organisation and gave it dominion over man.”
Genesis 1, 30A, subparagraph VIII.” (Robert Townsend. 1970. Up the Organization)

This Easter I’ve reflected on how our lives are too often distorted, disfigured and diminished by the organisations we inhabit; how some (usually small) organisations grow people instead of distorting, disfiguring and diminishing them.

Over Easter my wife took timeout from our workday organisational routines for two short adventures:

First we retreated to the Opotiki bush block that we’ve owned and congregated on with friends for over 30 years. For us all, including our children who spent every summer there from before birth into to their 20s, the place is a trig point in our individual and collective identities. Gatherings usually include a building project, an adventure and much feasting, talking and laughing. This Easter was no exception. By day, we hand-made and laid 6m3 of concrete together to ford a stream. By night we celebrated with communally prepared food and wine.

The place, the purpose, and the people have produced a successful and enduring collaboration (small on organisation and big on community) of individuals whose multiple diverse talents interact, flourish, revive, and reorient in the verdant quiet of chuckling steams, moss carpeted waterfalls, giant native forest trees, ponga and mamaku tree ferns and nikau palms.

Next we toured the Otago NZ wine growing region where some of our favourite Pinot Noir wines are produced. We visited small vineyards and wineries to get acquainted with the places and people in the wine. In dry rocky historic landscapes we talked wine and history with vineyard owners passionate about their vines and their wines; real people, real emotion, excellent wine: small organisations in big communities. The wine industry in New Zealand is renowned for collaboration.

The spirit of creativity, growth and change in a collaboration (small on Management, big on distributed leadership), is perhaps symbolised by the koru which in Maori art symbolises creation, origin, perpetual movement and the way in which life both changes and stays the same.

Lexicon? What’s that?

It’s our language that enables us to have and manipulate ideas; determines our capacity to conceptualise, think and change. In these times it is crucial for individuals and organisations to change – to transform even. Yet many are crippled; locked in by the language of Management.

This was once again highlighted for me in a recent discussion around the purpose of business-team coaching. I objected to the apparently widespread unquestioned assumption that business development coaching is to achieve “alignment”. I explained that “In my lexicon, “alignment” has strong associations with “staying in line”, compliance, groupthink: some of the least productive aspects of Managerial behaviour and expectation.”

On reflection that objection was potentially risky behaviour with the MD leading the discussion and several senior managers participating in the conversation: I was apparently questioning an almost unquestionable Managerial prerogative - compliance. On top of that I seemed to imply almost heretically that Management is wrong. As if that wasn’t enough I had the temerity to use strange language: “lexicon”.

“What’s lexicon?" the MD demanded. "A company name?” .

When I later explained that my lexicon is the language that I think with, he joked, “Well I guess lexicon’s not in my lexicon.” But of course, by that stage it was.

Particularly interesting to me was that that discussion was part of a process to reconceptualise; to find new language to express the concept and practice of business development coaching. Language was essential to the change process.

Working against that change was the spirit of Managerial control: arguably achieved in large part through control of language. Managers can require that ideas and argument are communicated in language that they readily understand, as they understand it, so reinforcing convention. Jargon becomes a means of exclusion and of enhancing knowledge-power.

How then can we introduce new language and with it new concepts, new ideas, new possibilities?

Reading is one way, but most popular writers use conventional language because it is readily understood and that’s what sells. Nobody except academics read academic literature.

In my experience, the best way to introduce new language is in context, in conversation. Then the initial difficulties and misunderstandings can be explored: illustrated by real, shared experience.

Unfettered brainstorming is an effective way to break the Managerial spell and let the language flow, unhindered by evaluation and qualification: formal, colloquial, slang, foreign, technical, expert, outrageous, boring, relevant, irrelevant, reverent, irreverent, dangerous, and tame language.

PS My closest colleagues in that organisation have affectionately given me a new nickname: “Prof”. I’m not sure if that’s helpful or not. But it is a mark of affection. That’s good.

The “secret” to leadership in uncertain times (2)

The secret to effective leadership in uncertain times is a relationship-based rather than performance-based climate: where you don’t rely primarily on an external system of rules to 'keep people in line' but on deeply shared purpose, generated and implemented through gutsy, open relationships between people; powered by the shared heartfelt desire to do good stuff together.

That’s the spirit of community and of high performance teams; where leadership is endemic, not restricted to 'a leader'; relationship is the driver; performance is an outcome; performance measurement provides data about the effectiveness of collaboration.

As writer Bob Gass puts it: effective teams share a “sense of belonging. Members extend trust to one another. Initially it's a risk because trust can be violated and you can get hurt. At the same time as each team member gives trust, each must conduct themselves in a way that earns the trust of others by holding themselves to a high standard.

When everyone gives freely and bonds of trust develop and are tested over time, they begin to have faith in one another. They believe that the people next to them will act with consistency, keep commitments, maintain confidences and support each other. The stronger their sense of belonging becomes, the greater their potential to work together.

All teams have disagreements. The mark of community is not the absence of conflict; it's the presence of a spirit of reconciliation. It’s not about people hiding their concerns to protect a false notion of unity. It’s about the ability to have a rough-and-tumble meeting with someone, but because we're committed to each other in shared purpose we can leave, slapping each other on the back, saying, 'I'm glad we're still on the same team'."

The leader’s role in a community like that is to lead by example (be 1st at):

• risking emotion and intimacy in leader/follower relationships;
  
• risking robust, open communication;
  
• risking walking into a meeting without already knowing the answer;
  
• risking sharing performance data;
  
• risking following;
  
• risking apologising;
  
• risking letting the team decide the performance standards and manage the accountabilities;
  
• risking performance appraisal by followers.

Tip: use the performance appraisal for feedback on the observed frequency of that risk-taking.

The age of relationships at last?

I have to say that I’m very “chuffed” that the sort of stuff that I’ve been working for, on, in and with particularly the last decade or so, like collaboration; specific patterns of behaviour that spell caring in interpersonal communication; and against the stupidity of most received Management ‘wisdom’, seem to be fast becoming almost de rigueur in popular advice on how to survive the global financial system meltdown.

It seems that everything does have its season and this is the season for intimacy in leadership; knowing who and what we uniquely are and fearlessly standing out for that in our all organisational relationships.

Suddenly it’s right, good, and financially advantageous to actually, really treat employees as valued customers; to be emotional in business and organisational relationships and to leave personality in problem solving (along with the ‘facts’); to be a manager and openly not-know; to trust that the best business strategy comes out of best interpersonal relationships.

Hallelujah! Thank God for the financial crisis! At last we have a real chance to really “keep it real” – for management and leadership to un-stick from 100 year old industrial assumptions and practices: for the age of relationships – where being fully functioning human beings is the greatest personal and commercial advantage.