Month: March 2017

I watched Crimson Tide last weekend. It's a terrific film on all things leadership with a strong theme on the 'moral courage' shown in it by two men who take opposite views and hold on to them. Watch the film to see what happens.

One researcher explains that, 'Moral courage involves acting in the service of one's convictions, in spite of the risk of retaliation or punishment … that moral courage also involves a capacity to face others as moral agents, and thus in a manner that does not objectify them'.

The same week I came across a research paper on 'intellectual humility', defined as 'the opposite of intellectual arrogance or conceit. In common parlance, it resembles open-mindedness. Intellectually humble people can have strong beliefs, but recognize their fallibility and are willing to be proven wrong on matters large and small.'

This set me wondering on the relationship between moral courage and intellectual humility and how they get played out in organizations and with what effect. One writer notes that 'In organizations, some of the hardest decisions have ethical stakes: it is everyday moral courage that sets an organization and its members apart'. I asked a few people what they thought.

Chris Rodgers came back with the following which is well worth sharing and he's agreed I can. So now it's over to him.

As regards your 'challenge', re the relationship between "moral courage" and "intellectual humility", I've only been able to give it some brief attention. So make of this what you will!

Both characteristics can clearly have value in their own right; yet they might be viewed as running counter to each other and not easily able to co-exist.

We could, though, think of them as existing in a paradoxical relationship around the central notion of ideas and beliefs. On the one hand, moral courage implies sticking to one's strongly-held beliefs, in the face of open challenge from others and/or unspoken social pressure to conform to some other, established norm. On the other hand, intellectual humility implies that there is an apparent willingness to take account of the ideas and arguments of others, and to flex one's own beliefs to accommodate their contrasting views.

What comes to mind is a book called "Paradoxical Thinking" by Fletcher and Olwyler. I referred to it in Informal Coalitions. Using their terminology, we might then think about these characteristics in terms of what they would call a "core paradox" around people's response to the beliefs that they hold. They would tend to look for paired characteristics in which one "pole" was perceived as negative and the other as positive. So, in this case, I might be stretching their 'model' a bit, given that they both tend to evoke positive reactions. However, one or other of them might be seen as constraining progress in a particular case.

Anyway, given the core paradox of moral courage and intellectual humility, the next step is to look at the most negative and most positive expressions of each of these. According to their theory, peak performance (or best outcome, perhaps?) is achieved when both 'poles' are expressed in their most positive terms. The worst of both worlds (or "nightmare position", as they call it) exists where people oscillate between behaviours that reflect the most negative expressions of each pole.

The aim of the approach is to stimulate dialogue about how the particular characteristics are manifesting themselves in relation to a particular issue, and to identify ways of moving closer to the "high-performance" position.

By way of illustration (off the top of my head!) the high-performance position might be something like principled (moral courage) pragmatism (intellectual humility), say. Or, a term that I've used elsewhere, flexible (intellectual humility) rigidity (moral courage). The latter might translate, for example, as a willingness to flex the means of achieving a particular end, even if this runs counter to one's own view of what and how things should be done. But, at the same time, being unbending as regards the outcome sought and also, perhaps, the ethics of getting there.

At the 'other end' of "Fletcher's Pendulum", (try the activity here) the nightmare position might be one characterized by behaviour that oscillated between fundamentalism, say, (moral courage) reflected in blind adherence to a rigid belief set; and 'what do I know?' behaviour (intellectual humility), in which one's own knowledge and/or position are cast aside without a whimper, to accommodate the views of others.

My specific examples/labels might not make any sense at all, of course. But, hopefully, you get the idea.

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How does your view of moral courage and intellectual humility reflect in your organization design work? Let me, or Chris, know.

During the week, I was contacted by someone I used to work with – I'll call him Bill – asking for help on a piece of work he'd just been asked to manage. Briefly his manager had asked him to develop a Business Plan for the Unit (comprising around 4000 people) along with an overarching narrative on proposed design changes.

This was no blank page. Bill told me that there's much work going on but in disjointed pockets. He mentioned: one piece looking at the core Unit functions, another at business processes that traverse his Unit and other Units, a third looking at a wide-reaching re-design of a different Unit but one that his Unit is interdependent with, and a fourth piece aimed at ironing out some overlaps and inefficiencies looking at a newly formed group within the Unit. Additionally, there are some small bits of redesign work in discrete work areas. The Unit as a whole has to make a headcount reduction, control costs, drive value, and manage any potential operational risks.

He was concerned on four points:
a) that people, without the necessary OD skills, are squeezing in design work when they are also under intense pressure in their 'day jobs'
b) the local design changes going on may not add up to anything that looks 'joined up' at a Unit level or aimed at the same strategy/delivery outcomes when they are completed
c) that people doing design work in one pocket are unaware of, and haven't tested, the possible consequences and knock-on effects in another part of the Unit, or elsewhere in the organisation
d) that the cultural and behavioural changes needed to work in new technology-enabled ways is being lost in the desire to deliver 'numbers'

Of further concern to him is that he has to pull together a report with recommendations very quickly and doesn't feel he has the requisite skill set himself to do this. (Hence the call).

Most OD consultants have found themselves in Bill's situation at some point. There's rarely a clean canvas to start work on and there are many possible ways forward. These include:

• Pulling all the pieces together, rescoping, and redirecting into an overarching 'programme' that includes the cultural and behavioural elements (Purist)
• Assessing the common ground between pieces of work and actively helping shape consistency towards heading in the same direction (Pragmatic)
• Letting people get on with the designs they're working on but identifying the main risks being incurred and encouraging them to address these collectively (Potentially risky)

Given things have to be 'sorted' quickly I'd go for the pragmatic response but in a participative way. (If you're interested in Socio-Technical Systems Design there's a good explanation of the Participative Design Workshops the practitioners of the approach advocate).

I recommend inviting the leads of the various pieces of work to a workshop, where they describe what they are aiming for. They then look at the Unit strategy and direction and its contribution to the organisational strategy/direction. The group could then do a consistency check of their pieces of work against a checklist or diagnostic. One, Alignment Matrix, that I have used is a good conversation starter. This would begin to show where there are gaps, missed opportunities, heading off in different directions, and so on.

Having done this, the group decides how to take the work forward. I think a wider participative process involving people who are actually doing the work being (re)designed is the best way. See my article A different way to tackle problems on ways for doing this, or download a great article Faster, Shorter, Cheaper May Be Simple; It's Never Easy.

This type of participative approach both helps disconnected pieces join up, and helps create conditions for collaboration and connectedness. It also starts to illustrate that organisation design work is multi-faceted and does not get good outcomes by working mainly to an organisation chart/top down approach. (See an article I was just sent that explores some of this by Niels Pflaeging).

How would you advise Bill? Let me know.

In a couple of work-shops I've been in during the last week we've started to explore 'politics' – both in a governmental sense and in an organisational sense. They're shorthanded as 'Politics' and 'politics', and they're both difficult to navigate, and when they're in the same piece of work the difficulties are compounded.

Gareth Morgan, in Reflections on Images of Organization, discusses organizations as political systems, saying 'When you start to explore organizations as political systems you quickly get into images of autocracy and democracy, Machiavellianism, gender, racial and social power imbalances, images of exploiting and exploited groups, subtle or crude power plays, and so on.' He asks, 'Isn't the stakeholder approach another way of exploring the relations between the interests, conflict, and power that lie at the heart of political analysis?' (Morgan, 2011)

A classic piece of work by management academic Henry Mintzberg suggested that: 'Politics and conflict sometimes capture an organization in whole or significant part, giving rise to a form we call the Political Arena'. He proposes four basic types of Political Arenas:

• the complete Political Arena (characterized by conflict that is intensive and pervasive)
• the confrontation (conflict that is intensive but contained)
• the shaky alliance (conflict that is moderate and contained)
• the politicized organization (conflict that is moderate but pervasive). (Mintzberg, 1985)

Most organisations that I've worked in have elements of the political images or arenas that Morgan and Mintzberg talk about. And it is in these arenas that political behaviours come into play. Other research has 'identified several areas in which employees engage in political behaviour, namely pressures for economy, management and sub-ordinates relationships, structural power struggles between configured groups such as unions and employers, conflicts between the workforce and management for construing agreements, uncertainty about standards and strategies of promotion, difficulty in linking reward with productivity … when there is uncertainty involved in decision-making procedures and performance measures, and when competition is present among individuals and groups for limited resources.'

The politics and political behaviours can be either negative or positive (or on some point in between). The negative play out can 'involve convenient and illegal behaviour, and the positive side which is a social function that is important for organisations to survive. Negative organisational politics are disapproved of because of the ethical dilemmas encrusted with them and the workplace conflicts that are generated, whilst positive organisational politics results from the amalgamation of shared goals and stimulating collaboration.' (Cacciattolo, 2014)

It seems to me that in order to navigate the political arenas, practitioners need finely honed political skill that is: 'The ability to effectively understand others at work, and to use such knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one's personal and/or organizational objectives' (Ferris, et al., 2005)

Politically skilled people 'combine social astuteness with the capacity to adjust their behaviour to different and changing situational demands in a manner that appears to be sincere, inspires support and trust, and effectively influences and controls the responses of others.' (Ferris, et al., 2007). Influence or control can be used for good or ill (hence the phrase 'appears to be sincere') and it is to be hoped that organization design practitioners are using it for good. Nevertheless, there can be difficult conflicts. As this practitioner found:

One organization where I consulted was highly political. Cliques had formed. People slipped into each other's offices before meetings to share the latest offense of the out-group and to plan their revenge. In highly political organizations like this one, there usually isn't one person responsible for the climate. Political activity is relational -— even if only a couple of people are engaging in negative types, others get pulled and playing-along-to-get-along becomes the norm. (Reardon, 2015)

The challenge for the organization designer is to work out how to behave in a helpful way in this context, how to find out who the 'real' players are, what are the vested interests in it that may not be obvious, how easy will it be to do the work without compromising ethical and moral principles, or the management consulting code of conduct.

How do you approach working in political arenas? Let me know.

References
Cacciattolo, K. (2014, August). Defining Organizational Politics. European Scientific Journal, 238-246.
Ferris, G. R., Treadway, D. C., Kolodinsky, R. W., Hochwarter, W. A., Kacmar, C. J., & Douglas, C. (2005). Development and validation of the political skill inventory. Journal of Management, 31, 126-152.
Ferris, G. R., Treadway, D. C., Perrewe, P. L., Brouer, R. L., Douglas, C., & Lux, S. (2007). Political Skill in Organizations. Journal of Management, 33(3), 290 – 320 . Retrieved March 4, 2017, from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0149206307300813?journalCode=joma
Mintzberg, H. (1985, March). the Organizations as Political Arena. Journal of Management Studies, 22(2), 133–154. Retrieved March 4, 2017, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6486.1985.tb00069.x/abstract
Morgan, G. (2011). Reflections on Images of Organization and its Implications for Organization and Environment. Organization and Environment, 24(4). Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1086026611434274
Reardon, K. K. (2015, January 12). Office Politics Isn't Something You Can Sit Out. Retrieved March 5, 2017, from Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2015/01/office-politics-isnt-something-you-can-sit-out

My blog topics usually arise from the week preceding Sunday – blog writing day. This week's looks in both directions. Back at last week's idea and forward into next week's event.

Looking forward: next Wednesday March 8 is International Women's Day and yesterday I opted to #BeBoldForChange ticking on their website the boxes that I would forge women's advancement and champion women's education. Both much needed.

Just after having done that I picked up a book, lying around the house, 'What makes great design: 80 masterpieces explained'. Hmm – a couple of thoughts crossed my mind as I skimmed through it: where are the women designers and how inherently biased language is. Look at the book title 'masterpieces'. That is a male word. There are no 'mistresspieces', and 'masterpieces' isn't noticeably gender neutral. Out of 80 'master designers' there are 6 women. That 7.5%.

Looking back: I picked up the book because last week we had the idea that we would see what the interest was in designing a multi-disciplinary 'design function' to work on organisational wicked problems: a flexible function that would include business architects, service designers, customer experience designers, graphic designers, strategy designers, organisation designers, and so on. Put differently, it would draw on anyone who could identify with the idea that they have design thinking skills developed through training and/or use in some field.

So, I was just generating my thinking on what typically comprises 'design' and how we might design and operate that function. Then I pulled out another book. Design: a very short introduction. It's one I recommended to students when I taught on the Design Strategy MBA.

Immediately I got from it a powerful statement on 'design' that is a touchstone for a design function. 'Design is … an essential determinant of the quality of human life. It affects everyone in every detail of every aspect of what they do throughout each day. As such, it matters profoundly.' Think about it. We are all working all the time in a designed world – keyboards, websites, door handles, business processes, organisations … the list goes on and on and on. Log everything you interact with in the next hour that has been designed and you get the picture.

And interestingly when we came to generate a list of names of people who might be interested in exploring the idea of a design function they were also predominantly male: it may be that we live in a male designed world.

Bridging the two weeks
So today I have in my mind some questions that bridge design and International Women's Day. Would our designed world look and feel different if there were more female designers in it? Where are the female designers by discipline? How can we design a useful design function that shows gender parity? Is the language of design gender biased – in favour of men?

I Googled 'women in design'. Two sites came up Women in Design, New Mexico, and Women in Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design, @WID_GSD. I'm sure there are others but I didn't delve beyond page one.

If I am serious in my ticking the #BeBoldForChange boxes on forging women's advancement and championing women's education, then the field of design and specifically organisation design might be a great start point.

One immediate way that I and all of us in the organisation design field could do this is by engaging our policy and finance colleagues in the idea of re#designing their processes and methodologies to include gender reporting and budgeting. This helps forge women's advancement. 'Gender budgeting is a way for governments to promote equality through fiscal policy. It involves analysing a budget's differing impacts on men and women and allocating money accordingly, as well as setting targets-—such as equal school enrolment for girls-—and directing funds to meet them'.

To champion women's design education I could work with education organisations to bring design thinking to change the way education is done. And/or I could mentor women who wanted to go into organisation and other design fields. For example, see how women are being encouraged into industrial design in Australia.

So, there are many possibilities. How would you bridge (organisation) design and gender equality? Let me know.

What are the rituals, restrictions, and relationships that define cultures? I ask because last week I was in two events where multi-cultures were in play.

Event one was in Dubai and one of the things I did there was facilitate a two-day organisation culture course. Dubai is a great place to discuss culture as its population is so nationally diverse – the 10 course participants represented Lebanon, Canada, UK, India, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and Pakistan, not to mention various professional cultures, and various corporate cultures. We also had the full mix of generations. So, a diverse group with many different perspectives and lots to say on designing organisational culture.

Event two was my daughter's wedding. She's lived and worked in many countries. Her list of 80 or so guests represented Tanzania, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Ireland, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Finland, Sudan, Iran, Hong Kong, England, Scotland, Australia, Holland, and Jamaica. As with the Dubai event it wasn't just the national cultures represented, there were multiple professions and the entire age range. It was a joyous experience to participate in a World Cafe in its truest sense.

What was so enjoyable about the events was not identifying or labelling people by nationality which is a relatively easy label to apply, but talking with them about their experiences and identities that were not only, or even, about nationality.

It is Taiye Selasi, in her TED talk 'Don't ask me where I'm from ask where I'm a local', who states 'I'm not a national at all. How could I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?' Instead she asks where are you a local? She proposes 'a three-step test. I call these the three "R's": rituals, relationships, restrictions … that would tell us so much more about who and how similar we are.'

Her talk is well worth listening to, because what she suggests is not just true of national cultures but also of organisational cultures and professional cultures. Each is defined by protocols and experiences known to the locals. As one of Selasi's friends said, 'All experience is local. All identity is experience.'

As the participants in the Dubai workshop discussed the various elements of the Johnson and Scholes cultural web they compared their organisational experiences of restrictions associated with such elements as hierarchy, grades, power, control, job descriptions, and decision rights. They talked about the way work really gets done – not usually via the defined business process flow but via relationships and who you know. They enjoyed telling each other about the various organisational rituals they have experienced.

At the wedding the guests were invited to talk about how they knew the bride and groom, and they told wonderful stories that were nothing to do with national culture but to do with the experiences that had brought them together – teaching, supporting, living in shared accommodation, being at university, having friends in common, sharing mutual interests. It was the relationships that forged the bonds.

Woven through the day were lovely stories and comparisons of the differing rituals of weddings and wedding customs people had experienced – clothing, food, roles of family members, songs, dances, …

Restrictions were also apparent – one invitee called in by phone to tell us of her long and valued friendship with Rosa – her physical absence caused by visa restrictions, while another beloved friend was restricted from attending by having had a very serious illness. But her voice was heard through a different invitee talking of and for her.

I'm intrigued by Taiye Selasi's view that 'History was real, cultures were real, but countries were invented', and the way she argues not of doing away with countries but of not giving nationality a primacy over other cultural characteristics. As she says 'Culture exists in community, and community exists in context.'

As we think about organisational culture would it be helpful if we agreed with Selasi's view 'In fact, all of us are multi -— multi-local, multi-layered. To begin our conversations with an acknowledgement of this complexity brings us closer together, I think, not further apart.'?

From an organisational culture perspective, it may matter much less where people are from, our ethnic monitoring may be a distraction, and matter much more on how people feel or experience the rituals, restrictions and relationships of the organisation. I'm wondering how or if we can design cultures that reduce the inevitable restrictions, and make the rituals and relationships both transparent and welcoming?

Can we design multi-local organisational cultures? What's your view ? Let me know.

(See also my previous blog on Rituals, restrictions and relationships)