Month: July 2019

Last Monday (22 July) Nick Richmond, European Organisation Design Forum (EODF), UK Chair, published a blog on LinkedIn ‘Top 3 Organisation Design Leadership Insights’.  He then challenged me (among others) to share my top 3.

The challenge came about because the EODF’s conference theme this year (October 25 and 26) is ‘Designing and leading technology enabled organisations’.  Nick was asked by the conference Dean to share some of his thoughts on this theme – hence his blog plus his challenge to others.  He offered 3 insights:  invest for success, innovation is messy, keep your eye on your ‘why’.

Typically, I began by asking myself some questions:  What do we mean by technology enabled? Are there any organisations that are not technology enabled?  What’s special about designing technology enabled organisations (as opposed to non-technology enabled ones)?  What’s different/the same about leading them? What do we mean by leadership in technology enabled organisations?  And so on.

I got stuck instantly in trying to answer the questions – I couldn’t think of a single UK organisation that isn’t tech enabled in some way.  Technology is almost globally pervasive, ‘The  2018 Global Digital suite of reports from We Are Social and Hootsuite reveals that there are now more than 4 billion people around the world using the internet. Well over half of the world’s population is now online.’

I started again, generating a hypothesis: That technology enabled organisations bring new and unexplored territory – we have no idea how to either design or lead them (and it’s pointless attempting it through any of our current paradigms/frames of reference).

That pointed me in a direction (not true North), more likely north-north-west , and I retrieved the digital maturity model we used in one of my previous organisations, and which helped identify the technology enabled stage we were at and determine which stage we aspired to.

There are many of these types of digital maturity models e.g. Deloitte’s TM Forum’s (remarkably similar to Deloitte’s),  digital leadership  (with 5 levels),  Forrester’s Digital Maturity Model.  They serve to ‘evaluates how well user companies have incorporated digital into their operating models and how effective they are at executing on digital initiatives’.  (Let’s not get hung up on the semantic differences/similarities between ‘digital’ and ‘technology’)

Looking at these, when I think of ‘technology enabled’ in terms of my hypothesis, I am thinking beyond the maturity model ‘levels’.  I’m thinking technology enablement is more on the lines of stuff you read in sci-fi where we are forced to think, as Doug Johnstone, reviewing Ted Chiang’s sci fi book  Exhalation, says, ‘how technology can change the way we think about truth in deep, meaningful ways’.   (Try substituting ‘truth’, in this quote, for other words – ‘leadership’, ‘organisations’, ‘morals’, ‘ethics’, etc.)  and how ‘humans interact with technology’.

From this somewhat disjointed musing, my first insight is – we are woefully underprepared and under-reflecting on the speed and penetration of technology and what the implications of this means for designing and leading organisations.   Anyone in organisation design must keep up with a multitude of technology developments across multi-disciplines (and/or read sci-fi).

Designing technology enabled organisations looks easy if you decide to follow one of the maturity model methodologies.  Forrester’s four levels of digital maturity offers a 3-point ‘action plan’ for each level. You determine your current level by completing a survey.   If you find you are at level 1 and want to progress to level 2, you follow the 3-point ‘action plan’ which comprises:  1. Instil some digital DNA,  2. work outside-in, 3. hack yourself.  Hmm – I looked up an article on Business Bullshit by Andre Spicer and pondered over a submission to Lucy Kellaway’s corporate guff award.

Designing technology enabled organisations is not easy and neither are we in control of designing.  Global Information Infrastructure Commissioner and CEO, Karl Frederick Rauscher, is one of many voices warning of the developing technologies [that] ‘continue to be disruptive, creating new paradigms of economic growth, political liberty and citizen action’. Read his Scientific American piece.  He makes the point that: ‘Concerns regarding how powerful companies may choose to design new technologies are justified, given that their primary interest is to maximize profits for their shareholders. Many of them thrive on not-so-transparent business models that collect and then leverage data associated with users. Tomorrow’s big tech companies will leverage intelligence (via AI) and control (via robots) associated with the lives of their users. In such a world, third-party entities may know more about us than we know about ourselves. Decisions will be made on our behalf and increasingly without our awareness, and those decisions won’t necessarily be in our best interests.’  (See also, Jaron Lanier’s work).

My second insight is – we are attracted to easy looking methods/approaches and a feeling of being in control.   We are not in control and easy looking methodologies are not a good investment of resources.  Instead first broker organisation-wide discussions, encouraging critical thinking to explore the trade-offs you are willing to make, the risks you are incurring, the moral and ethical implications of your journey down a technology designed organisation – try and find out how the technology is designing the organisation and what this means. (Read a short article: Inside the black box: Is technology becoming too complicated?)

Earlier, I said that we had no idea how to design or lead technology enabled organisations.  A research article considers ‘five technologies are transforming the very foundations of global business and the organizations that drive it: cloud and mobile computing, big data and machine learning, sensors and intelligent manufacturing, advanced robotics and drones, and clean-energy technologies.’ The authors say, ‘these technologies are not just helping people to do things better and faster, but they are enabling profound changes in the ways that work is done in organizations. …  Savvy corporate leaders know they have to either figure out how these technologies will transform their businesses or face disruption by others who figure it out first.’

As we get more data driven organisational decisions who will lead on data interpretation and analysis, challenging the data, over-riding ‘the computer says’ to make human driven interventions, etc?   Take employee monitoring as an example: ‘A 2018 survey by Gartner found that 22% of organizations worldwide are using employee-movement data, 17% are monitoring work-computer-usage data, and 16% are using Microsoft Outlook- or calendar-usage data.’  What are the leadership decisions around encouraging employee monitoring, interpreting the results of monitoring, making ethical and moral decisions on its introduction and use …  If we are still thinking as leaders being those in a hierarchy with positional power, then are we confident they all have the skills, knowledge, and aptitudes to have informed discussions on technologies?

My third insight is – traditional positional power leadership is not going to work in technology enabled environments.  People who have informal as well as formal influence, are technology savvy, think critically, and are aware of, and thoughtful about, the social, moral, ethical dilemmas, and are aware of the possible technology enabled futures they are facing will likely lead organisations and they should be encouraged to do so.

What are your three insights around Designing and Leading Technology Enabled Organisations?  Let me + other EODF colleagues + anyone else interested know.

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‘We are on the cusp of a massive transformation. …. We are on the edge of tremendous opportunity as well as heart-shattering loss. In the face of this chaos, I believe our organizations today have the power, capacity, and reach to wreak havoc or to heal the planet. Organizations can become a healing force if they choose to be.’

This is part of the opening para to a blog written by Sahana Chattopadhyay that I mentioned in a tweet recently.  Usually, I don’t dwell on the tweet items for long.  They are recorded if I need to refer to them again (tweets make a useful library equivalent), but this one I found myself pondering.

I’ve been wondering what she means by organisations becoming ‘a force for healing’.  Reading on, she seems to mean that they could heal society’s suffering as well as organisational suffering.  And before healing comes acknowledgement of suffering – which could be a stretch.  Recognising the suffering of employees can be problematic, let alone society as a whole.  (Some UK figures on work related stress show this is increasing).

So, I mulled over the question I posed in my tweet – ‘Is there a will to design organisations as a force for healing?’ from three perspectives:

The Project Manager Perspective:  Chattopadhyay discusses six ‘constructs that need to shift for organizations to become thrivable  in the VUCA world. For organizations to become places of heartfelt work done with joy, passion, and love. For organizations to become truly relevant and regenerative’.   The six are:

• Shift from economic growth to holistic well-being as a measure of success
• Shift from “forced hierarchy” to “natural hierarchy”
• Shift from fear to trust and love
• Shift from optimization to human transformation
• Shift from [a mechanistic view] to an Ecosystem View
• Shift from “action orientation” to “being orientation”

My project manager-self notices a ‘from’ state to a ‘to be’ state, implying a detailed transition plan with interdependencies mapped, benefits realisation statements and risks logs.  But at what level are we talking about here?  I think at a whole organisation.  But then I ask to what timescale do we envisage this happening?  How many workstreams will we need?  What will be the cost in time, human endeavour and other resources?  I don’t see this as being a viable, deliverable project.

The organisation development perspective:In 2009 Margaret Wheatley wrote ‘We continue to be confronted by the complexities of our interconnected fates, resisting solutions. Our hearts continue to be challenged by the terrible things that humans should not be doing to other humans. Our Western worldview of material ease and endless progress has been shaken. Economic failures have worsened life not only for ourselves but everywhere in the world, among those who knew abundance and those who knew only poverty.’

For Wheatley healing is about achieving ‘a world where more people would be free from suffering—the physical suffering of poverty, disease, and loss, and the emotional suffering of ignorance, mis-perception, and invisibility.’

I wonder whether things have improved at all in the ten years since she wrote that?  It’s hard to give a conclusive picture – take poverty, for example, in the UK ‘The Trussell Trust’s food bank network provided 658,048 emergency supplies to people in crisis between April and September 2018, a 13% increase on the same period in 2017.’  But the World Bank reports ‘The percentage of people living in extreme poverty globally fell to a new low of 10 percent in 2015 — the latest number available — down from 11 percent in 2013, reflecting steady but slowing progress.’

If we agree with Wheatley that the world is suffering then do we agree it is incumbent on organisations to be part of a ‘healing movement’, and what would that mean in practice?  Wheatley herself suggests that ‘great healing is available when we listen to each other. … Listening is such a simple act. …  We just have to be willing to sit there and listen. If we can do that, we create moments in which real healing is available’.

There are examples of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that have success in helping societies heal via listening to testimonies of people.  I have not seen any similar organisational examples but it could be an idea worth exploring?

The organisation design perspective:  Raj Sisodia (FW Olin Distinguished Professor of Global Business Babson College Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus Conscious Capitalism Inc.)  writes and talks about ‘The Healing Organisation’.  In a TEDX talk he provocatively says ‘if we do not consciously choose to be part of the healing, we are probably inadvertently part of the hurting’.  I’d be surprised if organisation designers wanted to be known for designing ‘hurting’ organisations but what does Sisodia offer in terms of designing healing ones?  Not much in terms of specifics we could design to.  He offers examples of organisations he considers either ‘healing’ or ‘conscious capitalists’ but I couldn’t quite workout which.  Nevertheless, they may serve as case studies to discuss (they’re all American) and include Pay Active,  Appletree, and Ram Construction.

Differently, the authors of a chapter in a book Virtuous Organisations, define organisational healing as ‘the actual work of repairing and mending the collective social fabric of an organization after experiencing a threat or shock to its system’.  In their thinking, it’s not the ongoing design process taking an organisation from suffering to healthy.  Their work ‘uncovers four themes of organizational healing that reflect an organization’s capacity for virtuousness: reinforcing the priority of the individual, fostering high quality connections, strengthening a family culture, and initiating ceremonies and rituals.’ All of these four are designable, and worth considering in if we’re thinking about healing organisations after sudden shock.

Another avenue to pursue could be around self-healing of ecosystems – it’s perhaps too futuristic to imagine that organisations could ‘build tools and platforms that can automatically monitor their … environments and make intelligent real-time operational decisions to remedy the problems they identify’.  Netflix, however, claims to have done this for its production environment.  (I deleted the word ‘production’ in the quote above to give a better flavour of a possible future).

After all this musing I’m left not much the wiser about designing healing organisations.  It seems a ‘good idea’ but is it ‘deliverable’.  Perhaps that doesn’t matter, we should just aim to design organisations that don’t foster suffering.  I enjoyed Margaret Wheatley’s story ‘Years ago, the Dalai Lama counseled a group of my colleagues who were depressed about the state of the world to be patient. “Do not despair,” he said. “Your work will bear fruit in 700 years or so.”

What’s your view of healing organisations?  Can we design them?  Let me know.

Image:  Tibetan Healing Mandala

Last week I explored one of five organisation design myths  – that design is about the organisation chart – through asking Robert Segal’s three questions

• Those of origin – why and how myth arises
• Those of function – why and how the myth persists.
• Those of need – what need does the myth fulfil and what need makes it last by continuing to fulfil

I was looking at the myths as I’m doing a webinar on them and the date is looming.  I have to get the slides ready to send this week.  So, in what a friend calls a ‘twofer’ (i.e. two for one), I’m going to explore the other four briefly here, in order to give me the info for the webinar.   (Note that I’ve derived these myths from my experience – they’re not underpinned by extensive, empirical research).

The four are:

• Leaders are in the best position to decide the design of an organisation
• Organisation design is an intermittent process
• Redesigning an organisation will solve its problems
• There’s a right way to do organisation design

The myth that leaders are in the best position to decide the design of an organisation probably originates in the ‘heroic leader’ model of leadership.   In this model senior executives act as if they have all the answers and ‘use the power of their position to make decisions unilaterally … in a culture that worships the ability to score goals, usually in the form of advancing compelling solutions to problems, while downplaying facilitation [and reflection] as not being real work.’   The myth persists possibly because people are drawn to hero figures and we need them for various reasons.  See Heroes: what they do and why we need them.

However heroic leadership doesn’t result in a well-designed organisation, because no leader can know enough about the day to day operational work of the organisation to make design decisions alone (or at the executive-only level). Designing requires insight and participation from a diversity of employees and other stakeholders who represent the differing points of view/experiences in the organisation.  See Realising the Impact of Organisation Design: ten questions for business leaders.

Organisation design is an intermittent process – this myth seems to arise from an old belief that organisations are fairly stable and that a new design can solve a presenting significant problem and once that’s ‘solved’ equilibrium will be restored and the design can stay as is until another significant presenting problem arises.

This myth persists, I think, because there’s not much teaching/learning for leaders/managers about design as a continuous process.  Nor do they recognise that continuous design is increasingly necessary today because, as Nick Tune a blog writer says, ‘Modern organisations need to move fast, continuously getting feedback from customers …  in constantly evolving competitive markets, customer needs are always changing. Organisations must continuously adapt.’ He offers an approach to continuous organisation design based on Simon Wardley’s strategy maps. From my observations and experience, the myth fulfils the perceived need – often reinforced in performance objectives – to pay more attention to business as usual/taking action and less attention to reflection, learning and challenging – all necessary to keep organisations flourishing.

Redesigning an organisation will solve its problems.  As a McKinsey article notes ‘redesigns that merely address the immediate pain points often end up creating a new set of problems.’   While Deloitte suggests that from their research ‘conducted on 130 organisation design projects from their global client base … fewer than 20% of those projects exceeded the original business case values that were used to justify them in the first place.’  The myth that organisation design will solve a business problem seems to stem from a feeling that changing the lines and boxes on the organisation chart is ‘design’ (related to myth one that organisation design is about the organisation chart).   It may derive from wishful thinking, ignorance, or both (or something completely different) but re/design is not straightforward.

Deloitte warns that ‘Sometimes changing an organisation design can be the wrong approach to address current issues.  It is vital to be very clear on why you undertake a redesign.’ And McKinsey confirms this warning, saying, ‘Companies should therefore be clear, at the outset, about what the redesign is intended to achieve and ensure that this aspiration is inextricably linked to strategy.’

I’d like to know what need this myth fulfils but, hazarding a guess, it’s the need for action over reflection, or possibly a lack of a theoretical knowledge of organisations as complex systems. To help dispel this myth I recommend a short, free Futurelearn course Decision Making in a Complex and Uncertain World in their Business and Management series and another Systems Thinking and Complexity.

There’s a right way to do organisation design.  The origins of this myth probably arise from articles from consultancies and proponents of a specific method.  McKinsey, for example, tells us the ‘9 golden rules’ to get organisation design right.  Strategy+Business offers 10 Principles of Organisation Design, BCG sells Smart Design for Performance while Requisite Restructuring© will ‘Design cost-effective organizational structure that fits the complexity of the company’s value chain.’  There are hundreds of others all somewhat the same and somewhat different in their approaches.

This myth persists because people seem to desire ‘a firm answer to a question and [have] an aversion toward ambiguity, [there’s a] drive for certainty in the face of a less than certain world. When faced with heightened ambiguity and a lack of clear-cut answers, we need to know—and as quickly as possible.’  There’s a tendency to look for ‘cognitive closure’ and I’ve been in situations where I’ve been asked to give someone the ‘right answer’ to various organisation design options.   When I say we can’t know what the ‘right answer’ is we can only work on best information to make somewhat informed choices my response usually doesn’t go down that well.  (I always like what I think is a line from a Van Morrison song ‘There ain’t no why, there just is’ but I’ve never been able to track down the source).

The myth of the ‘right way’ fulfils the need for certainty. Not much organisation design work would be sold by consultants who said they were going to work with what emerges from some delving into what’s going on in an organisation.  Having a structured methodology and an assurance it will work is more comforting to clients.  Working with the need for assurance and certainty is hard if you take the view that organisations are complex emergent systems.  The Cynefin Framework offers an approach.  As David Snowden says, ‘Most situations and decisions in organizations are complex because some major change—a bad quarter, a shift in management, a merger or acquisition—introduces unpredictability and flux. In this domain, we can understand why things happen only in retrospect. Instructive patterns, however, can emerge if the leader conducts experiments that are safe to fail. That is why, instead of attempting to impose a course of action, leaders must patiently allow the path forward to reveal itself. They need to probe first, then sense, and then respond.’  Too few leaders have the courage and patience for that but maybe they can learn?

What do you do when facing an organisation design myth in your work?  Let me know.

Image: Debunking the myth

A couple of weeks ago I was asked if I would do a webinar on organisation design. I thought the organisers would suggest a topic but they asked me to.  I offered three possibilities, ‘New Developments in Organisation Design?’ or ‘The need for continuous organisation design’ or ‘5 myths of organisation design’.  They picked the 5 myths.  So, I started on that,  writing down five myths:

1. Design is about the organisation chart
2. Leaders are in the best position to decide the design of an organisation
3. Organisation design is an intermittent process
4. Redesigning an organisation will solve its problems
5. There’s a right way to do organisation design

Looking at my list, I remembered the article I’d written in 2006 when things were different and dredged it out of my files.  (The Ten Myths of Organization Design. It was published in Issue 7, March 2006, Developing HR Strategy – a journal that doesn’t seem to exist now).   Oh, I found things weren’t different after all.  The 10 myths I wrote about then are below.

1. Organization design is only about changing structures*
2. Organizations can be designed to last
3. Organization design and change management are different
4. Organization design work spawns a cottage industry of its own (I noted, in the article, that this should be a myth but isn’t really as it usually does!)
5. A new design behaves predictably
6. People resist change brought about by organization design work
7. Organization designs work best when mandated by leaders*
8. Organization design is a start-over process*
9. Organization design is a quick fix for a business problem*
10. Organization design is best left to external consultants

The asterisks in the 2006 list indicate those which are also on the 2019 list. The only one that’s new on the 2019 list that isn’t on the 2006 list is ‘There’s a right way to do organisation design’. 

I wondered why my list of organisation design myths hasn’t changed in thirteen years?  We now have design thinking, agile, social media, AI, automation of work processes,  organisational network analysis, and hosts of other technologies that are changing both the way we work and the way we think about work.  (See, for example the RSA Report ‘The Four Futures of Work’)  Some commentators propose the end of organisation charts.

To answer the question ‘why no change in the myth list?’ I got curious about the word ‘myth’  In my using the word I’ve taken one definition that it is ‘a commonly believed but false idea’.  But there is another definition that it is ‘an ancient story or set of stories, especially explaining the early history of a group of people or about natural events and facts’.   In this definition ‘Myth serves to interpret the whole of human experience and that interpretation can be true or fictitious, valuable or insubstantial, quite apart from its historical veracity.’

In his book Myth: a very short introduction Robert Segal proposes that ‘myth accomplishes something significant for adherents’.  He takes issue with ‘today’s parlance’ in which ‘myth is false.  Myth is mere myth.’  And in his blog on the topic ‘For to call even a conspicuously false story or belief a mere myth is to miss the power that that story or belief holds for those who accept it. The difficulty in persuading anyone to give up an obviously false myth attests to its allure.’   Elsewhere, he notes that ‘Myths have also shaped societies and ideologies over the years, from nationalism to fascism, and helped forge the careers of infamous politicians.’

In a another piece he makes the point that ‘Myth as a false story or belief is not objectionable because myth is thereby false. For me, a myth can as readily be false as be true. (But then it can as readily be true as be false.) The falsity or truth of myth is secondary. What is primary is the need that the story originates and functions to serve’.

He suggests asking three categories of questions about myths:

• Those of origin – why and how myth arises
• Those of function – why and how the myth persists.
• Those of need – what need does the myth fulfil and what need makes it last by continuing to fulfil

If we take the view that the examples I give are myths that are false then asking questions around how they originated, why they persist, and what need they fulfil may take us towards less of a derogatory view of those who perpetuate, or work, the myth and more of an understanding of why they do and why it matters to them and how power of the myths help shape the way we approach organisation design.

Take, as an example, the myth that organisation design is about the organisation chart (aka ‘structure’) – which I think is false.  But in my experience, it is clear that many people believe it to be true.  Why?  Possibly because, an organisation chart serves several purposes.  It is a visual representation of hierarchy, reporting lines, who reports to who, number of jobs, teams, employees (not FTE), names of jobs, teams, core business – how work is sectioned, job vacancies, etc.  The myth arises from thinking that the formal elements that can be expressed on a chart are the organisation.

Why and how this myth persists could be to do with attitudes and beliefs around formal relationships.  In a hierarchical organisation, for example it may be a commonly held view that re-allocating positional power enables a ‘better’ person to take on a role (or sidelines a poor performer).  Or it could be, as Margaret Heffernan suggests, that an organisation chart is a powerful symbol of aspiration.  She says that, ‘For decades, managers imagined that corporate ladders were motivating and that dreams of climbing them would drive superior performance’.   Or it could be that there’s a belief that changing the chart is a quick and simple way to fix organisational issues.

Turning to the question of what need does the myth fulfil and what need makes it last by continuing to fulfil?  Well, although Andrew Hill notes in his article It’s time to kill the org chart,  some believe ‘They are a vital tool, providing information on the role and identity of team members. They supply valuable context.’ He says that one HR Director ‘said the org chart was her company’s best-read online document.’  Hill goes on to say that ‘while shredding the org chart may be a satisfying way of triggering such [transformational] change, it could make everything worse if it deprives workers of information about who does what. Businesses need some structure to be able to grow — and sooner or later someone will want to see what that structure looks like.’   So, the organisation chart fulfils a need for some information (but, in my view, it is still not the ‘design’ of the organisation).

Another need that it may fulfil – for those who believe that complex problems have simple answers is that it’s much easier to reconfigure an org chart – back of envelope will do – than take, say, a systems or complexity approach to organisation design.

What’s your view of organisation design myths – how they originate, why they persist and what need they fufil?  Let me know.

Image:  Left brain v right brain myth

Last week, in a discussion about speaking truth to power, someone recommended the documentary ‘Behind the Curve’.  I watched it on Saturday.  It’s a documentary examining the way ‘The internet has revived the conspiracy theory that the earth is flat, and America’s flat-Earth movement appears to be growing despite hundreds of years of scientific evidence disproving the idea.’  It is, as another viewer said, ‘sad, and funny, and fascinating, but it’s also a reminder of the mental gymnastics we would all go to keep our worldview comfortably known.’

In this film you have an example of the power of a belief that over-rides scientific evidence.  Speaking truth to that power isn’t going to get very far in changing the believers’ minds – as the documentary shows.

Much organisation design work is to transform the organisation: leaders talk about moving it from the ‘as-is’ to the ‘to-be’, along the way addressing some perceived and/or real problems.   What this often involves, but is rarely closely examined, is that it usually involves moving from one belief system to another.

For example,  moving from a command and control organisation to a participative and collaborative one.  If leaders have climbed a hierarchical ladder to gain a position of command and control and they believe that system works, at least for them, then what will shift that belief to one where they can be effective leaders in a collaborative and participative organisation.

It’s no good simply saying we want a collaborative and participative organisation if leaders are not willing and able to move their own belief systems (and demonstrate this in practice).  What does an organisation design consultant do, if the client/leader does not show that ability, or recognise the need to show it?  Is it the role of the consultant to speak truth to power i.e. tell the client/leader that if they want to transform the organisation then they must also transform themselves?

A simple answer is ‘yes, it is the role of the consultant’.  Speaking truth to power is, as researchers Megan Reitz and John Higgins say, is ‘vital to an organisation’s ability to thrive and survive.’  In their research they illustrate ‘the limitations of approaches that ‘disappear’ power and truth dynamics, suggesting that the complexities of truth and power must be acknowledged, and mindful action and inquiry undertaken, if organisations are to develop a healthy capacity for ‘speaking truth to power’.

A careful consideration suggests that it is not that simple.  It takes courage.  Doug O’Loughlin in his article  Practicing OD in a VUCA world says, ‘If we are going to create organizations that are actively engaged in dealing with the challenges we face, we need to make it safe for people to speak up for new possibilities’. He continues saying, ‘Courage starts with us [OD consultants]. One metaphor for OD practitioners is that we are the Court Jesters of the old kingdoms, speaking truth to power in ways that helps the royalty get clearer of the impact of their messages and actions.’

And courage is not easy to bring to bear.  For example, if you are an external consultant who has to keep bringing in billable hours or an internal one who is in a more junior hierarchical position than the client would you have that courage?

Gill Corkindale points out in her article The Price of (not) speaking truth to power that ‘It is not easy to speak truth to power, whether it is telling the boss he or she is wrong or owning up to one’s own mistakes. Bosses [and clients] have many means to intimidate — by position, power, personality or even wealth and a sense of entitlement.’

Pondering this while catching up on my reading pile, I came read an article about Chinese sci-fi that made me jump: ‘While Western sci-fi is often alarming, the truth is usually worth discovering … Mr Song suggests that, by contrast, Chinese sci-fi makes a dystopia out of the act of discovery itself, often presenting the truth as not worth knowing, or not worth the risk’.

Speaking truth to power can involves risk, not just for the consultant, but also for the client/boss – for example, does he/she want to know that things are going wrong on the front-line due to a decision he/she made previously? What would be the repercussions if it was revealed?

Then I read a comment section from The Times, posing the question – are we swayed by deep-seated belief rather than hard evidence?   ‘We are irretrievably drawn towards the truth, right? Wrong: anthropological evidence suggests that far from being truth-seekers we are geared for tribal harmony and social cohesion.’

Margaret Heffernan’s book ‘Wilful Blindness’, and her TED talk ‘The Dangers of Wilful Blindness’  touch on these questions.  In the TED talk she talks of ‘Companies that have been studied for wilful blindness’, saying their employees ‘can be asked questions like, “Are there issues at work that people are afraid to raise?” And when academics have done studies like this of corporations in the United States, what they find is 85 percent of people say yes. Eighty-five percent of people know there’s a problem, but they won’t say anything.’

Assuming that it is a desirable thing for internal/external consultants to speak truth to power and to challenge beliefs what can be done to develop skills in doing so?

One way is to develop the humble consulting skills advocated by Edgar Schein. In his book, Humble Consulting (See his 3 minute video intro to it) he talks about levels of relationships with clients, saying ‘In working on messier problems and trying to get at what is really on the client’s mind and what is worrying him, I have found that the formal professional relationships that most models advocate will not get me there.  I have to overcome professional distance and develop what I am calling a Level Two relationship that is more personal, more trusting, and more open.’

Another way is, in the words of Ed Conway, author of The Times piece, mentioned above, ‘the best solution is humility.  Let’s spend a bit less time hectoring and a bit more time listening.’   Listening is also picked up by Edgar Schein in his book Humble Inquiry who says that rather than simply telling people what we think they need to know, practice  ‘the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person’

A third way is offered by Doug O’Loughlin who says speaking truth to power ‘doesn’t have to be confrontative, as we can do this by pointing out patterns or asking reflective questions. Three questions we can ask before sharing something that requires courage are: 1. Will saying this be helpful?, 2. Am I the right person to say this? ,and 3. Is this the right time to say it?’

Two books I’ve found helpful as I think about developing my skills in speaking truth to power (an ongoing effort) are The Power of Difference – from Conflict to Collaboration in Five Steps which has lots of practical exercises and Interthinking – Putting Talk to Work with practical ideas.

Another route I am exploring is how I receive and accept truth in relation to my power and what I can learn from my responses to it.  (Remember power comes in many forms – Gareth Morgan lists fourteen sources – so we are not only talking about truth to positional/hierarchical power though that is, I think the common application of the phrase),

Do you think speaking truth to power is possible or impossible?  How are you developing skills in doing so?  How do you receive someone speaking truth to your power?  Let me know.

Image:  Truth to Power