The phrase ‘think-tank’ is relatively familiar. What a think-tank does, according to The Economist is ‘aim to fill the gap between academia and policymaking. Academics grind out authoritative studies, but at a snail’s pace. Journalists’ first drafts of history are speedy but thin. A good think-tank helps the policymaking process by publishing reports that are as rigorous as academic research and as accessible as journalism. (Bad ones have a knack of doing just the opposite.)’
But my interest today is not in think-tanks but in think banks. Not the actual Think Bank accounts ‘mainly for customers with poor credit histories or who have struggled financially’ which changed its name in 2012 to Think Money, but a think bank in terms of your own investment in your thinking.
Imagine we each had a think bank account. We could then build up the capital gained from reflective conversations, questions and reading that were not aimed at ‘getting the world’s business done, or baking bread, or flying aeroplanes’. Simon Blackburn in his book Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy argues for the value of ‘reflecting on concepts and procedures and beliefs that we normally just use’.
Invested in well, our individual think bank accounts would have the same outcome as a think tank – a rigorous and accessible point of view/thought process that we could draw on, as Blackburn says, ‘when the going gets tough: when the seas of argument rise, and confusion breaks out’.
During last week I added three things to my think bank account. I’m not sure when I’ll draw on them but they’re there and maybe getting interest. The first was on ‘additionality’. That was a term new to me but it made perfect sense as the discussion unfurled. The person I was talking with defined additionality as calling into being what didn’t exist as part of something and being able measure what value it added to the original thing.
This led me to looking up additionality, and I found a more formal definition than my colleague’s in the Additionality Guide, ‘Additionality is the extent to which something happens as a result of an intervention that would not have occurred in the absence of the intervention.’ The Guide itself offers ‘a standard approach to assessing the additional value of interventions’.
So now in my think bank is info on additionality to mull over + 3 questions to prompt reflection: What does this Guide offer that could help us measure the effectiveness of organisation design work? Is subtractionality (I’ve coined this word, I think) as useful a concept as additionality i.e. is what we take away in our organisation design work e.g. policies, or reduction of levels of hierarchy, a value add and thus additionality? What else can I learn from concepts of additionality?
The second thing that I’ve added to my think bank is from the pull-out section in the Economist: ‘The World if’. It’s an annual pull-out asking us to imagine various future possibilities. (Take a look at the 2016 edition that ask the question ‘If Donald Trump was elected’ which came out several months before he was.)
This year there are 10 ‘If’s’ all worth reflecting on. One that I’ve added to my think bank is ‘If companies had no employees’. The scene is set in July 2030. when ‘companies that embraced the shift away from having employees have reaped big gains. They no longer need to pay people to be in the office when demand is slack. They can find the worker with the perfect skills for a task, not just someone willing to have a go. Because individual workers’ output is finely measured, and their proficiency at completing a task becomes part of their online profiles, no one can be lazy and get away with it. Productivity growth has accelerated since the mid-2020s. Many workers have also benefited. For those with sought-after skills, it can be far more lucrative to flit from contract to contract than to work for a single firm.’
How likely is this scenario, I’m wondering? At the moment, I think it’s likely and I should be designing organisations to head in this direction, but maybe I should leave the question lying for the moment – banking it for when I have time and information to examine it more closely. As a thought though – it could form a very good basis for a leadership discussion – if the leaders were willing to give time to it. Many find it difficult to give time to a reflective discussion, even if they know the value of doing so – you may be able to persuade them with some useful tips from How to Regain the Lost Art of Reflection.
The third thing I added to my think bank account was a question: What effect do protests have? This was prompted by seeing the placards of the Homes and Communities Agency Unite workers beginning a strike over pay, seeing the tens of thousands in London attending the anti-Trump demonstration, and reading, again in ‘The World If’, If Martin Luther King had not been assassinated. A group of us – with varied views – were wrestling with this question and it’s one that’s again relevant to organisation design – could organisational protests spark organisational change and redesign?
There seems to be some evidence that they can spark policy change – but maybe only in the wider societal context? (Think LGBT, or gender equality, for example). Or maybe there isn’t any real evidence? I’m not sure, and again it’s in my think bank for investing in further.
Those were the three major deposits into my think bank this week. But I made a couple of smaller ones. After a tech conversation I had with someone, he sent me info on Digital Humanism which sounds worth investing thought into as we work with more and more organisational technology and automation.
I got into a further discussion on why we have difficulty with systems thinking (ref my blog last week) and I’m still investing in that one. Then I read a review plus sample chapter of Matt Haig’s book Notes on a Nervous Planet. In the book he talks about fear and the way it manifests in society. Fear is often present in organisations – particularly in risk averse cultures where people fear doing the wrong thing even if there are organisational mantras like ‘fail fast and learn’. This led me to a question, what to do when I observe that tension in play?
So quite a few think bank deposits this week to ponder, reflect on, and invest in for future returns. What have you added to your think bank this week? Let me know.
PS Thanks to James for the concept of a think bank.
Image: Ancient Roman Banking
Naomi Stanford 