Structural Amnesia: noticing, seizing and changing the obvious

The Nuer people live in South Sudan, mostly around the Greater Upper Nile. They are largely semi-nomadic cattle headers. It was the Nuer people that the British anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard (b1902-d1973) chose to study with a trilogy of seminal books published in 1940s. Anthropology is useful, it enables us to see ourselves through the lens of others in a way that we can’t quite glimpse directly. Gillian Tett (Gillian, 2021) quotes the anthropologist Horace Milner as saying that it is ‘alone amongst the sciences it strives to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange (p5).’ Back to the Nuer. The contemporary anthropologist Arlie Russell Hochschild quotes Pritchard as being fascinated that the Nuer could remember ancestors going back eleven generations – but only the men. When it came to women it was almost as if they did not exist. Pritchard called this Structural Amnesia as it reflected the power structures of the kin system which was an indirect expression of power that privileged men but not women. But the Nuer were blind to this. Hochschild uses Pritchard’s insights of Structural Amnesia to explain why some people in the deep red US Republican state of Louisiana (Hochschild, 2016) feel justifiably hurt by the destruction of their much loved environment from industrial pollution yet are blind industry’s culpability. She then meticulously plots the narrative and the power structures at play that create this social amnesia. These are two examples of Structural Amnesia, but they are all around us, yet we hardly notice them.

Here is something that you can try. Get a group together with different experiences and roles, hopefully including someone who is new to the organization, and be your anthropological team and investigate:

At a surface level: What knowledge is taken seriously, for example numbers over words, words over numbers, spoken word, written knowledge, tacit knowing, one topic over another, the weight one department has over another, the influence of different stakeholders, and so on.

At a deeper level: What does this say about who or what has the power.

• Within the organization what groupings and departments hold sway, and how is this reflected in the layout, structures, and even furnishings that you see. How is this power exercised – at meetings, e-mails, side conversations, who is included and who is excluded. 
• Beyond the organizations who are the stakeholders that hold the power and who does not (in healthcare those with learning difficulties are the ones that have less voice and power and have the poorest outcomes – this matters). This can include individuals, groups, and even regulators and government bodies.

Choices for change: Power structures grow and creep over time. These can result in unfair allocation of resources and outcomes for people and poor decision-making or organizations. The question is: by raising these questions and inviting conversations what might change? In other words, how we can work together to imagine and take practical steps to make improvements for people and organizations?

Gillian, T. (2021). AntroVision – How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life. Randon Hose.

Hochschild, A. (2016). Strangers in Their Own Land. The New Press.

Obvious, it’s obvious really

A few days ago Douglas Board, a friend and writing partner or mine, and I ran a Zoom workshop for organisation development professionals. The topic being:

Working with changes in the obvious: why do meritocracies produce glass ceilings

The aim of our session was to ask the question, why is the obvious not obvious to us and what might the consequences be – in this case unintentional effects of creating better and fairer places that sadly can result in the opposite. At least they can do without careful attention to the unintended, and how difficult this can be. For an exploration of some of the ideas we explored at the workshop click here.

However, in this blog posting I want to make some broader observations notably that the obvious is anything but! In a reflective conversation with Douglas after the session we focus on this and the experience of running a workshop for thirty people on Zoom, click here.

At the University of Chichester, I run an MBA for experienced managers as well as an MA in Leadership and Management. I know lots of things about the subject. There was a striking moment in my early thirties when I was presenting a strategy to a group of directors.  In an hour my paradigm that management was all about rational clear-headed argument and evidence was turned on its head. I had realised the importance of power, anxiety, conflict, influence and politics during the course of a very mundane side conversation about catering arrangements for the meeting – what were they doing and why? I can look back to see that this helped spark my long-held interest in management and leadership.

When I work with participants on our programmes a part of my work is knowledge sharing, but this is second order, it is not where I believe that I add the most amount of value. After all, when it comes to knowledge in management there are no ‘proofs’ like you will find in mathematics but ideas, fads and rules of thumbs that tend to work backed up with empirical studies, philosophy, sociology or psychology.

Instead I shake people up so they perceive their ‘obvious’ in new ways: they see it, feel it, hear it etc in a way that they can make sense of and act. And from that action further noticing of the obvious occurs and the ripples continue. I could be running a workshop on decision making and strategy, facilitating an action learning set or having a one-to one coaching conversation – they all shake up the obvious, albeit in different ways.

Perhaps those conversations with Douglas, writing this blog, reflecting on my own work has made obvious to me that little bit more is obvious. And so our work goes on.

Picture credit: Multi Color Abstract 2, 2018 (photo) / © Susan Vizvary / Bridgeman Images

Purpose and ethics of organisation development: moral practice of the moment

Picture credit: Blest are those of integrity, 2000 (acrylic on board), Waddams, Ron (1920-2010) / Private Collection / Bridgeman Images

James Traeger and I have been working with ODN Europe to ask some fundamental questions about the future of organisational development. Here is our letter on where we see the future and ethics brought into sharp relief by the ongoing pandemic. 

It is April 2020 and Covid-19 is ripping its way through the populations of the world. Both of us work in organisation and people development and are struck by the moral gravity of recent conversations. We have listened to people talking of their role in making mass redundancies of garment machinists in developing countries; laying off highly skilled people in the European pharmaceutical industry according to the rules dictated by American owners and the dilemmas of senior leaders weighing up the optics of releasing prisoners early into society. These are conversations unthinkable only weeks ago. Yet this is not the whole story. In nine days London has a new 4,000 bed hospital – one of the largest in the world.  People have organised with their neighbours to support the old and vulnerable and there are companies that have turned their operations around to make ventilators, masks, sanitizers in just days. There have been extraordinary acts of kindness, flexibility and solidarity and yet there are we see examples that make the heart sink.

For those of us in the field of people and organisation development we are reminded of the impetus of a founding father, Kurt Lewin (1890-1947). Lewin was driven to make the world a better place having been horrified by the inhumanity witnessed in the Second World War. But we should not wait for hindsight to prompt us to consider how to make sure people act ethically.  Petruska Clarkson (1947-2006), another luminary of humanistic psychology suggested we might use ‘midsight’ as reflexive awareness of our actions and mindset in the here and now is a better place to start. The world will be changed by this and we can help be better, by what we and the leaders we work with are doing right now. In all of this there is a question: what are the values of social justice that guide what we do? At some point history will judge us; each person, organisation, government and community. With the immediate transparency that is piped into our mobile devices, we will judge and be judged. Judgement starts right here, right now: the world is looking.

Over the past twelve months we have been working with ODN Europe, a professional body aimed at developing the theory and practice of organisation development (OD), to rethink OD. James has been working with others to ask the question: what is the future of OD? Rob and colleagues have focussed on the question: what are the ethics of OD? This pandemic brings the two together. At times of upheaval our true values come to the fore for both good and ill. It is now that those carefully crafted words in the corporate social responsibility policy are put to the test.

Even before the pandemic, organisations were changing unrecognisably. They have become loser, less connected and less bounded. This is characterised by long supply chains, networks of people coming together to work on projects and then moving on, casual employment and zero hours contracts and automation. But people have the same hopes, anxieties, worries, dreams and instincts that they always have. So, what is the role of organisation development? We believe that there are two important themes if we are to create better organisations and a wider society that Lewin might recognise. Firstly, the development of profound relational skills between people. In short, how people influence and how they are influenced in creating a better world. Secondly, to enable people to made sense of their experience, to challenge assumptions that would otherwise wash over them. All of this is serves the need for better decision making as well as social justice. We do not come to this from a privileged position of knowing the answers, instead we are part of a process of living inquiry of discovery and improvement.

The question is: how will we hold each other to account and bring about positive change? At its most radical, it is about everyday normal interactions that we all have as we understand the world, involve others and make decisions. It is not about abstract theory, policy or ‘key performance indicators’.

We propose three question areas that nest together, sitting at the heart of ethical practice. These are as follows:

Firstly, how we are planning for the future? Here the focus is on how our actions might impact people in the longer term. Questions include:

• How do I ensure that I ask the right questions before I decide on a course of action?
• How do I know when I have involved the right people and information in planning a course of action?
• How do I know if I have hurt or harmed?
• How will I know if I have done any good?
• How will I account for myself to others – what will I say in planning my course of action?

Secondly, how do we make the next step as we interact with others? Here are focus is in the here and now. Questions include:

• How will I develop awareness of the wider influences and contexts of what I am experiencing?
• How will I act in the network relationships in which some people are more powerful and others less powerful?
• How can I ask questions that will enable me to get more insightful views of conversation?
• How will I know that I have been ‘conditioned’ to act or think in a certain way?

Finally, In working with others how are we influence and how are we being influenced? Here we consider our impact on others. Questions include:

• How can we stop ourselves sleepwalking into poor and unethical decision making?
• How do we keep alive enough difference so that we can see our world with ‘new eyes’?
• How do we keep aware of the changing contexts and how this affects our stakeholders?
• How can we keep asking difficult questions of ourselves?

These are questions written in the first person; they are about ‘you’ and ‘me’, not the distant ‘them’. At this current time people are having to make extraordinary decisions where the normal structures and reassurance of knowledge and hierarchies are under enormous pressure as they change. This is becoming the new normal. If this is the case these questions of ourselves and those around us become ever more important. Today it might be about the pandemic but tomorrow we still face climate change, the impact of digital technology and the changing expectations and hopes of the world’s populations.

In summary, even before the pandemic organisations were changing rapidly responding to the realities of climate change, digital transformation and greater expectations from people and this will continue. Yet people have the same hopes, desires, anxieties that they always have. Through this we have choices to make and accountabilities to face. If OD is to remain relevant, to enable people to understand and navigate these challenges, we too have to change and to adapt in a similar manner.

This will bring into sharper focus the core of OD namely social justice and moral practice. This is achieved through developing profound relational skills and our ability to make sense and respond to what is happening.  This long tradition of OD practice is as relevant, if not more relevant, than it has ever been to make a positive change in the world.

Here is the paper: Ethics R Warwick and J Traeger

13 films that say something about people and organisations

In the following blog posts there are thirteen films that say something about people and organisations. Here are some questions you might like to ask yourself:

• What films are you drawn to and what does this say about you?
• What book, poem, film, play etc has influenced you and why?
• What do films etc communicate about organisational life that academic books and papers cannot?
• If you are studying management, organisations and leadership how would you bring films etc into your work?
• What script would you write?

To find out more about the project we have been working on click here. Any thoughts about our project it would be great to hear from you.

Rob Warwick and David Goodman.

 

Six books (that have helped me) to understand people and organisations

I have done a quick scan of my bookshelves to find six books that have helped me understand organisational life and to give reassurance that it is not just me. This is particularly true when I find it hard to fathom what is going on.  Here goes:

The Portable Hannah Arendt, Penguin Classics. Evil people are rarely born evil. They are nurtured and created by a lack of reflection and thought. We need to save others and ourselves from that fate by asking those searching questions that unsettle, even if it hurts.

Seeing Like a State, James C Scott, Yale University Press. Powerful people tend to be sensible folk. They make decisions based upon how they see their world and their own experience. The problem is that their experience is often not ours. The question is how do we keep sharing those experiences?

Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell, Penguin Books. Above all else, life is most vivid if we pay attention to the detail. It is there to see, smell, feel, taste and hear. It is fun, quirky, sad, confusing and simple all at the same time.

Victims of Groupthink, Irving Janis, Houghton Mifflin Co. Powerful delusional people surround themselves with powerful delusional people. Not only that but when things get worse, they only listen to each other. Note to self: stand by the lifeboat.

Rationality and Power, Bent Flyvbjerg, Chicago University Press. They may be wrong but powerful people get to write the truth. That said we do not have to believe it and we have a voice.

Grimms Fairy Tales, The Brothers Grimm, Routledge. At least I am not in a forest with a wolf.

SML v2.0 – practice based learning

Ideas are bubbling up for a new research project. And one keeps coming back to me and it is this: what might Self-Managed Learning (SML) look like in the 21^st Century? This begs two initial questions: 1) what is self-managed learning (SML); 2) what is so special about the 21^st century. In summary SML was developed by Ian Cunningham (Cunningham, 1999) whereby participants had greater control over defining what their learning goals were to be and how they would go about demonstrating their learning.  This was in contrast with most programmes with fixed learning outcomes, exams and other ways to demonstrate knowledge.  Here SML challenges participants to think carefully as to what they want to achieve and why. As for the 21^st century, we are clearly living in a faster paced world that is less stable with daunting existential threats such as climate change.

In bringing these two together questions and ideas swirl in my mind, some of which will survive time and scrutiny, others will not. To give myself a chance I am looking at postgraduate study in the fields of leadership and the development of organisations. To emphasise, I am making a clear link between the individual and their social working melee, both are a part of each other.

The first question I come to is: what counts for knowledge for learning and organisations now? This question is too big; perhaps better described by what it is not, or rather how things are shifting. In organisations there was the ‘go to’ expert, often senior with longstanding. Similarly in academia there is the peer reviewed journal for example, expert authors with expert reviewers behind the scenes. But how are we to make sense of fast moving fleeting knowledge that relates to one context but less so of another, yet avoiding the trap of ‘fake’ in its often contested nature. And having understood what is around us how do we build on this with others and communicate something useful. Similarly how we understand and contribute to other’s knowledge work. In this sense critical thinking becomes less of the individual and more social.

In this situation what might be the role of developers and universities be? This particularly important if we are seen less for our expertise? In addition, how might this be recognised in a qualification programme such as a Post Graduate Certificate? How do we explicably recognise the three-way role of the participant, the organisation and university or developer more explicitly given the slipperiness of understanding and knowledge? Perhaps what I am really interested in is Socially Mediated Learning?

Hot from the publication of our book, Organisation Development: A Bold Explorer’s Guide, this is a project that I’ll be working on with James Traeger. This week we met to make a start with a walk on the deserted winding beach at Pagham, a small harbour village on the south coast of the UK. Here we began the process of shaping what defines and interests us about the topic. I have laid out my initial thoughts and these will change and grow in the conversations we will have, as James’s views will do likewise. In fact, to catch the shift in thinking we are starting to talk about this as practice based learning. And very soon we will be having conversations with others. In short, to start the process of socially mediated learning.

Cunningham, I. (1999). The wisdom of strategic learning: The self managed learning solution. Oxford: Gower Publishing Ltd.

Organisation development: a bold explorer’s guide

This month sees the publication of the book that James Traeger and I have been working on over the last year or so. It has been a project where we have been keen to put the art of everyday interaction at the centre of organisation development (OD). We wanted to write a book that gave confidence to people who might ask themselves the question: ‘is it just me, but …’; particularly for those puzzled by the messiness, politics and sheer difficulty in getting anything done when set against the simplicity and step-by-step instructions implied in many other OD books and articles.

Think for a moment when we meet a senior director informally, moments later an idea can take shape with new avenues to be explored. On the other hand, another idea is quashed. What are our responsibilities to the organisation and its people in these moment-by-moment interactions? And how do we know? In this way OD is not a series of set piece of events, it is a continual process of everyday interaction. Some of these are high profile and carefully planned, others not. So, how do we pay attention and talk about OD in a different way? We have chosen to put the curious OD practitioner at the heart of their own development. We use narratives and fiction a reflexive prompts between our worlds and yours. Finally, we draw on some theory of process and interaction to draw some wider themes together.

If you are interested in buying a copy, use the Discount Code JW18 to obtain a 20% discount when bought online from our publishers – here is the link.

Everyday ethics of relationships

Picture: BAL21431: The Constructors, 1950, Leger, Fernand (1881-1955) / Musee Leger, Biot, France / Bridgeman Images

Here is a different way of thinking about business ethics, one that focuses on relationships and how these change. In other words, those small decisions and actions that we take daily that over the course of time come to affect us and those that we work with. Sometimes the results have positive ethical effects, but sometimes not. Let us take two quite different examples, one a growing loss of voice, the other being caught by surprise by an important person.

You start working with an established team and it is clear to you that something is not right.  Members of the team sees the world in very similar ways. And when faced with bad news they back each other up to establish a more comforting view of reality. They disregard your views that there is a problem and back each other up with greater energy. Later you try to take a halfway position on another issue using language which they relate to and toning down the message. This gets a better reaction but is still rejected. You accommodate further and in doing so you find acceptance. You feel you’re having an impact with nods around the table but limited future commitment. Months later you reflect: what has changed? In fact, nothing has, apart from you.

You are supporting a senior director on a major change programme and over a short period of time you have built a relationship. She tells you her current thoughts over a quick coffee. She sketches out some ideas on a paper napkin, including a hastily drawn organisational structure. The implications of this short conversation may come to affect hundreds of people for years to come, the majority of which you will never know. Caught by surprise what do you say? How hard do you push, particularly if you believe the wrong course has been chosen? Sometimes these interactions can be rapid and decisions taken in the space of a couple of minutes – both by what is said, and not said. What time do we have to reflect and consider the implications?

What links both examples is the way that we can be drawn in and become changed. Here we see the effect of power relations of a group and flattery of an important person, but there are many others. We think it is helpful to draw attention to those small ethical dilemmas of relationships that often develop. To us this is just as important as those ‘big’ ethical and corporate responsibility questions that people in organisations face. They are important because they are so ordinary and yet often unnoticed.

April will see the publication of the book I have been writing with James Traeger called Organisation Development: A Bold Explorer’s Guide (published by Libri books) in which these and other ideas are explored.

Two takes on Organisation Development

Jabob,D (2007) Ray Guns. Available at www.bridgemaneducation.com

James Traeger and I have been writing a book called Organisation Development: a Bold Explorer’s Guide and in a few months it will be published. We play with the idea of science fiction and how this might help us to understand organisations. Here are a couple of takes.

Take 1 ‘science’ and ‘fiction’ – science envy

Increasingly we have fallen under the spell of ‘science’; a hypothesis sits tightly wrapped in a specification or ‘Invitation to tender’ only to unfold months later to judge the success or failure of the learning.  In such a world there is little room for lucky learning and chance encounters that lead to sparkling conversations and new possibilities. Thanks to the likes of Burke Litwin and their models, PowerPoint slides now confidently show the causal links between ‘leadership’ and ‘Individual needs and values’, stopping briefly at ‘systems and values’. Here theory provides confidence that there is little to worry about, all we need is the application of scientific methods. This is a fiction; we know this to be untrue. However, we rarely speak of flair, art or knack of the experienced practitioner or others learning their craft. Working with people is anything but scientific. So why do we hold onto these ideas? The experienced practitioner uses them with a light touch, for example to communicate subtle issues to an anxious client. The practitioner new to OD clings onto these ideas like a child to a comfort blanket.

Take 2 ‘science fiction’ – enabling imagination

Suppose now we take ideas of OD as an art seriously. Here we can address full on different ways of knowing that pays attention to our experience of working in the moment, of making the best choices as confusing events unfold. This might include different ways of thinking about ethics, what does ‘right’ look like given the many people who might be affected by what we do. We might also need to think about who holds power and what our responsibilities are to those with a marginal voice. Also, we can think differently about how we describe progress, both planned and what has emerged through chance connections. How might we talk about OD in this way? One way is to talk about everyday experiences and examples. But what if we wanted to free ourselves of the context and limitations of the present? This is where science fiction comes in again. What if we were to use the future as a way to explore the now? How might this free up our imagination to make connections between people and ideas that we had not thought of before? Here science fiction enables of our social imagination as we share ideas and possibilities.

These different worlds are fascinating, not as discreet islands, but as they mingle together to shape the reflexive practitioner.

 

The educational tour and gift shop – No thank you!

Multiple shades of the Sussex countryside viewed from the Bothy at Standen House

I’ve got a confession to make. I don’t like reading management and leadership literature. Well, a lot of it. I should explain, my interest is in everyday experience and how we think, talk and write about it and how this might be of use to others. Sometimes this feels lonely, so it was wonderful to take part in ‘Voicing Experience: The 4th British Conference of Autoethnography’ conference at the University of Sussex this week. I know why kids complain when they are taken to stately homes and gardens, their hands tightly squeezed and marched along the most educationally economic route, to stand still in front of pictures and rooms belonging to long dead people. Look but don’t touch. And where lawns are not for running on. It seems to miss the point. I’m talking about my own experience here. And it is this that I react against in much management and leadership writing. As readers we get drawn predictably through introduction, methods, findings only to end up in the ‘gift shop’, that of the succinct conclusion. As writers (again I’m talking about myself) we are pushed to make our contribution clearer and clearer. In exploring experience, conclusions are often not clear, we have provisional ways forward that bring with them mixtures of hope and doubt. Sometimes we are just confused. Like a child I want to run about, play in the gardens, pick things up and bounce up and down on the sofas. I want to take fragments of insights gathered on my haphazard path and to relate these to my own interests and experience. This is perhaps why I am drawn to ethnography, a way of research that offers the textures and complexities of everyday life, from which we all might explore and rummage. The conclusions that we draw are tentative and created by ourselves with a gentle nudge and support from the narrator. I see this way of working most vividly in sociology and anthropology, but it has yet to fully catch on in leadership and management. A couple of things struck me at the conference: the variety of experiences we talked about; and, the variety of ways we talked about experience. What might management and leadership education be like if we adopted similar approaches? Perhaps being more tentative and less dogmatic might make management and leadership [development] less macho. It might also make us a little more reflexive of experience and keener to enquire of what we are doing and why. We might even be more cautious of articles in glossy journals that promise simple solutions to problems that we know are complex. We might even embrace poetry, filmmaking, storytelling and just experiment a little. And in doing so we might be more confident of finding our own leadership path.