One perspective that informs our consulting practice at Metalogue is cultural anthropology. We see value in trying to understand the symbolic meaning of behaviour, language, artefacts, rituals and ways of working. This lens often reveals new and different ways of making sense of what goes on in organisations.
The psychologist Carl Jung asserted that one should apply to oneself the same methods that one proposes to use with others, and to do so “with the same relentlessness, consistency and perseverance.” With this good principle in mind, the Metalogue team recently had a working session on the “Team Dialogue Indicator™”
The quote “CULTURE EATS STRATEGY FOR BREAKFAST!” often pops up (in big bold letters) on LinkedIn posts and has variously been attributed to Peter Drucker, Gary Hamel (and with more veracity) Bill Moore and Jerry Rose.
It is still by no means business as usual. While the impact of the pandemic has varied from individual to individual, we are all living with less certainty, often more anxiety and questioning some of the taken for granted in our lives.
Finding new possibilities for how to enable cultural change and transformation. In our last blog, we talked about applying “a liberal dose of science and an equal measure of art” when exploring organisational culture and change. As practitioners, one frame we find helpful comes from John Heron and Peter Reason (2008), who talk about there being 4 “ways of knowing”:
In our work with culture and transformation, we often talk about the importance of narrative and metaphor. In fact we wrote a report about this just recently. So it’s always pleasing when what we say is illustrated by others – in this case by Greta Thunberg in particular. If you managed to miss her speech to the UK parliament here it is.
As part of our research into the practice of designing organisations, we spoke to leaders and practitioners about their experience and reflections on organisation design projects. Most of them acknowledged that, with the benefit of hindsight, they had not given sufficient attention to how changes would be brought to life.
Throughout 2020, we conducted an action research project with our clients into the practice of designing organisations. One observation we made is that most organisations are in a constant process of redesigning themselves as they adapt to ever-increasing levels of uncertainty and complexity. Because of this, organisations are becoming more fluid and structures more transitory.
This was the question posed to us recently by a sceptical senior leader about to embark on an organisation design process for their organisation. On further questioning she intimated that in previous organisations she had always been told what her structure was going to be after a quick decision by the CEO, based on advice from the HR Director and external consultants.
Like all organisations we are looking how to deal with the effects of the Coronavirus outbreak. Our clients are thinking about how to keep making progress on planned work which involved bringing groups of people together, sometimes from around the globe, to tackle issues like strategy and organisation design.
We have been working in and around organisations long enough to have noticed a cyclical obsession with changing culture as a panacea for transformation and renewal. But is it helpful to describe this kind of change as if it is something we can master by applying some kind of cause and effect approach?
Over the past year, we have been researching the practice of transformation in organisations. A brief summary of our findings follows. If you would like to read our findings in more depth, then you can download a copy of the report by clicking on the link at the end of this blog.
The “T” word is everywhere – it’s hard to find an organisation that isn’t undergoing some kind of transformation. At an event last week to launch our Metalogue research on the subject, one group worked on the question “How do we help leaders hold their nerve during transformation.”
Many these days would see leadership development as a specialist field. However, if we look back at what myth and legend have to say, we realise that it is only comparatively recently that we have outsourced the development of leaders to ‘specialists’. For thousands of years before this, the development of ‘leaders’ has been something handled at the heart of communities.
During a recent meeting with a prospective client (let’s call him Paul), I was struck by how much he didn’t want us to sell what we did. He seemed to be much more fascinated in how we felt able to "just be ourselves"(his words). At one stage his challenge was “yeah, yeah I know when you are consulting you can do all that. I’m sure you will be good at partnering with us or anyone.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me”. Did you grow up with this saying as a supposed consolation when someone said something unkind at school? Words may not actually be able to break bones, but they do have effects on our physiology, and how we interact with the world.
“It’s a dance, isn’t it?” was how a client recently described the relationship between the Executive Team (ET) of the organisation and the Senior Management Team (SMT). This description seemed to strike a chord with others in the meeting with a number of knowing smiles in the room, including from us as facilitators.
Organisation 'transformation' has become somewhat of a leitmotif. Increasingly, our clients are using the word 'transformation' when they talk about planned or ongoing change efforts. We’ve become curious about what they actually mean and are doing.
We both attended a recent meeting which started with this exchange… John: “Can we spend some time preparing our plan for the future?”. Pam: “I think we spend too much time thinking about the future and the past – can we pay more attention to what’s going on for us right now?”
Some years ago, we were asked to tender for some work with an organisation which was creating a new five year strategy. The director responsible told us that the strategy he’d inherited sat unread, and largely unimplemented, on the shelf of his classy, glassy corner office.
When we join a new organisation, or move within organisations, it is not uncommon to experience a bit of linguistic disorientation. Groups and sub-groups have often developed their own vocabulary and way of talking about things.
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