The moment you can’t ignore: When big trouble leads to a great future

Citation

Stephen Flynn (2015), "The moment you can’t ignore: When big trouble leads to a great future", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 29 No. 6, pp. 32-34. https://doi.org/10.1108/DLO-10-2015-0076

This book is about change, change where there is a clash of culture. More than that, it is how and why organizations inevitably get stuck on that journey of change. The authors show how to move beyond such blockages using the techniques of the ethnographer or anthropologist. The book uses recurring case narratives throughout to illustrate this ethnographical approach to change management. Readers who like real examples and true stories will be attracted to this book.

The authors both work in CFAR, a consultancy based in the USA, that specializes in strategy and organizational development. They are both qualified in anthropology, which informs their professional practice and their writing.

The context for this volume is a business environment of ever-continuous change. The pressures placed upon organizations in such a context often show up in what the authors call “un-ignorable moments”. These are events, actions or comments that expose the clash between current and future. The book is a description of how several organizations and their leaders navigated through such troubled times.

These “un-ignorable moments” are potent instances that are packed with information on the current culture and on the positive energy for change. Such “moments” result from the clash between the existing culture and the change program that an organization has launched. Such moments have four characteristics. Firstly, they are generally public in nature. Everyone gets to hear about them. Secondly, they are irreversible. Thirdly, they are systemic. Fourthly, they fundamentally challenge the identity of the organization. The “un-ignorable moment” calls into question the identity of the whole group and each one of its members. They thus cannot be ignored. However, such moments also demonstrate that the organization is stuck. Organizations going through change should expect to get stuck. Such moments are thus both an opportunity and a threat. If “un-ignorable moments” are not dealt with promptly and sensitively, the organization may descend into chaos. However, if addressed appropriately, they offer a chance of valuable and accelerated success.

The threat inherent in “un-ignorable moments” is that they challenge the four questions that organizations going through change struggle with:

Q1. What is our identity as an organization?

Q2. Who’s in charge?

Q3. How do I lead?

Q4. What is our future?

This is because change confronts the tacit agreement between organizational players that constitute “culture”. The authors define culture as both a systemic agreement about how work gets done and the rules on how individuals interact with each other. Such an agreement and such rules are often unspoken. Organizational players will be so used to them that they are seen as “normal” – how we do things around here as it were. Such agreement and rules will be hidden in plain view. The authors suggest that they can only be raised to the conscious level by applying the art and science of the ethnographer. The techniques set out in the book include: participant observation, shadowing, open questions, listening in, picking up on signals and noting all salient observations. All of this is to help the ethnographer “take the native’s view”. From this, she is able to build up a “thick description” of the situation – the nature of the current culture and how the change initiative is a challenge to that culture.

This offers the diagnostic on the threat posed by the “un-ignorable moments”. The opportunity requires the discovery within the organization of what the authors term “found pilots”. These are people, units, projects or programs that already exist in the organization that are somehow experimenting with the desired future state or desired behaviors. Through indulging in ethnographical fieldwork, the reader can test whether such “found pilots” could work on a grander scale and offer the opportunity for the future success of the organization.

Found pilots are where the future is already happening inside the organization. As pilots, they are often fragments of that future, small scale, tucked away in corners of the organization, hidden in plain sight but under the radar:

• “Where does the solution already exist in the organization?”

• “Where is the future already happening in your organization right now?”

Often short on resources and with little in the way of official budgets, those running found pilots improvise, combine stuff in novel ways, indulging in bricolage – that is they use whatever is to hand to make their projects work. These are little pockets of action learning.

To move from these pockets of innovation to organization-wide change requires the next stage in the authors’ approach – mobilizing people’s energy. For a new strategic direction to succeed, it requires a new system-wide agreement on how work gets done and how people work together (the authors’ definition of culture). This needs a coalition of committed employees who can sweep people into building the new approach. This coalition needs authority figures to provide cover. The coalition needs to enlist the contribution of skeptical friends to help them navigate through the wider organization successfully. Skeptical friends are allies who can respectfully see the negative effects of every proposed action. By identifying such effects, actions can be modified to reduce negative consequences. The coalition also needs to leverage social capital by engaging with and influencing pockets of “resistance’. Such resistance often represents the guardians of the existing culture and a source of energy. Resistance is not opposition but feedback. So, by aligning actions with the interests of the “opposition”, the change program is more likely to succeed as it becomes compatible with the existing culture.

Finally, the reader is guided toward the style of leadership that enables all of the above. The authors comment on the shift from “command and control” to “command and collaborate”. In all organizations, there is a social contract between leaders and the workforce. The traditional model was “command and control”. Here, leaders commanded a hierarchical tightly coupled structure, designed and pushed the strategy onto the workforce and “motivated” and “empowered” employees. The modern world has shifted toward structures that are loosely coupled with a greater degree of interdependency and the recognition that motivation is intrinsic. In such a world, leaders have to manage as if the workforce were volunteers. Hence, leaders have to keep the workforce interested in and committed to the strategy. Thus, to be successful, leaders need willing followers. Once the basics are cared for and once an employee has a “good enough” wage, he is (self-) motivated by the opportunity to be self-directed with the chance to master something and the opportunity to participate in an organization with a valued purpose. Through “command and collaboration”, the leader has to create the environment that enables such motivation to the fore.

The authors conclude by offering a model of how to successfully deal with continuous change – by creating the “superconducting organisation”. Here, strategy and culture fuel each other, hidden assets are leveraged, interests are negotiated openly and decision-making takes behavior into account.

All of the above may seem time-consuming. Building collaboration requires an investment of time and energy. Yet, given the need to adapt to a volatile and ever-changing world, the authors’ recommendations may seem misplaced. When faced with an “un-ignorable moment”, it is naturally tempting to rush to a solution. However, they offer a paradox that somehow rings true – slow down to speed up. By slowing down, initially, you can speed up, later. By taking the time to understand the “un-ignorable moment”, by seeking out the “found pilots”, by building a coalition, by engaging with and aligning to the “opposition”, by creating the environment in which employees can be truly self-motivated, the leaders will energize the organization such that it becomes self-generating. Rather than all the energy coming from the leaders “pushing” the organization, now the energy is “pulled” from employees who identify with the change required because they have created the actions themselves. As the authors say, the leader of the future is not a hero, but someone who creates heroes.

This book offers an ethnographic approach to change management. It adds to the literature that draws upon the insights offered by anthropology when applied to the context of commercial and not-for-profit organizations.