Managing uncertainty is something our brain loves to do. And it loves even more  to be helped.

At macro-macro-level, Theories-Of-Everything do the trick. Very elegantly, Nobel Prize (Medicine) Jacques Monod (1910 – 1976) ^[1], whose Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology made a significant impact on me as a young doctor in my 20s, described as ‘mythical ontogenies’ those that explain everything from religious beliefs to Theory of Man.

But, on a small scale, we can see this in every little piece of uncertainty in daily life: the difference a little decrease of that uncertainty can make is not to be ignored. Behavioural Economics, to its credit, understands this very well and creates ‘nudges’ that can, in their own simplicity, travel a million miles between the certainty and uncertainty territory, and, in doing so, decrease our anxiety and tell the brain, it’s ok, relax, it’s not that dark out there.

Here are some examples

• From you are in a queue, to you are number 6 in the queue and going down
• From flight delayed, to flight delayed by 45 minutes; new update in 10
• From queue here, to 15 mins from here to the Immigration Officer
• From waiting for the doctors (no info), to you’ll see the doctor between 10 and 11
• From maybe three months, to something no later than three months
• From open possibilities, to there are 3 options
• From questions in a survey, to you are half way through the survey
• From we will continue tomorrow, to this is what will happen tomorrow

Each second part alternative contains that little extra piece of info that tells the brain to stop worrying.

We could construct an entire management system on this basis. The zero cost question is, how can I decrease uncertainty by 10-20-50%? Perhaps 100%, because how much you need that delta reduction and how much I need it, may be very different. In other words, the anti-anxiety effect is not linear, the difference between ‘from flight delayed, to flight delayed by 45 minutes; new update in 10’ may be for me the 100% difference between complete panicking and redirecting my attention to key things with zero anxiety.

In fact, I would go further and say that, delta reduction is far more effective than a full blown ‘I have all the data’. Uncertainty avoidance (a feature described as characteristic of some national cultures) does not require full avoidance, just a dose of decreasing, that magic delta. The pursuit of total uncertainty avoidance is futile. Unless of course you want to use the management equivalent of Monod’s mythical ontogenies (I have an answer for everything, what is the question?): these are all the answers, these are all the Gantt charts, this is what reality will look like on Wednesday 27 in the afternoon. A management practice that comes well below the weather forecast in efficacy. But could also be very effective even if wrong.

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The Chalfont Project Academy ^[2] – these resources are for you!

 

 

If you work in change, transformation or culture, whether you are a business leader, HR/OD/Communications professional, or with a remit in people engagement, the resources in our Academy, will take you into the mobilizing world with very practical insights that will be enlightening for everybody.

The Chalfont Project Academy ^[2] is here to enable us to share our many resources developed through the work of Dr Leandro Herrero and The Chalfont Project, enabling you to gain a greater understanding of topics around large scale change, leadership and organizational design – all based upon our unique approach. Read, watch, absorb, then share, enhance, enlighten the world with what you learn, observe and engage with.

You can take our flagship course: Mobilize! Masterclass ^[3]. Enter the world of organization architecture and acquire a complete blueprint for mobilizing people whether you are working on change, transformation or shaping culture.

Or start with a comprehensive collection of learning resource packages which include videos, webinars, papers and book extracts.

You’ll be able to choose from:

• Viral Change – The Principles
• Viral Change – The Key Players
• Behaviours – Part I
• Behaviours – Part II
• The Informal Organization – Part I
• The Informal Organization – Part II

• Peer to Peer Influence
• The Art of Storytelling
• Leadership Principles – Part I
• Leadership Principles – Part II
• Social Movement Principles
• Designing remarkable organizations

 

What people are saying…

I don’t like to sound gloomy, but, is the current self-centrism an epidemic of colossal proportions? Or, another way to put it, is navel-gazing the tsunami coming to all our shores?

Individually, we are in a massive selfie/toxic epidemic. Millions of homo sapiens take pictures of themselves as if running out of time before any Second Coming of the Lord, or at least The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse drop by.

Companies look 90% at themselves and 10% at the market. And when they use the 10%, 90% of that 10%, it is looking at competitors, not the real buyers, not society.

Big Countries. Well, that one wants to be Great Again, meaning close the borders, look inside, close the windows, look at us.

Big Global Brands have such a high regard for themselves that they keep telling us about their attributes, and their greatness, and their passions – which they have dissected into millions of PowerPoints and multi million pound consultants – so that the rest of us mortals recognise a greatness that we don’t care much about, and pay for that greatness that is not that great.

The Me Inc. is very strong and, dangerously, we believe that we are communal and resource-sharing loving people. Wow!

Across the world, self-centred-born organizations have become so sophisticated at navel-gazing that you wonder if they have inherited some sort of optical macular degeneration, aka blindness, in the process. Conservatives are hyper-conservatives because they want to conserve what they see in their navel-gazing exercises.  Left-leaning organizations have lost the equilibrium, due to so much navel-gazing, they are falling instead of just leaning, and becoming irredeemably self-centred. Nationalist movements thrive because telling people to look after oneself and forget the rest, sells very well. Add in the salt and pepper of ‘the others are screwing you up’, and, bingo, we all want independence in a Massive Interdependent World.

We need a counter-epidemic. It reads like this. People, can you open the windows? Actually you’ll be amazed what you can see. You are not that important, we all are. Calm down. Your horse is getting a bit tired. Bosses, employees, politicians, journalists (that excludes the UK Daily Mail), Decent Men, we are here In Transit. Stop looking in. We are in this together. The answers are outside us, most of the time.

I know that my Unsexy Manifesto won’t go too far but, come on, let’s be serious. There is a thing called society, despite Mrs Thatcher’s denial. Most of the things that look like ‘I’ or ‘me’ don’t have  a life within the ‘us’.

ps. I propose a Narcissus Tax. For every selfie, 10% of your phone battery is gone. (Mr Crook? Mr Croooook? Tim? Are you there?).

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You can now watch our free on demand webinars led by Dr Leandro Herrero and his team of organizational architects. To find out about our workshops visit The Chalfont Project website ^[4] or Contact Us ^[5] today.

 

‘A Better Way’ Series ^[6]

• Design your organizational structures to create a Remarkable Organization for the future ^[6]
• Create sustainable large scale behavioural and cultural change across your organization ^[6]

 

Feed Forward Webinar Series ^[7]

WATCH our 5, free webinars as Dr Leandro Herrero and his team of organizational architects, debunk uncontested assumptions and uncover the alternatives, whilst considering why this is even more relevant today in the current exceptional environment.

 

Camino Book Launch Webinar  ^[8]

Leandro Herrero discusses leadership themes from his new book and reflects on leadership as a continuously evolving praxis. ‘Nobody is ever a leader. Becoming one is the real quest’. He is joined by senior consultants from The Chalfont Project – Organization Architects ^[9] Anett Helling and Jayne Lewis, ACC.

I have described before the role of managers in many ways, often pointing to the risk of becoming ‘information traffic wardens’. The ones managing the valves of the pipes that carry information across the organization. Sometimes they open the valves and the stuff flows. Sometimes they close them, or a little bit, and the information gets stuck.

Indeed this is a pejorative view, but nonetheless a frequent representation of the reality. Valves open or closed, we are all a sort of ‘information traffic warden’. The question I often ask myself is whether in the effort to ‘share’, the sharing itself, a mechanism of the type I-do-because-I-can, takes over the meaning or even the intention of some sort of impact.

Jessica Helfand, designer, artist, academic and author, struck a cord when reading her beautiful book Design: The invention of desire. In one of her chapter she says:

And just what is it we’re sharing? Regurgitated content produced by others? In many cases, we don’t share; we re-share, positioning ourselves not so much as makers but as carriers, aligning ourselves as the purveyors of so much trivia, supporters of the eminently forgettable, participants in a spontaneous assembly line, a delivery mechanism of any number of random things—for what is more terrifying than being alone, staring at a blank screen or empty page, peering head-on into a creative void? Far easier to redesign and retrofit, to appropriate and go from there.

The figure and the concept of ‘the carrier’ made me think. We are all carriers of ideas (good or bad) or behaviours (good or bad). We all share, certainly, as Jessica says, re-share. The alternative is vegetative status, or, in today’s world ‘non participant’. Perhaps a modern version of the idiot, a word that in Old Greece meant ‘non participant’ (in the public life), as opposed to ‘the citizen’, before it degenerated into something related to intelligence.

Modern professionals, idiots we are not, participants and ‘sharers’, yes sir. But what do we carry? How much re-sharing or sharing do we do?

Are we carried away by that effortless possibility at the cost of original thoughts? Just wondering.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dr Leandro Herrero is the CEO and Chief Organization Architect of The Chalfont Project ^[10], an international firm of organizational architects. He is the pioneer of Viral Change™ ^[11], a people Mobilizing Platform, a methodology that delivers sustainable large scale behavioural and cultural change in organizations, which creates lasting capacity for changeability.

Dr Herrero is also an Executive Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Organization, Drucker School of Management.

An international speaker, Dr Herrero is regularly invited to speak at global conferences and corporate events. To invite Leandro to speak at your conference or business event contact: The Chalfont Project ^[5] or email: [email protected]. ^[12]

See here ^[4] for all workshops and masterclasses developed and delivered by Leandro and his team.  Or to discuss any of The Chalfont Project products and services call: +44 01895 549 144

 

We are pulled to conform to the group, to participate, to contribute, to say something. Nodding is not enough. Taking notes is not enough. You need to say something. And because this is universal, it sometimes feels as if saying is more important than what you say.  Meaning evaporates soon on behalf of content.

You may have been in meetings and conferences where everybody seems compelled to intervene. May worse moment is the ‘do you have any questions moment.’ I wish they didn’t. The short showering of triviality finds you naked with no raincoat.

Many team meetings are composed by walking e-bays selling second-hand thoughts. Nothing is terribly profound or cooked. However, if a figure of status or authority is in the room, the nodding increases and the probability of more second-hand thoughts increases as well. ‘You’ve made a fascinating point Jane.’ Actually, not. BTW, ‘fascinating’ is only reserved for you Jane; otherwise ‘very interesting’ would have done it.

Mind you, this is interesting. When the Brits say ‘this is very interesting’ , chances are it is the least interesting thing. Particularly when the sentence is left hanging as if anticipating a part 2 that never comes. Never take credit for something that a Brit has qualified as ‘very interesting.’

The trouble with group meetings, team meetings and any gathering of humans around mints and biscuits, is that the natives take the campfire very seriously. Uncooked ideas are great if you allocate time for them. Uncooked ideas at the time of serving the meal is only palatable to the few lovers of raw fish.

The best Time Management course is, of course. in Ecclesiastes 31:8:  To everything, there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born, a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to break down, and a time to build up.  A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time to dance.

And it carries on.

Even second-hand uncooked thoughts have a time. But it is not all the time.

I am switching off over the weekend, giving my thoughts a chance to avoid becoming e-bay goods.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dr Leandro Herrero is the CEO and Chief Organization Architect of The Chalfont Project ^[10], an international firm of organizational architects. He is the pioneer of Viral Change™ ^[11], a people Mobilizing Platform, a methodology that delivers sustainable large scale behavioural and cultural change in organizations, which creates lasting capacity for changeability.

Dr Herrero is also an Executive Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Organization, Drucker School of Management.

An international speaker, Dr Herrero is regularly invited to speak at global conferences and corporate events. To invite Leandro to speak at your conference or business event contact: The Chalfont Project ^[5] or email: [email protected]. ^[12]

See here ^[4] for all workshops and masterclasses developed and delivered by Leandro and his team.  Or to discuss any of The Chalfont Project products and services call: +44 01895 549 144.

This is plagiarism, of course. I am stealing 13^th Century Saint, Francis of Assisi’s  line: ‘Preach the Gospel all the time. When necessary use words’. Translation, do more, talk less. Lately recycled as ‘walk the talk’. Twisted by me as ‘talk the walk’. That is, you walk first, then you explain the walk.

Yes, I think the ‘walk the talk’ order is wrong. As leader, you walk, and walk; then, you bring people along and explain the walk, whilst walking, that is.

In our organizations, we have conceptual tsunamis of values and beliefs. Most of them dwell in the corporate graveyards of annual reports, reception halls and HR systems. These are words, not behaviours. People copy behaviours, not words on walls, not bullet points in PowerPoints.

We need to agree the non-negotiable behaviours of values and beliefs so that we can ‘do them’ and exhibit them, not just explain them. Those behavioural translations are life or death.

The ‘when necessary use words’ should be the motto of so called change management processes.

The pending role model/employee/peer-to-peer revolution, will be driven by deeds, not by words.

But let’s not forget. Words certainly engage and motivate. Words are the wake-up, the alarm bells, the declaration of intentions, the intellectual vehicle and the pre-emotional triggers of action. So we’d better be good at them as well.

However:

Words are pre-social, the revolution is social.

‘The things you don’t have to say make you rich’ – William Stafford’s ^[13] (1914 – 1993)

Let’s get richer. We act more, then, when necessary we will use words.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

For a selection of my Daily Thoughts on leadership, you can buy my latest book, Camino – Leadership Notes On The Road ^[14], available from all major online bookstores ^[15].

 

Downloadable extracts: Extract Camino Chapter 1 ^[16],  Camino – Extract Chapter 2 part 1 ^[17]

 

A collection of notes on leadership, initially written as Daily Thoughts. Camino, the Spanish for road, or way, reflects on leadership as a praxis that continuously evolves. Nobody is ever a leader. Becoming one is the real quest. But we never reach the destination. Our character is constantly shaped by places and journeys, encounters and experiences. The only real theory of leadership is travelling. The only footprints, our actions. The only test, what we leave behind.

 

 

Let’s start somewhere else. What is the logic behind Listmania?

Very often there isn’t one. But starting a note/blog/communication with ‘the 10 things that’, or similar, apparently is very good for the rankings. I have to confess I have followed this many times. Not by force of headline management. I do make lists, and I do publish them. So if you see rubbish, please shout.

But the non-logic logic I am talking about is the one that is simply fabricated around the same concept or idea, and sold as a clever list, which actually only an idiot can buy; a condition that ostensibly is unrelated to headline effectiveness management.

It goes likes this:

The 5 characteristics of successful managers are:

• They are punctual
• They arrive on time
• They are never late
• They are very conscious of time
• They attend meetings from the very beginning

How’s that for a successful full page ‘on management’ on a prestigious blog, of a prestigious business school of some sort? I’ve seen it.

Thesaurus-like list (mania) is a silly version of other things that pretend to be more serious. For example, a value system.

Imagine this:

Value = integrity
Behaviours = honesty, openness and candour

Value = openness
Behaviours = sincerity, integrity and honesty

Etc.

There is absolutely nothing in the above sentences about anything remotely operational, behavioural or otherwise. It is pure Thesaurus-management.

If you want openness, you’d better define what exactly it is that you want to see, and not to see, in real life, concrete, unequivocal, so I can understand what you want. And this is the first step to agree (if we have to) on how to go about creating a culture of openness. I know, harder than right-clicking on ‘synonymous’.

Organizations have traditionally used a three-legged approach to creating a ‘culture’: Communications, training and compliance. None of those in isolation have the power to shape a culture. The three together are a good machine gun approach and, as such, result in lots of wasted ammunition.

Communicating about what a culture looks like, or should look like, in terms of values or behaviours, for example, is a noble and necessary task. But communication per se has a diminishing power from the start. Channels get saturated, people become more cynical and eventually, they switch off.

Communicating is necessary, but hardly sufficient. Let’s take safety, for example in an oil and gas enterprise. Communicating that safety is a key goal, perhaps stressing that it is not negotiable is a given. Reassuring that the entire leadership of the company is behind this drive is something very important, expected, and surely welcome. But it‘s hardly an engine to create a culture of safety. Look at any single oil and gas company with a safety disaster (or worse) and show me that the importance of safety had not been communicated. You won’t be able to.

So, then, we have Compliance. Rules and Regulations naturally follow, particularly in territories such as oil and gas, transportation, civil engineering, etc. Compliance systems explain what needs to happen, and what is not acceptable. But a Compliance system, as many Health and Safety systems are, is mainly a threatening one. When you learn to drive, you remember the penalties for speeding and the thresholds in different places more than why those speed limits and regulations are there in the first place. Any compliance system has a bypass mechanism in waiting, and they will be used if people can get away with that. Compliance systems in themselves have very little power to create a culture.

The third leg starts in Compliance but goes further. It’s called Training. Training systems provide you with information, knowledge and skills (plus a clear reference to the penalties of non compliance). Training, (instructional, informational, rational or emotional), does not create a culture. It creates a well-trained workforce. We can say that a culture of safety is not the same as a culture of training on safety. The organization may become very proficient at training but not necessarily at building a safety culture, other than… a culture of training.

The Perfect Culture does not need much communication or compliance, or training. We know, of course, that this is unrealistic. A culture of safety, for example, is then one where safety is a normal day-to-day conversation equivalent to football, or soccer, or whatever conversation is the usual one around a water-cooler. If safety is an add-on, something one has to think about and ‘bring in’ (artificially) to the conversation, then this is not ‘a culture of safety’.

Cultures, in fact, are not created in classrooms. Cultures require behavioural spread and scale. Behaviours don’t like classrooms, they like the playground and the courtyard. Behavioural scale up (a fancy way of saying ‘shaping a culture’) requires a peer-to-peer, bottom up system as an engine. If this exists, then training and communications top up and multiply. But the other way around, banking on communications and training only, is a waste.

A Push system (communication, compliance, training) without a Pull system (behavioural, bottom-up, grassroots), is a very weak system. You need a strong Push-Pull combination.

Entire companies become proficient in training X, without ever getting close to creating a culture of X. They become very proficient at training X. But this is unfortunately what many organizations do, because it is an easy answer to problems. It is the wrong answer.

A ‘culture of safety’ is not the same as a culture of ‘training on safety’. A ‘culture of customer-centrism’ is not the same as a culture of ‘training on customer-centrism’. Etc. Now, substitute the word ‘safety’, or ‘customer-centrism’, for anything else, and it will still hold.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

THERE IS A BETTER WAY WITH

THE CHALFONT PROJECT

 

Join me for a series of webinars, as my team of organization architects and I, explore the future of organizational life. We will explain how the 3 Pillars of The Chalfont Project’s Organizational Architecture – smart organizational design, large scale behavioural and cultural change and collective leadership – work together to create a ‘Better Way ^[6]‘ for organizations to flourish in the post-COVID world.

 

• Webinar 1: “A Better Way to…Design your organizational structures to create a Remarkable Organization for the future.”
  27th May, 1730 BST/1830 CET

REGISTER NOW ^[6]

 

• Webinar 2: “A Better Way to…Create sustainable large scale behavioural and cultural change across your organization.”
  3rd June, 1730 BST/1830 CET

REGISTER NOW ^[6]

 

• Webinar 3: “A Better Way to…Build and enhance your collective leadership capabilities.”
  17th June, 1730 BST/1830 CET

REGISTER NOW ^[6]

 

In the short term, the health of all of us depends largely on people following public health rules (masks, distance, hygiene, group gathering etc) and also, eventually getting the vaccine.

The Covid-19 virus spreads exponentially and we need to address the desired behavioural change in the same exponential terms. Anything short of that won’t be enough to tackle the epidemic and progress towards normality.

A viral epidemic for which there is no immediate cure, only ways of managing it, can only be controlled by a counter behavioural epidemic.

The very likely availability of several vaccines in the near future brings well founded hope. But there is part of the population that may be reluctant to be vaccinated, mostly out of misinformation and powerful belief systems.

This article addresses the non-medical management of the pandemic through the lenses of large scale behavioural and cultural change principles, as practised by the Viral Change™ Mobilizing Platform for the last 20 years, in the area of organizational change.

Viral Change™ is a way to create large scale behavioural and cultural change (a) by the power of focusing on a small set of non-negotiable behaviours, (b)using peer-to-peer influence, (c) mastering the informality of connections in social networks,  (c) accelerating  with a well-crafted storytelling system, (d) and providing a type of leadership that we call Backstage Leadership™. Viral Change™, combines the power of top down, push, hierarchical and communication systems, which are very limited in power in their own right, with the significant power of bottom up, pull, behavioural scale up.

Click here for the full detailed article ^[18]

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dr Leandro Herrero is the CEO and Chief Organization Architect of The Chalfont Project ^[10], an international firm of organizational architects. He is the pioneer of Viral Change^TM, a people Mobilizing Platform, a methodology that delivers large scale behavioural and cultural change in organizations, which creates lasting capacity for changeability.

Dr Herrero is also an Executive Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Organization, Drucker School of Management. An international speaker, Dr Herrero is available for virtual speaking engagements ^[19] and can be reached at: The Chalfont Project ^[5].

His latest book, The Flipping point – Deprogramming Management ^[20], is available at all major online bookstores.

 

Corporate speak is of course tribal. So, to belong, you have to speak the tribal idiom.

Through my work, I have run behavioural recruiting interviews for clients. My interviews are a complement to the standard recruiting interviews based upon skills, capabilities and experience. I am looking for predictive value, predictable behaviours that could be compatible with a set of values that I had also helped to craft. In behavioural terms, the best prediction of behaviours comes from previous behaviours. So, this is something I do.

During that process, I find a few candidates have a robotic repertoire ready to use no matter what the question is. I get bombarded by ‘stakeholder relationships’, ‘exceeding expectations’, ‘empowerment’, ‘alignment’ and ‘shareholder values’. Although nothing is intrinsically wrong with them and almost unavoidable at some point in our tribal-corporate conversations, the difference is the percentage of airtime taken. That level of off-the-shelf, acquired vocabulary puts me off. I need oxygen at the end. A transfusion of normality.

Corporate life has it own language and God knows each company its own dialects. I am not interested in fighting them. On the contrary, if anything else, from a selfish perspective as an organizational architect, I need to hear, see and smell all that, to make a sense of the Tribe(s). But I have to say, I sometimes wish we could inject some normal prose and a bit of poetry!

‘A poem, my corporate kingdom for a poem!’. I am not Richard III but I prefer it to horses.

Ok, here we go. What about:

Landscapes of ideas
Tapestry of behaviours
Beauty of a plan
Adventure into new markets
Hospitality for the imagination
Sheltering the creative minds

OK. I get the message. I’ll get real.

Your language will shape you. ‘The limits of your language are the limits of your world’, Wittgenstein ^[21] dixit. No wonder we are so limited in our corporate narratives.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Continue the conversation…

 

Watch Leandro’s latest Webinar Series. ^[7] Leandro and his team of organizational architects, debunk uncontested assumptions and uncover the alternatives, whilst considering why this is even more relevant today in the current exceptional environment.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________

 ‘The Flipping Point‘ ^[20]. Have you got your copy?

A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs to be reached. ‘The Flipping Point‘ ^[20], contains 200 short vignettes exploring what ’deprogramming management’ may look like.

 

This book asks you to use more rigour and critical thinking in how you use assumptions and management practices that were created many years ago. Our real and present danger is not a future of robots and AI, but of current established BS. In this book, you are invited to the Mother of All Call Outs!

Available from major online bookstores ^[22].

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dr Leandro Herrero is the CEO and Chief Organization Architect of The Chalfont Project ^[10], an international firm of organizational architects. He is the pioneer of Viral Change^TM, a people Mobilizing Platform, a methodology that delivers large scale behavioural and cultural change in organizations, which creates lasting capacity for changeability.

Dr Herrero is also an Executive Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Organization, Drucker School of Management. An international speaker, Dr Herrero is available for virtual speaking engagements ^[19] and can be reached at: The Chalfont Project ^[5].

 

I have seen the same slide yet again. It keeps following me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. OK, not on Facebook, I have deleted my account. It says:  Old organization, new organization. Old power to new power. Power goes from hierarchical to distributed. Communication from silos to networks. Top down to bottom up. Top down to distributed. Command and control to empowerment. And another few more.

Have you seen that slide? If not, your Sabbatical sounds wonderful.

The beauty of this all-purpose-slide is that it will accept lots of labels: agile, future of work, change, transformation, and of course, digitalization. It is like a renewable energy product, a perfect idea recycling, multi-use, multi-purpose, prêt-à-porter  management.

This obligatory stop on ‘the new world that is coming to us ’ serves well as a tool for conversations . And this is good. The slight problem is that 90% of the talkers are proficient at talking but not many have a clue as to how on earth all that is going to be implemented. Small detail.

The talkers are fantastic at talking to each other as a global tribe. It’s mutually self-reinforcing. There will be workshops. There will be post-its (management development is the result of a conspiracy by 3M), there will be people on the floor arranging cards (why on the floor? It looks more tribal but it’s terrible for your back), wallpaper with arrows (change) and hexagons (design thinking). And all will be good. Biblical. They will look at everything they have made, and they will be very pleased.

There are however two problems

1. Nobody with real power to change in the organization listens or cares about the arrows, hexagons and the old power/new power stuff.
2. The Grand Designers design but have not a good idea of how this is going to be implemented in, say, a traditional medium to large organization. Will just go one day to leaders and say, ‘you people, stop being top-down, don’t you see this is démodé, embrace bottom-up!’ Change! You need to change! And be a good role model. People are looking at you! (No, they aren’t)

The ‘what’ (top down not good, bottom up good…) is well known by now. So well known that can be easily trivialised. The how is the trick. How to go from ‘that slide’ to changing 15000 people in the organization. How to actually change behaviours. You won’t find that in many powerpoint stacks from Big Consulting

When The Talkers venture into the how, they act as shoppers, not cooks. So they say, OK, we need more trust, a lot of accountability, and empowerment, and a lot, a lot, a lot of customer-centrism ( as if the customer cared about your post-its and Grand Designs) and, of course, leaders with vision who walk the talk. And let’s not forget Servant Leadership (why? I don’t know). Oh, I forgot resilience. Mary, could you text him to bring some resilience, before he leaves the supermarket?

I know about the shopping list but, excuse me, who is actually cooking?

Silence.

What do we do now? Well, when looking for recipes, that Talkers-Shoppers find them:  OK, a top down cascade of workshops to explain the  beauty of bottom up; an over inclusive training system to train how not to be over-inclusive;  the top 200 leaders attending Transformation Workshops (AKA pass the post-its)

And then what?

Still no cooks, no cooking, the kitchen is full of stuff. Leaders are bemused. No strategy of where to start, how to start, how to change, let alone how to scale.

We can do better. We must do better.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Our Feed Forward Webinar Series is now available to watch on demand.

Watch our webinar: High touch, high tech in the digitlization era ^[7]

 

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Suddenly the world has been ‘zooming’ in the way that Sherry Turkle pointed out many years ago in her book ‘Life on screen’. Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative? This webinar will bring insights into the not very well solved tandem ‘high touch- high tech’ and how we can shape a future where the human condition wins.

 

What attendees said:

‘It was a great pleasure to participate in today’s webinar…. If you would have been sitting next to me, you would have seen a lot of ‘head nodding’ and heard a couple of loud ‘yes’es’ from the bottom of my heart.’ 

 

WATCH NOW ^[7]

 

Some time ago a picture of a pack of wolves walking in the snow had been circulating on many social platforms. This is one of the accounts:

See the guy way back in the pack- (s)he is the LEADER.

“A wolf pack: the first 3 are the old or sick, they give the pace to the entire pack. If it was the other way around, they would be left behind, losing contact with the pack. In case of an ambush they would be sacrificed. Then comes 5 strong ones, the front line. In the centre are the rest of the pack members, then the 5 strongest following. The last one is alone, the alpha. He controls everything from the rear. In that position he can see everything, decide the direction. He sees all of the pack. The pack moves according to the elders pace and helps each other, watches each other.”

What a wonderful narrative for leadership in action. What a smart analogy of the varieties of leadership, the pace of the organization, the internal dynamics of this complex organism that we call the company. What a delightful metaphor for how strengths and weakness play in leadership. What a brilliant piece of the intersection between leadership in business and society, and human nature in both its vulnerability and its strengths.

What a pity that the story was a hoax. Quoting wolf experts, which does not include me as one, the whole thing is a lot of crap.

So crap wins if the narrative is sound. Nothing new here. From conspiracy theories to the imminent threat of the activation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a cohesive argument can be put forward and be compelling. Internal consistency is the killer. The more internal consistency, the greater the credibility. That is how Psychoanalysis was built. But both internal consistency and credibility have nothing to do with each other.

Creating an internally consistent and compelling narrative is actually child’s play. Here is how Blair’s memo to Bush put it:

‘In Britain, right now I couldn’t be sure of support from parliament, party, public or even some of the cabinet. (…) If we recapitulate all the WMD evidence; add his attempt to secure nuclear capability; and, as seems possible, add on al-Qaida links, it will be hugely persuasive over here’ (…) Plus, of course, the abhorrent nature of the regime’.

Solid narratives have great pull effect. You can challenge them of course, but there is something in the human mind that quite likes the idea of a solid construct. What could we do in the Jewish-Christian tradition without a massive exodus in the narrative? Without the Promised Land of Milk and Honey? Really? But the archaeological evidence does not want to play ball. Is that needed though? No. As I wrote before ‘the validity of (this) root narrative may not be terribly relevant; after all, entire tribes have been created and sustained under the root narrative of ancestors crossing rivers that did not exist, fighting wars that did not take place, or for years wandering deserts that nobody has touched.

So here is the (ethical) leadership challenge: a compelling narrative that is truthful; the truth translated into a narrative. Their dissociation, their dislocation, is dishonest. Yet, we seem to see it every day in front of us. Making them inseparable, the ethical imperative of leadership.

 

We need to improve communication is not the same as, this is what we need to do to improve communication, and not the same as, this is what I am going to do to improve communication. In fact, these things are miles away from each other.

Life in organizations is often lived at the level of diagnosis. Oh God, how good we are at diagnosis. Sometimes people spend the day hopping from one meeting to another and providing an assessment, a view, a piece of diagnosis. Meeting one: we need to fix the supply issue. Meeting two: the product recall is a fiasco. Meeting three: we need to make sure we get the candidate right. With coffee in between. But who is going to at least start addressing the problem? You would have thought that somebody in the room. But what if the rest of the meeting participants are equally good at diagnosing but nobody really jumps in?

It may be that:

a. They don’t have the authority (but somebody has it somewhere)

b. They don’t need the authority but they don’t take accountability

c. They feel they need permission to take the accountability

And another hundred or so reasons.

The diagnosis life, without action, is exhausting.

The organization whose main core competence is admiring problems, is equally wearing.

It’s Ok if you don’t have a solution but you point to them. But if you start with ‘the problem is’, please don’t use a full stop after the description of the problem. The word ‘and’ is required.

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Dr Leandro Herrero is the CEO and Chief Organization Architect of The Chalfont Project ^[10], an international firm of organizational architects. He is the pioneer of Viral Change^TM, a people Mobilizing Platform, a methodology that delivers large scale behavioural and cultural change in organizations, which creates lasting capacity for changeability.

Dr Herrero is also an Executive Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Organization, Drucker School of Management. An international speaker, Dr Herrero is available for virtual speaking engagements ^[19] and can be reached at: The Chalfont Project ^[5].

 

The Communications function in organizations has still today one of the best chances to drive strategic change. To do this, it must master a few things.

It must occupy at least these two corporate streets:

(1) Take over the empty space of Curators of the Informal Organization. Nobody really owns this space. Certainly not traditional HR. Most of the good stuff happens in the informal organization (informal, fluid social networks and conversations) but most of the energy goes to domesticating the formal one: teams, structures, committees, task forces. The informal organization needs care: fluidity, possibility of interaction, internal social networking, water-coolers… Internal/Corporate communications could take over that space, if it wanted. Invent that function. Occupy!

(2) Lead the ‘back to the drawing board’ exercise to rethink the spaces for Branding, Marketing, Employee Engagement, Employee branding, PR and any other cousin I may have forgotten. Bring the cousins in, have a party, but recreate these spaces. Because reinvention may be uncomfortable (more than carrying on in their respective shops as if nothing would trouble them), nobody is taking the lead. Occupy that street. The functional borders are gone or going. All those spaces are blurred. It’s all mixed up. These areas have foster parents. Occupy!

If you don’t, somebody else will. Other more vocal cousins? However, if you prefer to keep writing newsletters and preparing Powerpoints for the Board or Investors, up to you, but you are going to enter into terminal illness pretty soon.

It’s a choice. Just saying… These two streets need their own ‘Occupy movement’. You can always say ‘pass!’ But I did warn you.

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Most of the good stuff happens in the informal organization (fluid social networks and conversations) but most of the energy goes to domesticating the formal one: teams, structures, committees, task forces.

DO YOU WANT A DIAGNOSIS OF YOUR FORMAL AND INFORMAL ORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS?

 

With 3CXcan ^[23], a simple to use online survey, we can reveal your formal and informal connections. We have turned organizational network science into real practice: we uncover your networks with no pain, efficiently, fast and with absolute confidentiality. Find out more. ^[23]

Contact us now ^[5] for a free virtual consultation.

 

OK, at least you’re reading. Thanks.

The organization is a network. Networks have emergent properties. Translation: things come up from the randomness of interactions in a way not entirely predictable. Super-nodes, for example, behaving as a single node. More translations: that group of connected, yet not formally related individuals that ‘create’ a tribe (group of common interest or habits) that starts having a single and similar view of the world. Nobody set out to achieve this; it happened, it emerged, good or bad.

But for that to happen, a network was needed (ok, it was there), connectivity (they actually could use the internal Yammer group) and a progressive sense of belonging formed by seeing and feeling that they were sharing similar stories. For example. They did not have rules imposed. They were not given constrains and, frankly, for pretty much all the time, they were left alone and invisible.

There are options. You can let the network produce emergent effects (spontaneous collaboration, innovation hubs, Sceptical United Group, or bunch of bloggers, or the tribe above) or you could induce and engineer some effects, not waiting, but designing.

Spontaneity, emergent collaboration and idea sharing either come from a network effect, or need to be engineered. Engineering means creating the conditions, seeding the possibilities, giving and publicising permissions, producing safety nets and broadcasting the business impact. If you want spontaneous collaboration, wait for it, buy water coolers and sofas. Also bring engineers from the fifth floor to sit in front of the commercial guys on the second floor, and the other way around. The physical movement was engineered, the mind sharing is not.

Design forms of social-ability and don’t worry about their potential misuse. Increase interactivity and stop worrying about ‘meeting rules’. Don’t worry about internal Face-booking-waste-of-time. If waste, it will dilute itself. Believe me, this is the least of your worries.

But this is not what many people do. Because they fear the lack of control, they start putting borders.

Here is your team, be innovating, think out-of-the-box, collaborate, be autonomous, be entrepreneurial and be productive. This is the membership of the team, this the Product Leader, these are the Product Managers, this is the core and this is the extended. This is your budget; you’ll need to report the first Wednesday of every month. Take risks but not too many, and better if they pay off. Challenge the default positions of the company but don’t touch A, B or C. Be creative but make sure it is productive. You are free my friends, be happy.

Freedom in a straight jacket is the closest thing we have in many organizations. Designing the informality of the network is key. Internal Communications people have a role. HR has a role. Business leaders have a role. IT has to curate.

Because of the (on purpose) apparent contradiction in terms (‘All that must be spontaneous must be engineered’) people react in horror. That is good! How can that be? But it can. We plan for formality: teams, committees, reporting. We similarly must plan for informality: emergent clusters, emergent social networks, increased connectivity, peer-to-peer engagement and work, barriers down, let it go.

It’s not one or the other (I can hear) but both.

The point is, we spend 75% of the time designing formality that produces 25% of the goods, and 25% of the time designing for informality that produces 75% of the best innovation, the best employee engagement, the best culture to be proud of and the best overall effectiveness.

Surely not even the accountants can see this logic.

Choices!

All that you want to come up as spontaneous must be engineered in their conditions for that to happen.

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Here at The Chalfont Project ^[10] we undertake work with a particular peer-to-peer network of highly connected people through our Viral Change™ programme ^[24] and now we can help your business too, with our 3CXcan ^[23] product. This online survey which uses organizational network science software called Cfinder Algorithm, a tool for social network detection, will give you a profound understanding of your internal networks.

With 3CXcan ^[23] we have turned organizational network science into real practice: we uncover your formal and informal networks with no pain, efficiently, fast and with absolute confidentiality.

3CXcan  is a diagnostic tool which:

◦ PROVIDES A PICTURE: of the formal and informal organization and how effectively both operate.

◦ REVEALS organizational connections from strong to weak, to ineffective and broken connection.

◦ GAINS INSIGHT on the specific solutions and interventions required

◦ IDENTIFIES the individuals that will leverage change more effectively (ie champions)

If you want to know your REAL orgaization and be able to break down silos, identify collaboration barriers, unite your organizaton after a merger and more, then 3CXcan is your solution.

To find out more or book your free virtual consultation for a short walk through our demo – contact us now! ^[23]

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Don’t miss it – our webinar TODAY – 18:00 BST/19:00 CET.  

During Covid, digital has taken the lead with remote working, virtual events and more connectivity, but have we become more collaborative & how do we keep the human factor?

Join us for this webinar on High Touch and High Tech in the Digitalization Era. It will bring insights into the not very well solved tandem ‘high touch- high tech’ and how we can shape a future where the human condition wins.

Register Now ^[25]

An indepth analysis of the world of ‘Digital Transformation’ shows two things. One is that there is no such thing as ‘Digital Transformation’ as a single domain or relatively well bordered area of expertise and action. In fact, you don’t have to look hard to realise that it is more difficult to find things that do not belong to ‘Digital Transformation’ than the ones that do. ‘Digital Transformation’ seems like a big supermarket with hundreds of shelves full of stuff.

It is unrealistic to expect a ‘single domain’ (area of expertise, and therefore expert) that can seriously contain: going paperless, better customer experience on websites, transforming customer experience, jobs done by software, artificial intelligence, analytics, robots doing human stuff, digital transactions, blockchain, digital/enterprise social networks, mobile technologies, self-service HR systems, real-time data, electronic documentation, social media, multi-channel services, more sophisticated CRM, automation, faster computing capacities, process (digital) re-engineering, and cloud services. And there are still many other supermarket shelves I have not named.

Calling all of these ‘Digital Transformation’ is the equivalent to calling ‘business’ to all you and I do. And finding ‘experts in business’. When clients tell me that they have appointed some people to lead ‘Digital Transformation’, I ask which one.

The other ‘finding’, shocking but not entirely unexpected, is the virtual lack of reference to behaviours. It’s not the first time that technology takes all the airtime and reduces behaviours to a by-product of what technology changes or will change. The mistake is a big one since behaviours are hardly a by-product. It is more the other way around, you need some behaviours in the system to support the digital transformation. These behaviours must be tailored to the objective (since the supermarket has hundreds of shelves) but at the very least they will have to deal with changes from audience (push, customer, information) to community (pull, engagement, reputation); speed; trust and risk (less people involved) and virtual collaboration. And, again, this is just the start. Just a few of the pillars. Each shelf has its own behavioural set.

The most efficient way to deal with that multi-targeted Digital Transformation is to look at the cultural and behavioural conditions that are needed, perhaps changed, ‘installed’, embedded and spread at a scale, to support it. The behavioural DNA (changeability vs change) will support/must support any of these digital shelves in change. Behaviours are not a by-product, an afterthought. They are the fabric, the tapestry on which everything else works. Starting with behaviours, is a smart move.

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Continue the conversations….

Join Leandro Herrero and his team for their free webinar with Q&A on 13th August, 18:00 BST/19:00 CET. Register Now! ^[7]

High touch and high tech in the digitalization era

 

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative?

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Suddenly the world has been ‘zooming’ in the way that Sherry Turkle pointed out many years ago in her book ‘Life on screen’. Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative? This webinar will bring insights into the not very well solved tandem ‘high touch- high tech’ and how we can shape a future where the human condition wins.

Register Here! ^[7]

 

Model 1. The technology, for example in the form of digital platforms such as Enterprise Social Networks, ESN (Yammer type) speeds some interactions, facilitates communication, provides a key vehicle for collective framing and shared common understanding (usually from the top of the organization), creates some spontaneous or engineered groups of ‘common  interest’ but, above all, provides a single common brochure/repository/news feed for the company (traditional intranet for example). In this model, ‘Digital’ does not change the nature of the (cross) collaboration much, or the fundamental activity of the company and its groupings.

Model 2. The technology serves to connect otherwise unconnected, or poorly connected, groups, and, as such, creates new reasons for shared understanding and collective action. It creates proximity, otherwise perhaps in doubt, and an ability to share ideas, answer questions, help other groups (occasionally or more formally). In this model, ‘Digital’ is network building in its own merits and the real origin of (new) cross collaboration, for example, otherwise not planned or anticipated. It does not change much the nature of work in the networks or clusters connected, but changes their relationships and their learning opportunity, and also creates a possible, more cohesive shared sense of belonging.

Model 3. Technology is on purpose a ‘crowd-enabler’. ‘Digital’ allows and prompts everybody to possibly talk to anybody across borders and structures. It allows for example to launch ‘global challenges’ and incentivised, or not, semi-permanent Q&A sessions. In this model, ‘Digital’ is focused on the individual, not the clusters, networks or teams (which it had little control over it). ‘Digital’ here changes the nature of the cross-collaboration in the form of a permanent (if desired) ‘digital-face-to-face’. ‘Digital’ here is very much ‘core’, sitting above everything else, perhaps ‘the way we also work’.

These three models are useful to at least reflect upon what we may expect from ‘the adoption of an internal digital strategy’. Very often, a significant investment is made to install a global ESN, just to be followed by an also significant disappointment about its use and effectiveness. Technology is still today ‘installed’ in a way that seems to expect a following miracle in cross-collaboration or even (more naively) a fundamental change of ‘the nature of work’.

At the core of these issues are three things:

(1) The knowledge of what the technology can do (easy);
(2) The agreement on why the technology has been ‘installed’ (difficult: some may think it should be a sophisticated brochure, others a communication system, others an internal reproduction of a cosy Facebook; None of these are the same. Start with the ‘why’ before you look for the miracle);
(3) The pre-existing behavioural DNA (or the created one, e.g. via Viral Change ^[24]™) required to use the technology in a way that serves the declared purpose, the why in (2); this is a more difficult one.

For example in a very tribal, silo-like, fragmented enterprise, a model 3 type of crowd-enabled collaboration may completely fail; model 2 may have some effects, and model 1 may have no trouble, even if with very modest, if at all, effects on cross collaboration with perhaps little changes in the ‘ways of work’.

I have adapted for the organization these 3 models from the ones proposed at macro-level by Bennet & Segerberg in ‘The Logic of Connective Action; digital media and the personalization of contentious politics’ (2013). Model 1 is the equivalent of what the authors called ‘Organizational brokered collective action’; model (2) is ‘Organizational enabled connective action’, and model (3) is Crowed-enabled connective action.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

High touch & high tech in the digitalization era

 

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Pre-Covid we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative? Join us for our final webinar in the Feed Forward Series – Thursday, 13th August. 18:00 BST/19:00 CET, Register Now! ^[7]

 

 

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Suddenly the world has been ‘zooming’ in the way that Sherry Turkle pointed out many years ago in her book ‘Life on screen’. Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative? This webinar will bring insights into the not very well solved tandem ‘high touch- high tech’ and how we can shape a future where the human condition wins.

 

I was told, many years ago, by somebody very close to the old Microsoft management, in Bill Gates times, that they had a layer of around 70 VPs, below Gates, that people called ‘The Volunteers’. They called them like that because they had made so much money, that they didn’t need to be there. If they were there, and showed up every day, it was because they chose to be there, that is, they were ‘volunteers’

Since then, I have been using this metaphor to explain the ultimate goal of Employee Engagement. It does not get better than aspiring to ‘a company of volunteers’. And I am not talking about  the 70  MS VP style. It’s a powerful anchor. Some people may think that it is a bit naïve, or unrealistic, but it draws the attention to what people’s real authentic engagement may look like.

Not a long time ago, these ideas were dismissed by a senior HR person of one of my clients: ‘Everybody is a volunteer; everybody has a choice, if they don’t like it, they don’t have to be here’. And it sounded to me as if she was saying ‘Don’t you see it? This is not North Korea’. It was a facile, arrogant dismissal, and it missed the point…

Studying the dynamics of volunteer organizations should be part of the curriculum, formal or informal, instructional or ‘real life’, for anybody in leadership. All the ingredients of empowerment, motivation, collaboration, control and autonomy are often very quickly found in these organizations.  They are very vivid. When I tried this with a UN Refugee Organization, I learnt for example how normal it was to run the NGO with little control at the top and full empowerment of people on the ground. They had no other choice! And they mastered that.  Not the case for our standard business organizations!

I have suggested more than once to leaders, to literally embrace this as their number one Personal Goal.  Explicitly, written down: “I will lead a company of volunteers’. Just the thinking behind this idea, the effort required to understand what it would take, what would need to change, what would be the barriers to this company of volunteers, what ‘employee engagement’ might mean, and what that organization might ultimately look like, is well worth the effort. Imagine it! I suggest you try it.

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Let’s Join Forces!

If you’re enjoying our Feed Forward Webinar series ^[7] (next webinar 30th July – The Myths of Management) and want your own webinar tailored to your organization and delivered to an in-house audience or a remote keynote, masterclass or roundtable on topics featured in the series – all delivered by The Chalfont Project and designed by me – then get in touch and let’s talk ^[5]!

 

It all starts after the click!

• A similar webinar tailored to your organization can be delivered to your company for an in-house audience. Would you consider it?

I’m in ^[5]

• The presenters are available for a remote keynote or masterclass on the series topics. Would you be interested?

Click away ^[5]

• To discuss how these ideas can be applied within your organization, all you have to do is to let us now. Click here and we will be in touch.

Contact Me ^[5]

• We can organize a virtual roundtable for you on the topics specially tailored to you. Do you want to explore that?

Absolutely ^[5]

• If you want to be informed about talks, events, masterclasses or courses organized by The Chalfont Project and designed by Dr Leandro Herrero, please give us your details here.

Sending details ^[5]

Peer power: if managers say, ‘safety is first’, the impact may be relative. The dictation is totally expected. This is what they are supposed to say. If my peer says, ‘safety is first’, I’m beginning to pay attention. It’s not expected, we were talking football and holidays. (what is the matter with him?) But I hear it. Tell me more. Peer-to-peer is stronger than managerial top down.

Peer power: If managers say, ‘safety is first’, the impact may be relative (…)  If my peer says, ‘safety is first’, I’m beginning to pay attention. Peer-to-peer is the strongest source or engine of change and mobilization inside any organization.

 

I believe that most silo problems have names and surnames

Stop complaining about silos between divisions. Computer screens are the new silos. If you amalgamate non-collaborating silo A with non-collaborating silo B with the hope of creating a collaborating non silo C, good luck. People will bring their screens with them anyway.

Stop complaining about silos between divisions. Computer screens are the new silos. Most structural solutions (amalgamation of divisions or groups) are a response to behavioural problems (e.g. lack of collaboration). Entire re-organizations, with hundreds of people disrupted, are triggered by very few people being the problem. The so-called Big Collaboration Problem between Marketing and Sales can actually be traced back to Peter, Head of Marketing, and Mary, Head of Sales. The rest have no problem but are forced to migrate with their screens. I believe that most silo problems have names and surnames.

 

Extracts taken from my new book The Flipping Point. ^[20] A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs to be reached. The Flipping Point ^[20] contains 200 short vignettes exploring what ’deprogramming management’ may look like.  Read a recent review ^[26].

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Feed Forward Webinar Series – the organization now, under new management

Join our second thought-provoking webinar in the series. This week – can we MRI the company & diagnose its health in terms of internal connectivity, communication and collaboration? Yes we can.  Join Leandro Herrero ^[27], Marieke van Essen ^[27] and Carlos Escario ^[27] on 2nd July – 18:00 BST/19:00 CET – to learn how 3CXcan provides this analysis using the highest scientific principles of network sciences.

Bring your critical thinking brain, switched on. It’s a serious business. It may also be fun.    REGISTER NOW! ^[27]

 

The snap shot of the company as pictured in an organizational chart, is probably one of the most fictitious works of management art.  Yet, it is a map of power and control that perhaps, in many cases, needs to be shown by the HR Cartography Department.

But the idea that the static display of boxes, reporting lines, solid or dotted, tells us anything about what is going on, is very naive. I don’t think many people would see it differently.

To understand what is really going on, you have to have a ‘live organizational chart’ and that could only be achieved with a live social network analysis.

For all technological advances we have at our disposal, we have a fairly prosaic, rather boring and uninformative ‘thing’ called an organization chart as a ‘representation’ of the company.  For example, it tells us nothing about three vital, fundamental components of organizational life:

Unwritten rules. The organizational chart may point to the written ones and only in so far as they are connected with the mechanism of power and reporting lines. For example, whom to escalate a problem. But not even when.

The natural influencers. The organizational chart is blind as to where in the organizational network a particular individual sits. There is no correlation between a hierarchical system and an influence system. Mrs Jones running the mail room may have three times more (cultural) influence and connections than Mrs Smith running the Strategic Unit.

The tribes. Every organization has tribes. Some are functional, and they may have their own organizational chart: IT, Operations, Finance etc. But many powerful tribes are not functional and they don’t have ‘their chart’: the youngest, the part-timers, the remote workers, the newly-acquired, the ‘women in leadership club’, the smokers or the runners/gym-lovers/wanting-to-die-healthy people. And if you don’t know about your tribes, or don’t know what to do with them, please note your Sabbatical has ended, come back.

The organizational chart is that lonely artefact that corporate archaeologists will find and frame, a relic from the divisional and Fordian organization, a Guide to Bosses for Dummies.

Although the reports of its death have been grossly exaggerated, the practice of  management as ‘organizational chart reordering and reshuffling’, is today in a rather poor state of affairs.

I despair when I see reorganization announcements solely based on new power distribution, or that say little about the possible excitement of the new structure in favour of that new chair showroom.

Some press releases are new furniture brochures, the new chairs and sofa collection. And a few beds.

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THE COMPANY IN A MRI ^[27]

Are you ready to do your organization health check? A must for the well-being of any organization. Join the conversation with us this Thursday July 2nd for our 2nd thought provoking Feed Forward webinar with Leandro Herrero ^[28], Marieke van Essen ^[29] and Carlos Escario ^[30] from The Chalfont Project ^[27]. 18.00 BST, 19.00CET. Register Now! ^[27]

Can we have a sense of the reality of communication, connectivity, and collaboration inside the company, a real sense, without simply using assumptions, or taking for granted what we see at face value?

Maybe get confirmation bias out of the window and have a good diagnosis of what is going on, whether we like the outcomes or not. It can be done. And it may save you millions in reorganizations or reshuffling that may not be needed. Or, yes, it validates your intentions.

Let’s put the company in an MRI and find out so that any course of action is informed. (Would you have an operation without X-rays and perhaps MRI?).

 

 

Each participant who attends any of the live webinars of the Feed Forward series will be eligible for one copy of Leandro Herrero’s new book: The Flipping Point ^[20].  Read a recent review ^[26].

Our traditional management education has almost 100% focused on the formal organization, the structural fabric of teams, divisions, groups, committees and reporting lines. The informal organization, often also called the ‘invisible organization’, has always been a ghost: you know it’s there but can’t see, can’t manage, can’t measure, so I don’t do anything about it. Not many years ago many leaders considered the informality side as a waste, a detractor from the core and formal, that is, doing your job. It seems yesterday when a friend of mine, a very successful business owner, spent a lot of time writing (hand writing for his secretary to type) memos to staff about how not use email for personal reasons, or the internet for that matter. Forget that online shopping and Ticketmaster deal. Not in his company.

Today, the role of the informal organization is more recognised. But still it is important to remind ourselves of what the informal social networks inside the organization, the web of connections, the largely (but not totally) invisible side does, and why it is inexcusable for leaders today to ignore it, or even treat it as an anecdote.

1. Connectedness (= network) Obviously! The issue here is fluidity. Informal social networks inside the organization could become non fluid if you attempt to formalise them, ‘convert them into a team’ or corporatize them. They then become clubs (women in leadership, expats) which have their own utility, but they are not strictly speaking an informal network. The real connectedness dwells in the informal organization, well above the ‘forced connectedness’ of teams and task forces.
2. Information traffic and communication. The travel, the social life of information, uses two highways: the top down hierarchical system of communication (the pipes) and the informal network (chatter, rumours and all versions of Chinese whispering). You can’t exercise a role, or example, as Internal Communications without mastering the social life of the rumour. So you need to know how the invisible organization works.
3. Clustering. In the internal social network, people who know/does/did X, also know/do/did Y. There is an entire social cartography that can be considered. The informal organization loves clustering. Find an element, chances are you’ll fine the others. It’s ‘people like me do this’.
4. Listening. Receiving feedback. The informal organization/internal social networks are very good at listening and closing the loop with people. If you see the organization as a listening organism, then you need to focus on the informal organization, not the structural and formal of teams and committees. What the formal organization hears is then listened to in the informal one.
5. 24/7 Q&A. The informal organization is a 24/7 Q&A system you can tap into. The 24/7 Q&A knows no boundaries. The fluidity and use of the informal organization and its clusters of (informal) social networks allows for the bypass of a formal ‘expert system’. It is literally a ‘can anybody tell me about X?’, assuming that everybody is a possible ‘expert’. You don’t need to catalogue them anymore.
6. Ideas generation/crowdsourcing. Tapping into intellectual capital, idea generation and fast idea qualification requires the entire network. Internal crowdsourcing is only possible if the fluidity of the social networks is respected.
7. Ties. The social network is the generator of ties, strong or weak. The more weak ties, the greater the potential for innovation. Strong ties are more predictable (you already guess what your team members John and Peter and Mary are going to say) and less good for innovation. The informal network hosts the weak ties, which are often the most powerful ones.
8. Social capital. The network is a constant creator of relationships, a self-configuring one. It is therefore the strongest social capital builder; social capital defined as the sum of qualitative and quantitative relationships.
9. Host of conversations. The true conversations take place outside the straitjacket of the team meeting.
10. Stories. The informal organization is a big campfire for stories to be told. Their nodes in the informal organization (you and me) are raconteurs. The employees in the formal structures are more on the information traffic side.

Leaders should be curators of the informal organization, masters of the invisible world and keepers of the fluidity, avoiding any attempt, from anybody, to corporatize or formalise it. It is the art of unmanaging to reach full potential.

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THE COMPANY IN AN MRI ^[27]

Can we have a sense of the reality of communication, connectivity, and collaboration inside the company, a real sense, without simply using assumptions, or taking for granted what we see at face value?

Maybe get confirmation bias out of the window and have a good diagnosis of what is going on, whether we like the outcomes or not. It can be done. And it may save you millions in reorganizations or reshuffling that may not be needed. Or, yes, it validates your intentions.

Let’s put the company in an MRI and find out so that any course of action is informed. (Would you have an operation without X-rays and perhaps MRI?).

Join Leandro and his team on July 2nd, at 18:00 GMT, 19:00 CET for the second Webinar in the Feed Forward series (back to normal may be tricky, normal is not waiting for us). Register now! ^[27]

 

 

Each participant who attends any of the live webinars of the Feed Forward series will be eligible for one copy of Leandro Herrero’s new book: The Flipping Point ^[20].  Read a recent review ^[26].