Organizational Jazz

Extraordinary Performance through Extraordinary Leadership

David Napoli, Alma Whiteley, Johansen Kathrine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317324966
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

It is obvious that the world is caught in the process of constant, rapid and unpredictable change. Such changes are challenging the time-honoured business models that we hold, as we strive to understand the changes around us and survive.

This book offers a lens through which we search for new ways of thinking about, and working in our dynamic complex world. The search draws on the science of complex adaptive systems.

Organizations of today need 'Extraordinary Leaders' who can 'dance' with these changes by embracing the principles of complexity science to create highly adaptable and innovative organizations that recognise the value of intangible assets. The success of an organization usually depends on those working closest to the value-adding end of the business. It is those employees and their immediate leaders, who seem to have the greatest impact on the success of an organization. Managers-as-leaders can ease the way for those who depend on them for support and encouragement. People are the only true agents in a business or organization. All assets, whether tangible or intangible, are the result of human actions. Therefore, it is essential that people in organizations experience high levels of commitment to their work and value relationships and respect. These are fundamental requirements if rapid, timely and comprehensive information is to flow to the decision points within the organization in productive and sustainable ways.

This book places people at the centre of the organization working within the theoretical framework of complex adaptive systems and shows how and why it works to create wealth and dignity. Organizational Jazz symbolically represents the joining of the certain with the uncertain creating an environment for innovation and performance.

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION

The scene takes place in the mining industry somewhere in Australia. It is in the early hours of the morning, a time for thinking and philosophising. A group of workers, mates, are talking and thinking about life at work. They are musing about the never-ending mysteries of what goes on in the workplace, and in particular how managers never seem to hit the mark of mutual understanding.

‘It’s as though we speak a different language on the job, and the strange thing is that when we all go for a beer, the problem disappears.’

‘That’s not my biggest problem, what bothers me is why managers rarely seem to do what they say they will do. They just don’t walk the talk.’

‘Yeah...and then when we ask them something, they always seem to hide something – how can they expect us to give our all when they don’t share things with us?’

‘Not only that’, comes another response, ‘managers always act as though someone – some unseen force – is pulling their strings. Reminds you of Star Trek.’

‘That’s true. I suppose they’ve got pressure on them too – and all those bloody stupid rules...’

‘Rules, rules, rules, sometimes you feel so boxed in that you aren’t sure that you should go ‘you know where’ without checking on a rule,’ sighed one of the group, an old timer.

‘The strange thing is,’ says one of the newcomers to the shift team, ‘we seem so near and yet so far. These guys in management are really decent people and yet they just don’t get how we think and what we need.’

‘And what’s more,’ says his mate, ‘I think they feel the same about us. If you ask me, we are all boxed in, and from what I can see, it can get very comfortable in these boxes. I haven’t been here all that long but it all becomes so bloody boring. You’re glad to get home and feel that you’re something more than an extra set of arms and legs. At least your kids think that your brains are worth picking. What I would really like is help on how to make my work life and my home life similar in the things that matter. I don’t want an imbalance between work and home as though one were the enemy. I want one to be a part of the other.’

They stared morosely into their coffees and pondered on the double lives they seemed to live – one at work where they were boxed in, often of their own doing – and one where they could think for themselves, take a chance, make some mistakes and still come up smiling.

In another area of the factory, a group of managers are talking.

‘I honestly don’t understand them. They’re bickering and complaining about so many stupid things. I’ve tried to tell them what I know, but it seems like they just don’t trust us.’

‘Yeah, it’s the same old thing. You try to do your best for them and they just want to keep on and on about the same old things.’

‘You know, I asked for some help the other day with a break down, but do you think anyone wanted to stay back and help?’

‘They’re not a bad lot you know, my kids go to the same school as some of their children, so we meet sometimes outside of work. It’s just that they’re not enthusiastic. But how can we make it different for them?’

We could peek in on such conversations all over Australia and not only in the mining industry. Almost since the first organizational forms and formats were invented, there has been a very visible ‘us and them’ way of thinking. It may be a bit unkind to call it ‘managers think and workers do’ as Fredrick Taylor¹, the famous scientific manager suggested, but we must admit that in deed if not in word, this is sometimes what we see.²

In this book, we are facing such problems head on. Basing ourselves in large organizations that have asked themselves the hard questions and gone on to do something about them in practice, we listen and learn as managers and workers tell us their stories. We will present them to you, the reader, to strike a chord with some of the experiences you have gained as you have gone through working life. Some of these may have kept you awake too, as you may have watched your best efforts dissolve into cynicism, resentment, or worst of all, apathy. As workers, you may have marvelled at how much of your talent and creative thinking has been untapped, seemingly unneeded. In fact you may not have even recognised that you had any particular talent if it was left to the workplace.

Following this introduction is a chapter we have called “The Dance and the Music”. We identify the need to dance a new dance to the old music, working together within boundaries, however, departing from the ordinary or usual. We take a look at the nature and models of change and through this learn why identifying the nature of variables is so important in strategy, change and leadership. We present here some ideas and principles that scholors have contributed to our thinking.

When you leave this, you will meet the chapter on mechanistic management. We are fairly critical here as the lack of deep and fundamental criticism is something that this style of management has, perhaps, suffered from in the past. We maintain that some of the mechanisms we talk about such as rules, regulations, and procedures are necessary if not vital to keep organizations safe and legal. However, as you see in our ‘yin’ and ‘yang’ figures, too much ‘mechanistics’ inevitably leads to too little liberation of people to exercise their wisdom, understanding and individual/collective knowledge and experience. From chapter four, we take you to the transformational edge. In fact, we do no more than mirror the world as it is for most of us anyway. Thankful though we are to have some certainty, work premises, car parks, routines and so on, the ‘inside’ of organizational life is fraught with the unexpected. Sometimes this is a delight and sometimes a worry, but never is it as boring and controlled as the most avid mechanistic manager might believe. In chapter four, then, we talk about learning to lead and manage in a world that is far from certain, in which, for many things, there is far from any agreement. We owe a debt here to many writers and scholars who have helped us to translate theories of transformation in to practices such as the extraordinary leadership workshop, designed and facilitated by David (and we have all helped at times). It gives us pride to say that upward of five thousand people have attended the workshop which, in its full form, is a week-long residential. In this chapter, we introduce some terms from complexity theory and you will find them, referred to throughout the book, either as concepts or practices.

Chapter five is our ‘reflection and making sense’ chapter. Here, we outline the ideas and concepts first as they compare with the ones we have used in chapter three and then, in part two, the ones that are almost unnecessary in mechanistic management but come very much to the fore in extraordinary leadership. These are mostly relational and we use some of the metaphors and ideas from complexity theory to offset the trap of explaining an exciting future in the words and images of the past. As the famous philosopher, Wittgenstein, said ‘we are prisoners in the cage of our language’. This is why you will meet terms like the strange attractor and fractals to project images of ‘organizational magnet’ and ‘self similar but uniquely different behaviour’ that these two terms portray.

Following the reflections chapter, we introduce the ‘Extraordinary Leadership Program’ we talked about earlier in the introduction. Words can not convey the experience of watching people work in a non-hierarchical environment where they gradually, over the week, ‘find’ resources, skills and talents that they did not know or even remotely suspect they had. The chapter describes the workshop itself, and we have persuaded David that it would not be too immodest to share just a few of the reactions and reflections of those who attended various workshops. For the mechanistic leader, the workshop might come under the heading of ‘danger, whole people at work’.

One of the syndromes of the last twenty or so years is that of political correctness. It has not been OK for some time now to be considered as a poor corporate citizen whether this is inside or outside of the organization. This has resulted in many cases in declarations, in public and in the press such as ‘people are our greatest asset’. Nice to hear, but do organizational structures and organizing practices bear scrutiny on this score? Does it matter and how would the manager/leader know? Stirred by one of these inspirational declarations in the press, and because only a few days before, workers were on strike not because of pay and conditions, but because they were not valued, the PATOP model was built. Basically this is a ‘walk the talk’ diagnostic model for leaders, teams and even individuals to check out the talk and the walk. Thanks to the devotion and encouragement of many PATOP users over the years, we bring you an extended version which also deals with strategic change.

Following PATOP we bring to you a summary of extraordinary leadership and then in Chapter 9 we provide a possible lens through which we may understand why the journey along the path of extraordinary leadership may be difficult for some people.

The remaining chapters are stories from organizations who have transformed themselves in an extraordinary way. In doing this, we hope to convince readers that however much of a ‘mechanistic ceiling’ is above them, it is possible to take people to (and over) the transformational edge. We hear stories about the life of uncertainty and far-from-agreement that to us is much more realistic than the ‘fantasy’ one of control. Interestingly, in liberating people and coping with diminished opportunity for control, the leaders, especially those who have been in the workshop, find that productivity goes up, whatever the constraints and uncontrollable variables.

More than anything, we hope that you will enjoy being with us, sharing our ideas and experiences.

Notes

¹ Taylor, F. W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. New York, Harper & Row.

² Whiteley, A. (1995). Managing Change: A core values approach. Melbourne, MacMillan Education Australia Pty Ltd.

Chapter 2
THE DANCE AND THE MUSIC

Many managers are aware of the needs of the present and future. Pressures and problems are not only greater than ever before, but they are experiencing different problems. Their tried and tested solutions just don’t seem to work anymore. The way we like to think of it is that managers are being asked to dance a new dance to the old music. It’s here that we liken organizations to jazz players. They are working together, but improvising in ways that depart from the ordinary or usual, to deliver something new and exciting. Their music is eclectic, yet they are playing to the same tune.

In this chapter we are going to bring you some of the views of our favourite management scholars. In his book, ‘Strategic Management & Organizational Dynamics’, Ralph D. Stacey³ provides a useful and intriguing lens through which possible options for organizations can be explored. We would also like to acknowledge scholars such as Meg Wheatley⁴, the late Fred Emery⁵, and Bob Dick⁶, who we have quoted elsewhere as well as Stacey for their ideas and principles. These, presented with great scholarship, have contributed to our thinking. We add to their writings our experiences and ideas, focusing on the topic of strategic change.

Strategy, change and leadership go hand in hand. We believe that the ordinary methods of the past need to become the extraordinary ones of the future. We begin by looking at the nature of change.

Nature of Change

For Peter Senge⁷ and his colleagues, people seeking change in organizations may use many different labels (as we ourselves often do) but essentially Senge captures the essence of change.

[Organizations are] Trying to respond quickly to external changes and think more imaginatively about the future. They want better relationships with less game playing and more trust and openness. They want to unleash employees’ natural talents and enthusiasm. They want to move genuinely close to their customers. Through all of this, they are striving to shape their destiny, and thereby achieve long-lasting financial success.

Many change writers and managers share some central ideas about what is involved when change happens. One is that change is really a feedback loop, and one that is not linear, but more resembling a series of interacting feedback loops, never still, always dynamic and coming in different guises.

For example, Senge talks about ‘fear and anxiety’ feedback loops, ‘no help’ feedback loops, ‘not relevant’ feedback loops, ‘not enough time’ feedback loops. Remember, these are all feeding back into the organizational system at varying times and with varying intensity. As he says succinctly, (p61) ‘In any complex system...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• PREFACE 'Organizational' Jazz
• CHAPTER 1 Introduction
• CHAPTER 2 The Dance and the Music
• CHAPTER 3 Mechanistic Management
• CHAPTER 4 Transformational Edge
• CHAPTER 5 Extraordinary Leadership
• CHAPTER 6 Extraordinary Leadership Workshop
• CHAPTER 7 PATOP
• CHAPTER 8 Learning Through Reflection
• CHAPTER 9 Constraints - Shackled by Bureaucracy
• CHAPTER 10 Introduction to Stories — "The World of Experiences"
• CHAPTER 11 Complex Adaptive Systems in Practice at DBCT
• CHAPTER 12 Mineral International
• CHAPTER 13 BHP's Whyalla Rolling Mills: Managing Change which Benefits All
• CHAPTER 14 The Metropolitan Cemeteries Board
• INDEX