All inclusive? Go where the energy is?
Dr Leandro Herrero
Chief Organization Architect & CEO of The Chalfont Project, leading global transformations with Viral Change?. Psychiatrist blending behavioral science with practical leadership and culture change. Author & Speaker.
Many times in my consulting work, I find myself facing this dilemma. Do I involve many people on the client’s side, engage them, teach them about ‘behavioural change principles’ or ‘behavioural DNA’, for example, and create a journey of many travellers to reach some conclusions or destinations? Or, do I go semi-solo, reaching the same shores, with the same happy CEO, and the same professional fees?
Journey 1 is perhaps painful. Often feels like ‘herding cats’. The organizational and behavioural side of consulting has this peculiar problem: ‘everybody thinks they know’. People with little or no psychological background, suddenly become behavioural experts overnight. Managers who have never managed to seriously create any traction in the organization, suddenly say that ‘they have been doing this – whatever ‘this’ means- ‘for many years’.
The organizational and behavioural side of consulting has this peculiar problem: ‘everybody thinks they know’.
I’ve never seen non financial managers claiming huge accounting expertise, or non engineers claiming manufacturing, mechanical systems proficiency, but I have encountered numerous people in the organization claiming complete understanding of human behaviour, individual and social. Everybody seems to have some sort of unofficial PhD in Organizational Behaviour.
Journey 2 – full provision of hands on expertise, advise, active involvement, with no pretension of democratic particiaption or over-inclusiveness – is far easier and less stressful.
I shared this dilemma some time ago with a good friend and client, excellent CEO, and he said: ‘Do what I do, go where the energy is and forget the rest’.
There are choices. Bringing people along on a journey can hardly be dismissed as trivial. But one has to accept that it’s not always possible to have everybody ‘aligned’, to use a bit of managerial jargon. Inclusiveness is a noble aim which can turn into a pathology – over-inclusiveness – very easily.
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Bringing people along on a journey can hardly be dismissed as trivial. But one has to accept that it’s not always possible to have everybody ‘aligned’.
Some people have an extra need to embrace everybody, or as many as possible, all the time. They are not content with the few, or even with a pure ‘rational understanding’ of the issues. They need full emotional, all on board, and, if possible, happy, personally engaged people. And they don’t get tired in the process. Bill Clinton was this kind of man when president. For all his shortcomings, this was his fantastic strength. He did not want you just to ‘agree’ on X but to emotionally love X.
I have to say, I have not seen many Clintonian leaders in organizations.
Inclusiveness should not be an automatic goal, specially at the expense of bold progress. It deserves good critical thinking of what is possible and realistic. In the meantime, I recommend going where the energy is.
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CEO/co-founder CircleLytics Dialogue | Collective Intelligence & AI driven Decision Making & People's Commitment | Culture of Learning & Trust | Engaged People Network
2 年Thanks for your reflection, Leandro Herrero. Our customers choose journey 2 and .... journey 3. Journey 3 is including all employees. Engaging them in questions that rouse their curiosity, structure issues and spark solutions. Collective Intelligence is not only - as science explains - for cognitive and creative additional power, but also for aligning behaviour. Deliberate open-ended questions, throughout the change program turns the change into something that's co-owned and co-shaped by the people that matter most to success, including the board. This combined journey 2 and 3 is quite a solid way to avoid tier 2 managers to politically influence the agenda as a small group, hence they become by default / design part of journey 3. No preference is made for one person or the other, no years at the company count more, no skin colour nor age. Online, massive dialogues in multi rounds are in my opinion a very needed and proven intervention and way to engage and co-create. Would love to exchange thoughts with you and invite you to an idea Leandro Herrero
Communication Strategist and Consultant; Founder, #WeLeadComms
2 年This is right on the money, at several levels. Coalition-building is both more efficient and effective than attempts at consensus building. Still, it's easy to underestimate the pressure to at least go through the motions of trying to bring everyone on board - like having a "top quartile" engagement score KPI or having to kiss the rings of the most recalcitrant stakeholders. The bigger question is how can we start to address that pressure - both within the client organization and within the larger business society that takes the requirement for consensus as a point of departure?