Drink Every Time the Organisation Says it's Special

Some years ago, I interviewed for a programme change lead role with the national police force.

At the start of the interview, one of the panellists told me earnestly that the organisation was special.

And then both panellists reminded me they were special about every third sentence in our 1 hour together.

If I'd had to drink every time they said they were special, they'd have had to arrest me at the end of the interview!??

Now, don't get me wrong. The police force performs an essential and challenging role.

But you know what, I'd just come out of ANOTHER organisation that told me daily how special they were in the nine months I worked there.

The notion of 'being special' embeds itself into culture and can have positive and negative aspects.

Now, organisations are complex, but usually and desirably, you can break down what they do into one simple sentence.

For instance, the Accident Compensation Corporation statement says, 'We help you when you hurt yourself', police, 'We enforce the law to keep you safe from crime', banking is something like, 'We make money helping you to make the most out of your money'.

In Chapter 10 of "Change Management that Sticks," I discuss that there's a problem if you can't articulate the organisational purpose in a straightforward sentence.

In the organisation before that interview, I was the Change Lead on an enterprise upgrade to their shared services SAP system.

Every week for months, I would meet new stakeholders. When I described to them what I was there to do, they would cock their head to the side and say with a puzzled, slightly anxious and sometimes sad face, 'But how can you do that when you just got here?'

After months, I started to get visions of shouting, "YOU'RE NOT THAT SPECIAL!".

Behaviour, I caution you, which is never encouraged in a change manager! (But sometimes fantasising about what you would say if all bets were off can get you through tough days and even entire assignments!)

This organisation was in the public sector and had the most long-tenured staff I've ever seen.

A lovely woman I sat next to when I regularly visited a regional branch described herself as the 'baby of the team' as she'd ONLY been there for 24 years...

On my side of the fence, I'd been a contracting/consulting change practitioner for several decades when I worked there.

Sometimes, I've worked in as many as four organisations in one year.

No organisation is THAT special.

And why? Because they all have a purpose. And they group themselves around the delivery of that purpose.

It's either delivering goods, services or both.

They all have 'doing' groups in the organisation that produce and deliver the goods or services and 'support the doing' groups that do just that.

So far, I haven't encountered an organisation you can't break down in this manner.

I think it helps that early in my career, I worked as an information manager mapping and writing content for enterprise KnowledgeBase repositories, i.e. systems that describe EVERYTHING an organisation does and how they do it in a systematised, accessible way.

After the first week in an organisation, I always draw myself Barb's classic blob diagram.

Draw a blob on the page for the operations arm (the doing and delivering people), then add blobs for all the support groups with inputs and outputs to and from the operations team arranged around them.

You will instinctively draw lower or higher blobs on the page according to their power, influence and status within the hierarchy.

It's interesting to do this exercise BEFORE you see their organisational structure chart and compare where your picture is similar and where it differs.

This picture will tell you a lot about who's really calling the shots in the organisation, what is valued and their belief systems about themselves.

You are sense-making and contextualising who this organisation is (OK, sometimes it's who they think they are and who they actually are), their purpose and how they arrange themselves around that purpose.

It's one of the maps that will get you to successful change delivery and high adoption.

The organisation thinking they're special can culturally be a help or a hindrance.

Is it a source of pride and accountability for high performance, or is it teaching an arrogance that shuts down agility and receptivity to change?

If it's the latter, you must coax them towards a gentle reframe so that thinking 'we're special just as we are' doesn't become a barrier to change adoption.

The public sector organisation with the long-tenured staff had locked into some fairly self-limiting beliefs regarding embracing change. They believed they were complex, unknowable and 'OK just as we are'.

The bottom line is when it comes to organisations, they're ALL SPECIAL - in their own unique and special way!

This week, I came across Morgan's Metaphors, described in Gareth Morgan's book (not the New Zealand cat-unfancier one) "Images of Organization".

I am curious if I'm behind the times just hearing about these; I note the book has been out for 20 years, but they are interesting. Here they are:

1. Machine: an organisation is a series of connected parts arranged logically to produce a repeatable output.
2. Organism: an organisation is a collective response to its environment and, to survive, must adapt as the environment changes.
3. Brain: an organisation is a set of functions designed to process information and learn over time.
4. Cultural System: an organisation is a mini society with its culture and subcultures defined by its values, norms, beliefs, and rituals.
5. Political System: an organisation is a game of gaining, influencing, and coordinating power.
6. Psychic Prison: an organisation is a collection of myths and stories restricting people's thoughts, ideas, and actions.
7. Instrument of Domination: an organisation is a means to impose one's will on others and exploit resources for personal gains.
8. Flux and Transformation: an organisation is an ever-changing system indivisible from its environment.

Finding the metaphor amongst these that best fits your organisation is another valuable sense-making tool.

It's an index to why people do what they do in the ways they do them.

This helps you understand the purpose, culture, opportunities, and barriers to adopting change.

Reading through the eight metaphors for the first time, I felt there needed to be a ninth metaphor.

"Organisation as steaming pile of excrement." ????

It's a metaphor not for the faint-hearted, but I've worked in two organisations that qualified for this description and one that was borderline.

These organisations all had in common that they paid lip service to 'people-care' and being 'employee-centric' (ugh, the cliches...!).

But the actual behaviours towards the workforce were impossibly demanding, aggressive, manipulative and exploitative.

Plus, poor behaviour was never called out and shut down.

Morgan's Metaphors cover it in number 6, 'psychic prison' and 7, 'instrument of domination'.

There's a book giveaway on my LinkedIn feed right now. Click here to view and enter.

As always, here's to your change management success!