The Graveyard of Disappointed Hope

Reflecting upon the relationship between hope and organizational change arising out of reading Steve Hearsum’s No Silver Bullet.

[The following post is by Mark Hughes, one of the most insightful thinkers on organisational change in recent years. Mark recently retired, and generously he not only read my book but also wrote this in late December 2024. His website, where it originally appeared, is a treasure trove of his work.

You could do worse than have a rummage there...]

Introduction

Yesterday, I finished reading No Silver Bullet: Bursting the Bubble of the Organisational Quick Fix (NSB). ?I awoke this morning intending to begin writing this post, yesterday, I had no such intention.? My unconscious also gifted the slightly depressing title for this post. ?In my sleep, I was processing thoughts and feelings about NSB, not so accessible to my conscious mind. Unconsciously, I was back amongst the workshop whiteboards, flip charts and coffee airports; back with my organizational change publication successes/failures, very personal hopes and despair. NSB is as much about the invisible often unconscious emotional aspects of organizational life as the more visible and tangible conscious quick fixes. If we put the shortcomings of silver bullets to one side, they are carriers of strong and at times intoxicating emotions.

I worked for over three decades as an academic before volunteering for redundancy in 2019.? Over that time, I observed the demise of change management, the rise of change leadership and the ascendancy of the leadership development fetish. Interesting times and as a Reader in Organizational Change, I was not a neutral observer.

I read NSB by way of preparation for a potential future conversation with Steve. We met at a staff seminar, about a decade ago and subsequently, we have had some water cooler conversations facilitating our respective workshops over the years. I virtually attended and enjoyed the NSB book launch and more recently enjoyed reading NSB. ?I have a strong suspicion that it will be the last organizational change book that I read.? If that is the case, I am grateful to conclude with such a meaningful and thoughtful read. ?I assure you that there was a lot of meaningless and thoughtless organizational change literature that I encountered.

I am going to major in this post on hope and despair regarding organizational change. However, first I need to balance the slight menace of the title of this post with a reassuring and uplifting Amazon-style book review.

Excellent Book (5/5)

I had high expectations before reading NSB.? As I read the book these high expectations were repeatedly exceeded. The crude dichotomy characterizing much of the organizational change literature is as follows.? Academic literature speaks to academics but disengages and excludes practitioners.? Practitioner literature persuades practitioners but at the expense of academic engagement/respect.

I admire how Steve has been able to write a book with an appeal to two very different audiences with different agendas.? The only audience excluded would-be academics and practitioners seeking a superficial read.? This is a deep book, in NSB you have a sense of the author reliving his past experiences, but also living through (and surviving) the writing experience. ?It took time for this weary old academic to read, largely because the book engaged me both emotionally and philosophically.? However, I felt neither patronized nor overwhelmed. NSB is informed by both knowing scholarship as well as a deep and thoughtful engagement with the development and facilitation of organizational change practice.

In subsequent sections, I will illustrate the reflexivity NSB surprisingly encouraged. This reflexivity is enabled through Steve’s frequent very candid disclosures. In most of my academic writing, I had to maintain the artificial objective/subjective distinction. The first-person singular was taboo in academic writing, academic authority informed by excluding the self, that’s interesting.? In reading NSB, I felt more like I was in a conversation than a lecture, refreshingly different from other organizational change books.

The Cemetery Gates

‘even disappointed hope wanders around agonizing, a ghost that has lost its way back to the cemetery and clings to refuted images.‘(Bloch, 1995:195)

The title for this post is taken from a quotation in The Principle of Hope, Ernst Bloch’s encyclopaedia of human hoping. I will return to hope and despair, but for now, we stand together at the Blochian cemetery gates. In this instance the gateway into a world of organizational ghosts and personal shadows. Whatever happened in my sleep last night I was taken to the gates of the cemetery of disappointed hope, in C.G. Jung’s terms, I am having to make my unconscious conscious.

In 2009, I was fortunate enough to be at a Critical Management Studies conference where Simon Critchley was one of the keynote speakers. He talked persuasively about passive nihilism.? Instead of the terrorism of an anarchist, passive nihilists find the tyranny and manipulation in the world abhorrent, but focus on passive activities such as gardening and bird watching. Post-redundancy, I wear my passive nihilist t-shirt with pride lost in my twin passions of gardening and rambling.

In writing NSB, Steve appears to have sidestepped this passive nihilist cul-de-sac.? Alternatively, he has hidden his existential angst very well.? NSB and its no quick fixes subtitle does not offer the warm comfort blanket of certainty. Steve offers plenty of practical guidance, particularly in the two concluding chapters. There is also a very useful subtext throughout NSB about the benefits of being more reflexive and thoughtful in the processes of organizing.

In reading NSB and some of my writing and workshop facilitation I embraced the shift from doing to being.? That said it is never easy to relinquish agency.? The sleazy Just Do It (J.D.I) organizational slogan exists for a reason (even if it is a dodgy reason). In reading NSB I was in the realm of, Just Don’t Do It (J.D.D.I). There are plenty of references in NSB to corporate rebels and contrarians. I enjoyed these folk tales they felt like my kind of people. ?I enjoy listening to The Road to Nowhere by Talking Heads and Everyone Knows This is Nowhere by Neil Young. The awkward part isn’t the journey, it is when you reach the existential nowhere.

So, here’s to you DiMaggio and Powell

The existentialist nowhere in the last section went a little too deep, a little too quickly. Perhaps I can lighten the load with the healing balm of institutional theory. I enjoyed facilitating many organizational change workshops with Steve Reeve and we worked well as a double act.? He would approach organizational change from perspectives of political science, institutional theory and economics.? I would approach organizational change from the perspectives of psychology, sociology and history.?

Steve (R) covered the institutional theory of DiMaggio and Powell (1983) in our workshops. It always went down well with workshop participants, regardless of seniority, or sector background. ?Benign ghosts from these workshops joined me in reading NSB. ?DiMaggio and Powell helped me to understand why organizations copy each other. Once I had this insight, it informed my attempts to understand organizations. They referred to institutional isomorphism which could take three forms; coercive, mimetic, and normative. Organizations gain legitimacy by copying each other.? The interesting bit for me is that they have to copy other organizations, the agency of choice isn’t as prevalent as many imagine. If everyone else in your sector has an armoury of silver bullets and you have no silver bullets, you may well feel exposed, insecure and illegitimate.

As Steve (H) eloquently explains business schools and large consultancy firms are significant players in manufacturing and delivering silver bullets. I have a suspicion that organizational receptiveness to these munitions is cultivated through the forces of institutional isomorphism.? There is a very real desire to be legitimate or at least signal legitimacy.? At different points in NSB Steve refers to the tale of the Emperor’s new clothes.? Even if it is blindingly obvious that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes, it is challenging to spell this out when everyone else is saying the opposite.

Steve repeatedly acknowledges the role of collusion which is very valid.? However, for me, collusion was the precursor to co-optation. I had my moments explicitly questioning business school orthodoxy and Steve cites one of them. My (2011) provocative highlighting and questioning of the spurious nature of 70% change failure tendencies enthusiastically espoused by respected business schools/respected professors. ?Yet, a decade later, Hughes (2011) was repeatedly invoked in Human Relations as the author who claimed change tends to fail (Schwarz et al, 2021).?My irreverent critique of business school orthodoxy now co-opted into favoured business school orthodoxy – change tends to fail and we can help you succeed.

NSB has rightly been applauded, but the danger is that it is co-opted into the beige orthodoxy of organizational change. One of the paradoxes, witnessed over three decades was how resistant organizational change orthodoxy was to the type of change Steve encourages.

Too many words have been expended on the spurious goal of overcoming resistance to change (see HERE), perhaps it is time to overcome the resistance to change of organizational change orthodoxy.

Who Killed Change Management?

Sorry the last section was meant to be more upbeat, but I went back to another dark place of old battles and frustrated emotions.? There are reasons why the unconscious lurks in the shadows. ?Possibly counterintuitive, but let’s visit another dark place. It’s around 2009, we have just experienced the global financial recession, and businesses and governments are broke.? The organizational work we did for the university dried up. Politically we were out of favour and fashion in our institution, dark days indeed.

I stumbled across Who Killed Change? Solving the mystery of leading people through change by Ken Blanchard et al (2009). This frothy little book was written in the style of a Mickey Spillane murder mystery. ?The murder under review was the apparent tendency for change to fail. ?Who Killed Change, was the antithesis of NSB and could be paraphrased as – we’ve got silver bullets/quick fixes and we know how to use them. ?The hopeful news for readers was that Ken Blanchard companies were able to solve their murder mystery for a consultancy fee.

I wrote Who Killed Change Management primarily as therapy with publication in the wonderful Culture and Organization a welcome bonus.? In following the detective style, I parodied the Blanchard et al parody. ?My detective delved into my growing concerns with practitioner depictions of change failing, but also the increasingly vociferous academic critiques of change management and the manageability of change.? Writing the paper was fun, but also helped me to understand the consultancy dependency on failure problems as the precursor to successful solutions. Business school/consultancy quick fixes were contingent on failure depictions, such as change tends to fail, regardless of the validity/reliability of such depictions. ?Also, at this time I began to explicitly and purposefully engage with the literature on hope and implications for organizing.

Hope – The Fuel of Progress

The politician Tony Benn was quoted by Younge (2002) in The Guardian as referring to hope ‘…as the fuel of progress…’ Hope fuels practical organizational agendas, as well as, the publication ambitions of academics, yet somehow remains implicit in these agendas and ambitions. Hope was a recurring theme for me in reading NSB, though on the pages it is more implicit than explicit.? Perhaps in asserting no silver bullets/quick fixes, Steve Hearsum is the hope thief, apparently offering to replace hope with despair and optimism with pessimism. ?

Hope is integral to NSB and my concluding reflections on organizational change bookending my career. Although, unpublished I did a deep dive into the relationship between hope and organizing at a time when my life felt hopeless (see previous section).? The following selective insights about hope feel pertinent to Steve’s NSB thesis.

In NSB the sloppy misrepresentations of Kurt Lewin and other scholars are rightly called out.? In my hopeful quest, I wanted to know what Kurt said about hope.

‘…the importance of that psychological factor which is commonly called hope … Hope means that sometime in the future, the real situation will be changed so that it will equal my wishes.’ (Lewin, 1942: 80)

Lewin captures exactly what I am dancing around in this post.? Academic critique plays a crucial role in social science. Bursting quick-fix bubbles informs organizational practices, but how does this take us to a future which equals my wishes, or are we on the passive nihilist road to nowhere?

I took reassurance from Halpin (2001: 107) ‘…frequently the state of being hopeful implicitly involves critical reflection about prevailing circumstances.’ This was the subtext I read into NSB which transforms silver bullet bursting from a hopeless activity into a hopeful activity.

In my hope literature review, an epiphany came when I unexpectedly understood the utility of despair.?? Nesse, (1999) suggests that events indicating our efforts will succeed arouse hope, whereas events indicating that our efforts are futile foster despair. Although not favouring this dualism, he acknowledges that the bias is so powerful, because the words hope and despair contain intrinsic judgements.?

This acknowledgement is crucial to understanding the role of success and failure in organizational change, I feel a sermon coming on, but back to Nesse.? Nesse (1999) highlights two persuasive illusions about hope and despair.? Firstly, the illusion that hope and despair are opposites, they are dependent upon each other.? Secondly ‘…that hope is a beneficial virtue and despair is a harmful sin.? Both exist only because, in certain situations, they offer benefits’ (Nesse, 1999: 431).?

The Who Killed Change Management moment featured in the previous section was my despair for the field of organizational change and my involvement in the field. However, out of the despair of this critical questioning came hope and fortunately subsequent successful publications and workshop facilitation. I perceive this down, through up and out trajectory when I read NSB, but that might just be me.

Leaders Solve Problems or Construct Problems?

I have an urge to address the leadership theme of NSB and as it is winter and my gardening has paused, I will indulge my urge.? Heroic leaders fire silver bullets at the problems of organizational life. We mere mortals look on in complete awe, fantasising that one day we might get to wear our underwear over our trousers.

One of the best/most useful papers I ever read about leadership questioned such heroic leader orthodoxy.? Problems, problems, problems: The social construction of leadership (Grint, 2005) highlights the involvement of leaders in creating the problem context they heroically solve. The paper unpacks the tame, wicked and critical problems organizations encounter and the applicability of management, leadership and command in addressing these problems (see further elaboration HERE).

I agree that there are no silver bullets, but even the perceived targets leaders point their big weapons at are often largely socially constructed.? This position is incompatible with traditional leadership development and consultancy interventions. Over time critical voices are co-opted into the dominant and dominating orthodox narrative – “where are the leaders, what we need is leadership”. Very few business schools would teach students that leadership is about asking questions, whereas command is about offering answers (Grint, 2005).? No, it is easier to peddle the pornography of strong leadership using the sleazy glamour models featured on The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den.?

The Principle of Hope

Hope was tangibly delivered when a member of the university library staff informed me that the three volumes of Bloch’s (1995) The Principle of Hope had arrived. ?My academic solution to a very human emotion of despair. Tragically, Bloch’s encyclopaedic historical account of hope was the most depressing set of books I ever read. Bloch’s historical overview highlighted human hopes repeatedly being manipulated and unfulfilled. He wasn’t against hope, his anger was targeted at those peddling false hopes.? His anger was around the knowing manipulation of humans hoping to serve the power and financial interests of the manipulators.

Emotions are invested in particular organizational change initiatives such as hope, excitement, pride, fear, anticipation, confusion etc.? Business schools and large consultancy firms have been masterful in their manipulation and monetization of these emotions as they successfully deliver and distribute silver bullets.

Earlier, I rhetorically caricatured Steve as the hope thief, but I never believed this.? After reading NSB, I perceive him as the bouncer at the cemetery gates of disappointed hope.? Just inside the gates, we see a small group of academics sobbing over the latest academic league table. Opposite them, smartly dressed consultants fondle their top-of-the-range smartphones. Steve in his brown overalls shuffles past a non-descript group of practitioners enthusiastically bounding towards the cemetery gates.

“Nothing for you here madam/sir, just the shells of dodgy old silver bullets and some cases of new silver bullets, move along please, we will be closing the cemetery shortly!”

Ghosts of disappointed hopes haunt too many of my reflections. However, these benign ghosts encourage critical reflection on past experiences. This reflexivity is the best defence against the manipulation of silver bullets and quick fixes.

If you can be patient and reflexive, the proposition that there are no silver bullets is a reason to be cheerful. If you have the courage to resist the isomorphism of adopting the latest silver bullet, your position is stronger not weaker. Questioning the silver bullet prescriptions of business schools and large consultancy firms is a basis for despair informed hope.? If you are willing to embrace an ongoing and uncertain process of organizational change, one day the future might just equal your wishes.