What Is An Organisation??

I recently had the slightly sadistic pleasure experience of writing what seems to be an infamous paper in the land of the Roffey MSc entitled 'Mapping the Field of People and Organisational Development'. Speaking to my fellow cohort and others that have trodden the MSc path before, it was resoundingly a tough paper—choosing how to represent my map of a vast and complex field felt big.

One thing it caused me to reflect on more deeply than before is 'what is an organisation'? It sounds so simple - but there are many ways to depict this. Fundamentally, I am curious about how your lens on this question impacts you and how you work. I also wonder whether the impact of the pandemic on how we work may, or may not have affected the way we think about what an organisation is. And again, how a change in thinking impacts the course of our ways of 'being' at work…

A Blast From The Past...

I received a book last week from Roffey's library; it was not what I was expecting – but I recognised the title and authors. The book is 'building a dynamic corporation through grid organization development' (a very funky lower case title for 1969) written by Blake & Mouton and introduces The Managerial Grid. It spiked my curiosity. After getting past the continual references to 'businessmen', 'manpower', 'he' and 'men'! And wondering what it must have been like for Jane Mouton – as co-author with my 2020 lens! I found it interesting to reflect on the lens Blake and Mouton shared around organisations and their purposes in 1969.

The book states, 'A company's purpose for being is financial – to take an investment and increase its value. That companies attempt to do so by creating useful products and services that consumers want is an important but separate issue of justification… the motivation of business is to do this in a way whereby it can realize an appreciation of the investment put into it. Any businessman who has let his interest in his product or service overshadow his financial considerations, who does not sense the reciprocity of high purpose and maximum profit, has probably experienced the unavailability of funds essential for growth and expansion' Blake & Mouton (1969:5)

I am not sure what Simon Sinek would say re 'Finding Your Why'! But you can see how this lens informs a way of being in business, approaching decisions, creating a culture and an environment where people deliver growth on investment. The book presents a model where you can analyse a company, against a set of criteria and that will tell you how you 'fix it' and achieve 'excellence'. Blake and Mouton see understanding an organisation as something that can be split down into pre-determined boxes, which can be assessed against criteria and from that we know how to fix.

My experience is this is often how people think about organisations and their wish for the magic guaranteed ticket out of dodge, by telling them the right box. This view relies on the idea of an organisation as a defined system, that is in many ways closed, linear and connected by straight lines. A complicated machine that can be fixed, understandable thinking when we often see companies defined by their organogram.

Having said that I can still see the relevance of the boxes in Blake and Mouton's 'Corporate Excellence Rubric' as a tool to help us see and understand some of what is going on. But it if you were to use as the only basis to understand and then affect change, it fails to connect with the complexity of an organisation, and why 70% of change management using stepped processes fail.

More Like Spaghetti...

Our cohort was privileged to have Dr Sharon Varney come and share some thinking on complexity. Put simply, organisations are wiggly, like a bowl of spaghetti. With all the will in the world, you are not going to be able to identify and pull one strand and untangle the bowl. You'd work slowly, and draw a strand, teasing it apart, and then when that becomes stuck, you look for next option. Varney shared strong and powerful images of the depth and variance of how organisations are connected, the constant motion that they hold and a 'dance between patterns and events'. No boxes, no easy ins to understanding - its a view that presents a much slower, challenging and uncertain picture. But if you hold such a lens, |seeing the grey, is there the potential to be able to see and work with more?

Is This Just Sci-Fi?

In complete contrast to this weekend's reading, the weekend before I read Frederic Laloux's 'Reinventing Organizations', this appeals to my developmental lens. I see and hear the criticism of it - perhaps for many, it is a little fanciful, but it feels like there are also some useful insights. Laloux talks about the development of organisations that recognise more complexity and grey; he shares the concept of a 'teal' organisation. Using the metaphor of an organisation being a 'living system/organism' with the complexities that are inherent in that.

Laloux asks us to imagine what organisations would be like if we did not imagine them as soulless machines. He brings forward ideas such as self-management, wholeness and evolutionary purpose, that may feel too radical or inapplicable for many. For others, this is relevant; it brings ideas of meaning, empowerment and agility into reality. Arguably, it shows consideration for how we enable diversity and obtain success in the high levels of disruption and ambiguity we face. And I wonder what holding a teal lens means people and their ways of thinking and being at work, what we would be asking people to give up and bring of themselves.  

One of the key arguments for such approaches is that they give us the agility, diversity and connection to cope with the levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity we face now. By bringing ideas such as self-management and empowered decision making this ideal is pushing out the power to make decisions, solve problems and engage fully in ways that develop people across an organisation. He includes thinking around wholeness – where a person's deeper self is as much, if not more so rewarded than egoic demonstrations traditional privileged in the hierarchical and masculine organisations depicted by Blake and Mouton. But again, it's one lens.

Our Lens Matters

In leadership courses, much time is spent on delineating the difference between management and leadership – but I haven't seen time invested in exploring people models and concepts of what an organisation is. I don't necessarily believe this is something that we have to teach, in terms of what it should be. But it feels powerful to explore the lenses people hold, the thinking and experiences that have led to those and what they mean for them, their businesses and how that informs the way they operate. I am now even more curious about how people see and relate to the concept of what an organisation is. It feels a powerful place to explore…

I am really curious to hear where others are in their thinking on this....

Jemma Barton, 

E: [email protected]

T: +44 7717 131 434

W: www.awokendevelopment.com/ www.risebeyond.org