If I’ve been asked that question once, I’ve been asked it a hundred times in the last few years. In an age of the “sound bite” trying to talk about the complexity of human relationships that make up business life doesn’t quite lend itself to co-operation.
All of my work comes to me structured as a “problem” that needs to be “sorted out”. That “problem” may be a plan that needs to be written, a consultation process that needs to be designed and rolled out; a “difficult” person or team in an organisation that needs to be “fixed”. While the framework around which my invitation is phrased can often look quite generic – the underlying issues are always about people and relationships. What I “do” is design processes for engaging people in dialogue. What happens as a result of that is that we create plans that are owned, consultation processes that are genuinely dialogical/meaningful and solve human resource issues.
My toolkit consists of questions – rather a lot of them at times. I work from the perspective that there are no “taken for granteds” and my starting point is generally trying to explore the assumptions and hypotheses around which the particular problem or issue is constructed. One approach I use is Appreciative Inquiry.
I like working with problems. I see them as solutions. By that I mean that a particular kind of behaviour – whether it is bullying, excessive praise, stubbornness, stuckness etc… - is the only way at this moment in time that an individual or a team can give voice to an issue. As such, I approach problems from a benign, curious position. I don’t begin my work by assuming that this problem is a bad thing (which can be challenging for my clients sometimes!). In fact, it may be a very useful thing. It may contain rather a lot of information about how the whole system is communicating. That way, I avoid falling into the trap of blaming and I hope that I can approach each member of a team or organisation from an appreciative position. It gives me, and the organisation, a richer understanding of how this issue is relevant to the broader organisational system.
As well as working appreciatively and asking questions about what is going on overtly, I’m curious about what’s not said – the unconscious processes that contribute to organisational life - and more interestingly – the emotional climate in organisations. Because like it or not – we don’t leave our emotional selves at the front door and enter into a rational entity that is “organisation” even though there is a dominant discourse that organisations are “rational” entities. Organisations are emotion generating environments and asking people to be rational only is a fairly irrational request when you think about it.
Approaching consulting to organisations from this perspective means I offer insights that address the overt “problem” while also addressing the “covert” issues that may be informing it at a deep and unspoken level.
I'm delighted to announce that Interactions has won the contract to design and manage a consultation process for Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council to inform the first strategy for arts development in the county. We'll be working closely with the Arts Office and I'm looking forward to meeting artists, policy makers and audience members over the course of the next few months as we wonder out loud and draft a plan that speaks to the priorities for arts development in the county over the next 3 - 5 years. Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council is a new client for Interactions and we're very excited to be their chosen consultation partners for this assignment.
We're also looking forward to rolling out a creative approach to the consultation using our Dynamic Participation model. We've already used the Dynamic Participation model in our work with The Arts Council in 2005 where we designed and rolled out a national consultation process involving over 1000 people, 100 meetings and many geographically disparate locations to inform the national plan for arts development. Set against significant consultation fatigue in this sector, the consultation process was widely hailed as a successful model of public consultation and resulted in the recently published Partnership for the Arts (available on The Arts Council's website).
“In terms of clarity, strategy has become an ever more obtuse art” (Micklethwait J and Wooldridge A, 1996, pp159).
We are regularly invited to assist organisations in the generation of strategic plans. The generation of a document or report is very often seen as the “end product” of a process and in some cases the plan itself then needs to be “sold” to the organisation. Increasingly we find management teams wanting to approach this task in a more creative way. The following are some thoughts, garnered from conversations with our clients about how it might be done differently.
Controlling the future
Why do organisations strategically plan? This question is rarely asked because of the dominant discourse in business that suggests that not to plan is somewhat reckless. Banks require plans in order to release funds. Marketing departments require plans in order to position the company or product. Most business engagement with state or central government requires a written plan that serves to reassure the parties that some kind of certainty exists as to who the primary actors are. Plans and strategic plans in particular are a primary map and compass of the business world. This raises one of the fundamental aspects of strategic planning – i.e. the hope that in producing a plan, uncertainty will be controlled and the future predicted.
Many strategic planning processes are predicated on the assumption that the “future” exists as a separate tangible place and the role of the strategic planner is to identify which aspects of the organisation’s mission and activities can be made to “fit” with that expected arrival. This can sometimes set up a defensive pattern within organisations that may turn a strategising process into one which seeks to prevent the organisation from experiencing any risk whatsoever, thereby protecting it from uncertainty and potentially from growthful risk and challenge.
The Paradox of Plans
The paradox can often look like this:
Increasingly I’m working with clients to create strategic planning processes whereby the strategising is fluid and evolving while at the same time visible and tangible. A plan is delivered but it is the result of and beginning of strategic thinking. If we are fixated on “one” future, then any unpredictability or deviation from that future can leave us feeling unprepared which is what we’re supposed to be addressing by doing a strategic plan in the first place!
Strategising vs Strategy
The contracting phase is now a time when I work with clients to re-frame the possibility of strategising and planning as one where the future is co-created in the present and is seen as a plurality rather than a single certainty. As a consultant I assist clients create safe enough spaces to imagine a different way of working, and more importantly, a jointly constructed future that embraces change, challenge and uncertainty.
Graetz draws a distinction between strategic thinking and strategic planning.
“..Planning concerns analysis – establishing and formalising systems and procedures; thinking involves synthesis - encouraging intuitive, innovative and creative thinking at all levels of the organisation”.
Hypothesising, de-constructing, re-framing etc are all tools for creative thinking and strategising which fit within my consultancy tool kit.
“So long as contrasting right versions not all reducible to one are countenanced, unity is to be sought not in an ambivalent or neutral something beneath these versions but in an overall organization embracing them” (Goodman, 1978, pp5).
In revisiting some of the work I have undertaken with clients strategising has been a way of asking creative questions with a view to generating new possibilities and new futures. The other insight of course is that we strategise all the time – whether how to sneak out of the house in our teens or securing additional finance for a business venture – strategic thinking comes naturally!
The Challenge for Consultants
The primary challenge to those of us involved in assisting organisations to strategise is the co-creation of a secure enough environment in which to envision a future that is insecure.
An un-attributed quote states – “Martin Luther King did not say, ‘I have a strategic plan,” he said “I have a dream’” – and has a lot to offer those of us in the midst of strategising. The dilemmas about outputs become secondary to the strategising itself and business plans, marketing material, bank proposals etc become obvious ways of developing contextually situated conversations that can only enhance understanding.
Goodman, Nelson, (1978), Ways of Worldmaking, Hackett Publishing Company
Graetz, Fiona (2002), Strategic Thinking Versus Strategic Planning: Towards Understanding the Complementarities, Management and Decision, Volume 40, Number 5, pp456 - 463
Micklethwait J and Wooldridge A, (1996), The Witch Doctors, Heinemann, London,
I refer to myself as an extroverted thinker. That's shorthand for - I haven't a clue what I know until I start talking to someone - that's why you'll see frequent references here to "conversations". Conversations are my key strategy for understanding myself and I’ve also found in my consulting experience that conversations are the most important strategies in my toolkit. If I can't be in a conversation with someone - how can we work out what we know? And if we can't work out what we know, how can we work out the bits that we don't know?
Following on from
yesterday's post it occurred to me that once we move into the unconscious competence domain it is increasingly difficult to work out what it is we actually do know. We take it for granted, and we often take for granted that other people also know..
One way in which I am generating data for my PhD research is via interviews....nothing new in that I hear you say. But one of the primary interviewees is me. Over the course of the next few years I will ask colleagues, my supervisor and various others to interview me about the research and my findings. I am totally convinced that it will be during those conversations, as distinct from sitting at my computer writing, that I will really get an authentic sense of what it is I know. Something will happen when someone asks me a question I haven't considered before and I will answer from a place I don't normally visit - somewhere in the middle will land an insight that's new.
When I'm working with clients I place a huge value on conversation, interview and informal chat. It's in those moments that we collectively work out what we are struggling to know and also affirm what it is we are certain of. Unconscious competence keeps the show on the road but from time to time we need to take a moment to reflect on how we managed to make it all unconscious...and more importantly, the "it" that we do unconsciously.
Interviews are a fantastic way of doing that and I never fail to me amazed at what happens in the space "between".
Mark Hollander writes something that resonates with me:
It is interesting that for a field as collaborative as ours just how much time we spend in complete isolation. I look at my weekly time sheets and am amazed at just how much time I am alone, staring at a computer screen. Writers are confronted by a taunting empty document waiting to be filled. The editors I work with can spend as much as 60 hours a week alone in a dark room working on their AVIDs. Directors break out scripts in isolation. And even Producers with the million phone calls that must be made to get one simple shoot set up are still isolated. Long term happiness (not to mention mental health) requires a steady diet of human interaction. We are by nature social creatures... and when denied interaction by the demands of work or the allure of email, it takes it's toll.
I spend a lot of time alone - thinking, writing, planning etc and there are times when I'm in one of those contemplative moods that I have to remind myself to reach out and make contact. Solitary periods are a necessary part of my work but I contrast that with being an extroverted thinker - which means that I rarely know what's on my mind until I start talking to someone.
I don't experience solitary times as lonely but they can sometimes be isolating so my rules (for myself) around this when I know I am going into one of these phases are:
- Make plans to meet friends or colleagues for lunch on a regular basis
- Pick up the phone and chat with a friend or colleague either about the work or about a social matter at least once a day
- Make sure to get out of the office for a walk, coffee or some other "outside" activity during the working day
- Recognise the difference between needing to talk to think and needing to talk to forget!
- Mind the boundary around time because it often blurrs when there's nobody to remind me the working day is over
Do you experience working on your own as isolating or lonely? How do you manage social context in oe of those phases?
I've been hosting two American blogger friends of mine over the past week or so and it's been so interesting to hear about my city second hand and from a new perspective. It's amazing what you take for granted when you live somewhere all the time. I've learned that electric kettles that automatically shut off are a new phenomenon where my friends come from; just because you think you know where you are going doesn't mean there are street signs to assist; non Guinness drinkers, if placed in the right hot house environment can become evangelists for the stuff etc. All joking aside it's affirmed for me the usefulness of having a different view on what we take for granted and most of the time that's what my work involves - turning something upside down or sideways to get a better view and to offer that difference to my cilent. 9 times out of 10 change works because the difference makes sense, and if we can approach that search from a position of curiosity then I believe that anything (including converting to being a Guinness drinker) is possible! Now whether or not that Guinness situation is sustainable change is a topic for another discussion.
Some time ago Mark Hollander from Coaching Creative Minds, in a comment on this post, asked me
What advice would you offer to those individuals who work at home? They have to *force* themselves out of the house. And they sometimes report it to me as thought it were a personal short-coming. Might they consider this it a "good mental health habit" like "brushing your teeth". There's no judgment there. You have to do it or you get cavities. You have to go out regularly if you work at home to keep things in balance?
Working from home is an interesting one…On one hand you can work all day in your pyjamas – and as someone who has occasionally done that – there’s definite merit in a dress down Monday to Friday :) Apart from everything that’s been written about the lack of commuting time, reduction in expenses etc etc the main challenge is managing boundaries.
I discovered this for myself when writing up my Masters’ dissertation and now that I’m writing up a paper to send to my PhD supervisor – I get very creative about distraction and procrastination strategies. Because I don’t have a group of peers or colleagues around me to chat with the day sometimes disappears and before I know it I have written 4 blog posts, done the laundry and have no word count worth talking about when it comes to my main task. So far so normal eh?
The real issue comes when it’s past 6 O’Clock and technically personal time. The guilt kicks in “I should have more done”; “I can’t go out and meet friends because I’ve wasted the day” and the inner dialogue proceeds. (I'm not assuming that everyone's boundary is 6pm, but I do think there needs to be a defined time between work and play!)
This entire conversation in my head can turn quite pathological – and I have also seen it with clients. The inability to manage the boundary between work and personal time means they blend together with neither being productive. We need the water cooler conversations, the trips for a coffee in our work lives as social encounters that get us out of our own self referring worlds. Sometimes our pathological chat can lead to a self perpetuating perfectionism that never gets addressed – comparing what we’re doing to what someone else is struggling with builds camaraderie and can be sustaining in the tough times – those who work from home need to develop a system for sustenece in the absence of those casual work rituals.
So in answer to Mark’s question I would say:
- Strategically Socialise: Working from home, particularly if you work alone can drive you crazy – we all need social interation so you are going to have to deliberately and strategically manufacture that for yourself if you are a home worker. Pick up the phone, make an arrangement to meet a friend for coffee or lunch.
- Prioritise the Personal: It’s never “if” you go out of the house if you are working from home it’s always “when” – you’d never stay tied to your chair in the office at work? Why would you do that if your office happens to be in your home? Schedule a workout at the gym or the pool into your diary directly before or after your work day and don’t negotiate on that unless it’s a world war 3 emergency.
- Creatively Rejuvenate: If the work is not flowing give yourself permission to take a guilt free hour/day off. Unproductive time off is simply guilt time and leads to more pathologising and no creative rejuvenation.
- Ritualise: Create rituals around the beginning and ending of your work day – this is particularly pertinent if you don’t have an official work space in your home. I sometimes burn different aromatherapy oils to transition from one space to another. Clients of mine dress in a particular way if they are in work mode and another when they are not – simply to create a boundary.
There’s also a great post on this topic over at
Escape from Cubicle Nation.
I was delighted to attend an event in Dun Laoghaire last night where Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council launched their first published arts strategy. I have to declare an interest here as I worked with the arts office to design and manage the consultation process that informed the shape of the strategy.It's always satisfying to see a final document after a long and complex consultation process, particularly in this case as great care has gone into the design of the plan which includes a series of commissioned photographs by Ros Kavanagh. I was really impressed by the way in which the arts officer Sharon Murphy acknowledged the work of previous staff of the arts office by naming them and inviting others to contribute written material to the documentation - she placed the current plan in a context that is wider and richer than the period of time that she has been in post at the local authority. I am also delighted that Sharon has become the most recent recipient of the Jerome Hynes Fellowship and will take up her role as Clore Fellow from September onwards.
So much of the work we do as consultants is "confidential" and does not result in public documents which can make it challenging to talk about the work with new and potential clients in the absence of something "tangible". That's one of the reasons I started a blog and increasingly I am bumping into people who are reading even if they are not commenting. I'm wondering how other consultants find this issue of the absence of publicly available "evidence" of their work?
I will post a link to the pdf of the plan once it has been uploaded to the DLR site
I love the idea of re-introducing scarcity into systems that lack boundaries
If too much choice leads to unhappiness then does scarcity lead to something more productive? I'm inclined to think it might after the past week or so. Mayo County Enterprise Board asked me to design and deliver a series of day long workshops for 16/17 year old students to encourage them to think of entrepreneurship as a career option after school. 50 students attended each of the four workshops we ran over the past 2 weeks and at the end of each day we had 8 new businesses complete with elevator pitches; unique selling positions and costings.
I designed the sessions to give the students resources including the services of consultants; some brainstorming exercises to get their creative juices flowing; space; time; there was an award for the members of the winning team and a clear task. Then I added some constraints. Consultants could be booked for a limited number of timed sessions. A lovely lunch was provided but we didn't have an official lunch break. A deadline was imposed for each of the 8 groups to present their pitch to their classmates. The students had to self manage time, resources and constraints.
The workshops were variations on similar bootcamp events I've run for business clients and I also structured the days around a set of principles I believe to be true in organisational systems.
• People (particularly teenagers) know much more than we give them credit for
• Real creativity happens when you connect people with their own unique truth and experience
• People are experts about their own experience
• When creativity dries up in the system start looking at who’s managing the process – blocked creativity is rarely located in an individual’s experience it’s always about the message individuals are getting about what constitutes the ‘right’ way of being creative
• Most of what constitutes consulting and facilitating is getting out of the way
• The other bit is learning to listen – which means not thinking about your response to what the person in front of you is saying
• Creativity can only thrive with constraints. Too much of anything is not liberating it's oppressive
• You can only manage at the boundaries - anything else is police work
The students came up with fantastic ideas, on time, on task and made creative use of all of the resources we put at their disposal. Claire Wilson documented the days and we were joined by a team of five consultants who worked closely with each of the groups.
If I've learned anything in the past week it's that teenagers know more about strategy than any MBA graduate I've ever met and trusting them to get on with the task is half of the work involved - let's not assume that because someone is 'younger' (in any sense of the word) that there's anything they need to learn from us oldies. These young people blew me away with their ingenuity, positiveness and ability to work with what was in front of them. I'm indebted to a wonderful 17 year old young woman (my niece) who has taught me a lot about respecting the wisdom of younger people - she deserves half the credit for the design of the day and I'm proud and honoured to have a wonderful consultant of this calibre. She has two younger sisters and I'm on standby for the life lessons they'll pass on when the time is right.
Hat tip to Gary for the Merlin Mann post
I'm wondering whether much of our efforts to create strategy, rather like cultivating leadership skills, are based on a rather idealistic notion of what really goes on in organisations. And possibly actually conceal rather than acknowledge the very individualistic expectations of the supposed strategists...
I meant to pick up on this great post from Johnnie some time ago but I've been too busy working on strategies with clients! Seriously though, of course he's right. There's a lot of idealisation around strategies - as though a strategy is a fixed object of wisdom (preferably published in a book) that when published will reveal the way ahead. Strategies are about now, and how we see the future from this vantage point - so I am more interested in cultures of strategising than I am in trying to control the future. Having said that, I've experienced a lot of fear amongst some clients of wanting something different in the future - as though admitting their desire will in some way ensure it can't be realised. Strategising means a degree of making the fantasy real to some extent and consultants can be pressurised into containing that fear by providing the framework (or offering their own wishes and interpretations of what's possible). So I agree with Johnnie and at the same time ask my usual question which is - how are consultants and facilitators used in that process to do a job on behalf of the client system?
