23. July 2015
How you are, how the world is – this is the irreparable.
(Giorgio Agamben)
In his small, but philosophically very dense booklet The Coming Community, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (also see the German blog entry on state of emergency) elevated the irreparable to act as a symbol of being itself: »The irreparable is neither an essence nor an existence, neither a substance nor a quality, neither a possibility nor a necessity. It is not properly a modality of being, but rather it is Being that already always gives itself in the modalities, is its modalities. It is not thus, but rather is the thus.«
In the business world, this notion sounds strange, and not only so because the sentences cited above are not quite the style typical for management literature. Taking something that is defective, broken, damaged and blemished as being the symbol of true being? That sounds not only strange, but simply stupid. Every client would complain about an irreparable product and have if repaired or replaced. However, business is not only about products, but also about the people who make the goods. I think that for people in business, irreparability is relevant in two ways: Firstly with reference to the topic burnout and secondly with respect to establishing a positive culture of dealing with mistakes.
Regarding the first point: As long ago as in the 1990s, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (he has been mentioned before on this blog with reference to rhizoms) gave an enlightening sketch of the current state of our society. He called it a control society, which follows on from the previous disciplinary society in his view. The disciplinary society of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century disciplines its citizens in »enclosing milieus«, which use rules and regulations to clearly define what is allowed and, more importantly, what is not. The control society, on the other hand, is a delimited society, where in everyone is potentially allowed anything under the paradigm of freedom and independence; yet the individual is directed by means of »ultra-rapid forms of free-floating control«. The individual receives subtle suggestions to continuously have to make something of him- or herself.
In the disciplinary society, people taking on a new role had to »start again at nothing every time«, and they therefore »never stopped starting«. People in the control society »never finish anything«, wrote Deleuze. There will always be further aspects of performance that can be optimized and there will always be further possibilities of education and training that have not yet been used … The failure to make full use of one’s own potential is considered a deadly sin in the society of control; apple watch and self-tracking bracelets are its new status symbols. Byung Chul Han (who has also been introduced on this blog as a proponent of story-telling) followed on from Deleuze when he identified this excess of positivity in the society of control together with the simultaneous lack of all (negative) boundaries as the original reason for the burnout phenomenon. We are not strained by pressure from above, but by home-made pressure from inside.
When I suggested that we meet the new challenges of the VUCA world with VUCA-AIKIDO, I introduced the basic stance clarity, outlining a competence I consider vital: »I know (my) limits«. In a VUCA world that produces a control society as defined by Deleuze, which lack boundaries to the point where people are driven into burnout by their excessive yearning for self-optimization, it is essential to know how to set boundaries. In this context, it constitutes a boundary to admit to imperfection and permit oneself not to be perfect. By granting yourself shelters of irreparability, you are enabling yourself to confidently deal with the subtle demands of the control society: You will decide where to invest the time and resources that are available in order to become better. You will also decide where to remain less than perfect, to stay as you are. This does not mean asking for less application. It means to give one’s best in selected areas without having to be perfect in every realm.
Regarding the second point: Businesses that work in production necessarily focus on quality (as well as the dimensions time and cost). Faulty products are rejected and not brought to sale. The more bearing the product has on safety, the greater the focus on quality, of course. This treatment of the product often also reflects on the treatment of people. This means: the more bearing the product has on safety, the more importance is given to the need to agree, the insistence on process compliance, status orientation, etc. in the company culture. Focus on a perfect product often produces perfectionist people in companies.
Add to that our cultural and religious historical background, which also places behavioral faults into an existential context. The great sociologist Max Weber showed the close links between Christianity and our modern economic methods even in the early twentieth century. The way mistakes are dealt with in companies can also be interpreted in this light. In Christianity, a behavioral fault is easily considered a human fault: a sin and therefore a barrier to access to Christian paradise. In analogy, companies are quick to question their employees’ right to be in the company when they have made a mistake. The search for a »guilty party« is often more important in businesses than the attempt to fix the mistake. Take Giorgio Agamben’s plea for irreparability as a counterpoint to this culture: »Without refuge and nonetheless safe – safe in its being irreparable.« True being is what it is: real, faulty and blemished.
I am of course not calling for carelessness or deliberate sabotage; my aim is different. Stability and security are lost in the VUCA world. It is therefore an entirely predictable consequence that the error rate will increase. This enormously increases pressure on perfectionist individuals in a company culture that is focused on continuous optimization. At the same time, experimentation is the only way to find out what will and what will not work in a VUCA situation. And experiments sometimes fail. In a VUCA situation, it makes sense to act first in order to then be able to make a fast judgment on whether the actions were helpful or not (see Dave Snowden’s Cynefin approach for complex and chaotic realms, as outlined previously on this blog). I believe that in a VUCA situation, a mistake is one thing above all others: a valuable informant! Mistakes help adapt behavior accordingly and to improve without attaining perfection. That is why I believe that openness for experiments and valuing mistakes as opportunities to learn are important elements of the basic stance intuition in my suggestions on VUCA-AIKIDO.
I may have to stress once again here that I do not want to praise what is known as minimum performance or to demand less achievement in business. Instead, I want to support companies in establishing a company culture that allows the employees to realistically do their best without having to be perfect. I am convinced that this is the healthier and therefore also the more sustainably successful method of doing business.
I think that the use of strokes from transactional analysis is a useful model for the establishment of a high-performance company culture that still accepts the individual’s irreparability. The founder of transactional analysis, Eric Berne, described the establishment of a trusting environment that fosters achievement as early as the 1950s. Interaction with others and attention from one’s fellows is a basic need for every human. Indeed, research and reports have shown for centuries that humans literally die when these two basic needs are not met. Berne defined a »unit of attention« as a stroke. When we meet, we exchange strokes with every »hello« and every nod of our heads. And when we start a conversation, this exchange of strokes continues …
The word stroke has a double meaning that is important to this context. It can connote an act of kindness when giving a caress, as well as a negative action in the sense of a blow. In analogy, strokes that are exchanged can be positive or negative. All messages and actions that signal »I like you« send positive strokes. Conversely, all messages and actions that signal »I do not like you« send negative strokes. Another very important aspect of the stroke model is the difference between conditional and unconditional strokes. Conditional strokes are focused on the other’s actions, behavior and performance. They always also include »because-information«: I (don’t) like your behavior, because you are (not) doing this or that. Unconditional strokes, on the other hand, are focused on pure being. They relate to the person themselves, their essence and existence and are therefore much »stronger« than conditional strokes are. Unconditional strokes like »I like working with you!« or »You’re a real idiot!« (both without a »because« of any kind) have a much greater effect than conditional strokes like »Good work!« and »This was a mistake!« do.
In correlation, there are four kinds of strokes that people in companies exchange:
- Unconditional positive strokes: All messages and actions that show the other person that I fundamentally value them as a person and do not question their work in the company in itself.
- Conditional positive strokes: All messages and actions that show the other person what I value in their behavior and which aspect of it they should maintain.
- Conditional negative strokes: All messages and actions that show the other person what I don’t like in their behavior, what could be improved.
- Unconditional negative strokes: All messages and actions that show the other person that I fundamentally do not like them as a person and generally question their work in the company.
This list in itself may already show which stroke behavior can establish a trusting yet at the same time performance-oriented company culture: unconditional positive strokes (1) build fundamental trust in oneself and others. They are the most important basis for a valuing company culture, yet in my experience they are also the most neglected ones in companies. When I give the others in the company the feeling that they count as human beings and that their workplaces are safe, I fundamentally raise their motivation to perform. This sets up the basis on which conditional positive strokes (2) can establish confidence: I make the other person aware of their strength and what they should keep doing by giving feedback. Conditional negative strokes (3), on the other hand, foster self-criticism and are the basis for learning development: I give the other person feedback on where they have the potential to improve and what I would like to be different – giving them a basis on which to change their behavior. (The exchange of conditional strokes are familiar to many who work in companies as feedback. It is therefore useful to use the familiar rules of feedback: I-messages, concrete examples, focus on attentive behavior, …) Unconditional negative strokes (4) should be avoided in all instances. They result in nothing but destruction of confidence and trust in the other person, in frustration and demotivation.
In this context, I want to stress one thing above all others: When a criticism is being voiced, it is vital that the person being addressed understands at all times that the criticism is levelled at their behaviour and not at their person. People are too quick to »hear« strokes that are intended to be conditional and negative as ones that are unconditional and negative. The most sustainable way of avoiding this is to send out enough unconditional positive strokes. This experience appears to confirm the following rule of thumb: The more unconditional positive strokes I send out, that more »severely« will I be able to demand performance without disencouraging my employees and losing their trust.
Managers and employees often report that unconditional positive strokes are in too short supply in companies. This is probably due to the circumstance that they are generated via “waste”, albeit in a positive sense of in-waste-ment, a concept I have sketched out before: giving a partner attention without an agenda, taking time for conversations about non-business topics, investing in community-building, »sense-less« activities, … This in-waste-ment produces a lasting feeling of value and fundamental trust. This brings me back to the beginning of this text: Unconditional positive strokes also include the recognition of the other as an irreparable being. Giorgio Agamben, again: »Seeing something simply in its being-thus – irreparable, but not for that reason necessary; thus, but not for that reason contingent – is love.« Translated into the context of companies, this reads: »As (imperfect and blemished as) you are as a human, I value you. Let us find out together how you can do your best in the company …«
The stroke model is more than a mere guidance for behavior with others. It can also be a useful tool for putting yourself in perspective. Giving oneself enough unconditional positive strokes reinforces anyone’s own confidence in (work and private) life.
To accept oneself and others as not perfect and then making the best of that: this may sound like sixties romanticism. Yet in my experience, I receive the most attention from managers and employees in my workshops when I present the stroke model. This reflects how relevant this topic is for companies. I am utterly convinced that those companies that fundamentally recognize their employees’ irreparability and have confidence that they all do their best will be the most successful companies in the VUCA world.
Johannes Ries
8. July 2015
The differences between an Indian slum, a Brazilian favela and the banking district in Frankfurt, between a discriminated Roma group and a company department, between a family on benefits and the boardroom members of a DAX enterprise are apparent: poverty v. wealth, powerlessness v. power, underprivileged v. privileged … No business school and no MBA degree will waste even a single thought on people who live in conditions of precarity – how they are and how they deal with their precarious situation. However, I believe that the business sector can learn from these people and the cultures that they have established under extremely averse conditions. After all, slum dwellers, the poor, minorities, outsiders and other fringe groups who have to master their sheer survival day in day out are experts on precarious situations – in other words, they are VUCA experts.
The VUCA situation is usually perceived like an state of emergency in companies: it cannot be met with the usual management and leadership tools. Although their physical survival is safe, people in companies regard the situation of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity to be precarious, because our well-being is firmly attached to stability, security, simplicity and explicitness. I have referred to the cultural philosopher and artist Yana Milev in an earlier blog post. She works on strategies for an emergency design in response to the state of emergency. Philosopher Isabell Lorey also addresses precarity in a completely new manner as an opportunity. Thanks to a great number of case studies, social scientists – foremost among them the cultural anthropologists – have met and are aware of confident experts in really dealing with precarity: people on the fringes, people who are marginalized, nomads, the excluded and other groups. These people have to live with the constant possibility that everything might come to an end by the next day, or at least change radically, and have to be ready for that.
I myself was able as a cultural anthropologist to study survival strategies in the face of a permanent state of emergency on fieldwork with Roma/gypsies in Romania (see Welten Wanderer, 2007). To me, one of the most interesting aspects was their completely different approach to time: the Roma/gypsy groups who I was privileged to meet also lived as marginal people who live for the moment. Michael Stewart, Sophie Day and Evthymios Papataxiarichs used this phrase as the subtitle for their wonderful anthology Lilies of the Field (1998), which draws a non-judgmental and equal portrait of the cultural survival strategies employed by Hungarian Rom, Untouchables in India, London prostitutes and other groups in precarious situations. According to the cultural anthropologists, they live like »lilies of the field« (cf. the bible verse Mt 6:28), who do not worry about tomorrow but are able to act confidently in the here and know while trusting (in God) that the next day will bring opportunities to survive.
As long ago as 1966, Oscar Lewis conducted his enlightening studies on the Culture of Poverty, where he established that people in a permanently precarious situation are particularly focused on the presence, even »forget« how to plan for a future beyond the immediate tomorrow. As I was sitting in clay huts and shacks without water or electricity supply during my own field research and was allowed to participate in the lives of the inhabitants of these shantytowns, I realized how much of this fixation on the present is a matter of self-protection: if you are caught in deepest poverty, thinking of tomorrow will only drive you mad or send you into depression …
Yet this fixation on the present in marginalized groups does not mean that they deliver themselves to the future as submissive victims. They go into the future step by step, »without a plan«, which can be of great advantage to them. There is a remarkable inventiveness to the way in which marginalized persons use bricolage, resourcefulness and improvisation in order to find solutions to problems. At the same time, they focus onkairos moments: opportunities that suddenly arise or come about, that are useful to those who grasp them on the spot and react flexibly to their presence. People on the fringes of society establish intensive relationships based on trust, thereby building tightly woven networks and systems of patronage that act as a safety nets in crises. Even though these groups can often not escape their poverty and precarity in this way, they are still equipped with successful coping strategies in the face of a state of emergency.
Our future-oriented society considers it a lack of planning skill to act out of the moment. However, the experts on precarity are in fact demonstrating an interesting new approach to handling VUCA. In order to perform successfully in a VUCA situation, those in the business world will need the same coping strategies as are used by groups on the fringes and in conditions of precarity in order to secure their survival amid poverty. This hypothesis is supported by the results of research conducted by Professor Saras Sarasvathy from the USA. She researched the behavior of successful businesspeople, far removed from milieus of poverty as they are. Interestingly, she identified quite similar aspects to be factors of success for entrepreneurs. Just like marginalized groups in a state of emergency, successful entrepreneurs will act »out of the present« and without overly narrow, concrete aims in mind »into« a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous future. Sarasvathy called this type of action effectuation; it is in strong juxtaposition to the linear-causal and goal-oriented school of thought that is generally preferred as a logical and goal-driven approach to handling the future.
Like the fringe groups outlined above, successful entrepreneurs also focus on four central Effectual Principles:
1. Means
In linear-causal thought, we set a goal that we want to reach and then conclude from that which means we require in order to achieve that goal. Ideally, we will have some of those means at our disposal, but will still have to generate others in order to reach our goal: We have to collect information, build up competence, create structures, establish contacts … Whoever has ever been involved in a company’s strategy process will confirm how firmly business planning adheres to this route.
All of this makes perfect sense if the one, set goal will remain stable in the long run. In a VUCA situation, however, it is anything but certain that a goal set today will still make sense tomorrow. Today’s effort invested in a future-oriented establishment of means can turn out to have been senselessly wasted energy by tomorrow.
An effectuating venture, on the other hand, proves to be VUCA resilient, as it generates future (options) from existing present potential. Effectuating planning does not set off from the one goal that is to be reached in the future, but from the means that are available in the present. All existing means together make up the potential from which a range of possible goals can be identified. Strength-oriented gathering of potential sets off from the plenitude that actually exist rather than from a scarcity seen from a future point of view. This plenitude allows the entrepreneur to start acting today.
2. Affordable Loss
The principle of affordable loss concerns finance and investment planning. In linear-causal thought, we create an (imaginary) business plan, in which we calculate a notion of the future income situation. We set certain conditions under which we will be able to make a (maximum) profit with (minimum) effort. This means it is often necessary to invest in the beginning, as the means to reach our goal still have to be generated (see point 1). In expectation of a large profit, which also requires a large investment, it makes sense to borrow money from others for the start. If our business plan is good, we can calculate the ROI point exactly: that moment in the future when the (assumed) earnings will balance the (assumed) investment and from which time onwards we will make a profit.
What happens, though, when a VUCA situation makes the future ever less calculable? A financial plan that makes assumptions on the future, and then bases large investments for large profits on this plan, is an increasingly risky enterprise. If the future is uncertain, the (assumed) earnings are also not certain. Debts make us less free and steal the flexibility we need to react to new situations speedily.
An effectuating finance and investment plan is contrary to linear-causal thought: it sets off from the bird in hand and does not strive for the two in the bush. That means, planning is focused on the loss that can be afforded in the present and not on the profit that is hoped for in the future. As planning includes the VUCA-aware knowledge that the venture can also fail, the entrepreneur asks: how much money can I afford to lose at the moment in order to realize a venture? The investment therefore never crosses the line to becoming dangerous. If a venture requires more capital than is available to the entrepreneur, the effectuating entrepreneur will not enter a debt dependency. Instead, they will find trustworthy partners (also see point 4), who are willing (also without endangering themselves) to join the investment and in return enjoy a proportional share of the profits. In this way, effectuation shares investment risks and safeguards financial survival through cooperation.
3. Leverage Contingencies
These first two principles alone ought to add up to the way in which the two schools of thought approach circumstances and coincidences. As linear-causal thought sets a firm goal and follows an exact plan of means attainment and financial investment, it must attempt to control the circumstances that will actually arise and avoid surprises. Every coincidence can ruin a venture, as it can cause deviance from the plan. When the real circumstances of the future turn out to be different from what had been assumed, the goal attainment plans will have to be adapted; in the worst case the goal will even have to be shifted. In an earlier blog post, I have already outlined the basics of this school of thought based on the Prussian warfare theorist Clausewitz.
However, VUCA situations are making it ever more difficult to control the circumstances of the future. Rising volatility and increasing complexities make it more and more probable that we will be surprised by coincidences and therefore will be facing realities tomorrow that will differ from what we were able to assume today. It is therefore much more useful to chose an opportunistic (in the positive sense) tactical approach in a VUCA situation, as I outlined in the above-mentioned blog post at hand of the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tsu.
Sun Tsu described an effectuating approach to strategy as long ago as two and a half millenia before now: the strategist needs to open up to surprises, always being in charge of the now and able to make decisions for future actions out of the actual moment. Entrepreneurs who set off from the extant means and do not focus on one goal only, but are able to aim for a range of options in a wider spectrum of goals, and who at the same time are able to react flexibly without debt obligations and fears of being ruined, will be (largely) independent of the circumstances in which they will find themselves in the future. This can make coincidence a possibility. In this context, a changed situation is not a crisis of the plan, but always an opportunity for further action (cf. the double meaning of the word in Chinese).
4. Co-Creation Partnerships
The linear-causal approach asks: who do I need in order to realize my venture? We search for the missing piece to our venture in others. In doing so, we want to be able to define exactly what we need our partner for. In companies, this very aspect is enacted in often endless discussions about interfaces. As we are obliged to follow a clearly defined goal »from above«, we have »a right« to be supported by other parties, who are not part of the process. If we do not receive this support, we make demands that are accompanied by the frequently serious and debilitating arguments in a silo culture.
In VUCA situations, dealing with others becomes a key skill. This is why I suggested interactivity as one of the six basic stances of successful VUCA AIKIDO. When all plans and ventures collapse, it is useful to have a broad web of trustworthy relationships to catch and hold you in an emergency.
An effectuating entrepreneur will not try to define the interfaces but create wide junctions. Such entrepreneurs will look for people they value, with whom they can establish firm relationships of trust. Sarasvathy visualized this approach with the image of a patchwork quilt: a so-called »cracyquilt« that is sewn together out of firmly connected individual patches to make one stable surface. To effectuating entrepreneurs, the central question is: Who do I get on well with, who can I trust and who is ready to take part? A web of trustworthy partnerships is one of the central means for effectuating out of the present into the future. It magnifies individual potential and at the same time offers security amid the uncertainties of the VUCA world.
Experts on precarity possess a basic cultural skill: living in the moment. It will now be apparent that there are advantages of effectuating action to the economic world: While linear-causal thought always requires a future that can be planned as well as a stable environment, the VUCA situation offers an ideal context for effectuation. The effectuating mindset does not consider VUCA to be a problem, but an opportunity. That which is there already opens a wide range of options, possibilities and paths. The future is always open – it is and remains our choice what we will make of it out of this moment …
Johannes Ries
3. July 2015
Applying what is proven and exploring what is new.
(SYNNECTA’s long-standing claim)
Ambidextrous organization: this term was coined by Robert Duncan in the 1970s and picked up by James March in the 1990s and more recently by several other authors to describe a core future competence of organizations. The word ambidextrous comes from the Latin ambo (both) and dexter (right hand) and designates the ability to use either hand with equal skill. In the context of companies, ambidextrous organizations are simultaneously efficient and flexible, adaptable. They can make maximum use of what is there (exploitation) and explore what is new (exploration).
My blog contributions so far have focused especially on the aspect of adaptability and the potential for exploration by companies in a situation marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), as well as the search for adequate forms of behavior in the face of VUCA, e.g., in the realms of strategy, organization, cooperation and leadership. I remain convinced that companies will in the future be confronted more and more frequently with VUCA situations and that, therefore, exploration will gain importance. At the same time, I do not mean to say that we should forget exploitation. Companies will continue to act largely in situations characterized by being stable, secure, simple and explicit (SSSE). In such situations, it is sensible to act differently than in a VUCA situation.
In order to chose the right approach, it is initially important to be able to define the situation one is in at all. The Stacey matrix (named for Ralph Stacey) can help to do so: Stacey established a correlation between the degree of agreement on the path to be taken and the degree of certainty of that path. If, for example, all parties in the company agree on which path is to be taken, and if it is also clear how this path should be taken, the organization is in a simple situation, in which it makes sense to rely on tried and tested standards, submit these to tight monitoring and continuously improve them. The situation is different when there is disagreement on the path, for example because of great diversity among the stakeholders. If the path to reach the goals becomes additionally more uncertain – for example, if there is not enough information available or technologies to reach the goal have yet to be developed, the organization is entering an increasingly complex situation (and if disagreement and uncertainty both increase to the maximum, the environment even becomes chaotic). Standards are of little help in a complex situation. It makes more sense to »negotiate« paths via open forms of cooperation and to foster creativity and innovation.
Welshman Dave Snowden set out the Cynefin Framework, in which he similarly differentiates between four different domains for organizations: obvious and complicated domains are clear enough to be able to establish what needs to be done out of best, resp. good practices. Complex and even more so chaotic domains lack in clarity so greatly that only emergent resp. novel practices can help. The difference between the first two and the last two domains is the following procedure: in simple and complicated domains I see what is happening, categorize and analyze the reality I have sensed and then react with reference to the results. In complex and chaotic domains, on the other hand, I begin by probing and acting. Only then do I sense what happened and react accordingly in my next step.
Both the Stacey matrix and the Cynefin framework can be very helpful in organizations in order to identify the current situation, for example in a project landscape. In workshops, it has served me well to use pinboards on which to order the separate (part) projects into the Stacey matrix or the four Cynefin fields with the participants. It was usually easier to decide afterwards which procedure would be best suited for the given (part) project.
In obvious and complicated domains it makes sense to raise exploitation efficiency via standardization, as the situation is sufficiently stable, secure, simple and explicit (SSSE). Efficiency programs, such as those related to lean, are a sensible choice in such cases. Complex domains, on the other hand, are characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA); exploration of agile methods of working will be more useful in these cases.
I will not give a detailed explanation of lean and agile approaches, but I will give a short, differentiating outline of them. The lean approach comes from the automotive industry and is focused on batch and mass production. It is aimed at creating a lean business that uses optimized processes and continuous improvement to produce as inexpensively as possible and in best quality with the fastest processing time. Efficiency is raised through continuous identification and removal of what is considered waste. Standardization plays an important role in order to reduce changes and to generate comprehensive processing security. At the same time, the business will ideally be fully transparent with regard to all figures.
Agile approaches, on the other hand, come primarily from the IT branch for the generation of individual products (which can then be »cloned«). The process is iterative and strongly includes the client, creating the product in continuous increments step by step from the first, rudimentarily functioning raw version to the final version. The agile approach has full flexibility, especially in order to be able to react to altered conditions by changing the product fast and inexpensively. Short cycles include phases of work (often known as sprints), followed by collection of open feedback. This is to avoid running in the wrong direction for too long, and enable early adaptation.
I have found that agile approaches often have to struggle against a reputation of chaos and anarchism in companies (although that is quite unjustified), but are usually not considered dangerous. In contrast, the announcement of a new lean project often has half the employees fear for their workplaces or at least assume that »harder times« are upon them. The creation of transparency is often experienced as an increase in totalitarian control. This is somewhat justified, as many lean projects in Europe really do not seem to be based on the original lean philosophy from Asia. Many lean programs in European companies are in fact squeeze outs that aim to tighten the belt. Again, it is not rare that they are initiated from the outside with the help of consultants equipped with stopwatches and that they are »beaten« into the organization from top to bottom, making extensive use of hierarchical authority.
Lean programs that are implemented in this manner clash significantly with agile approaches. Agile work is not possible when there is pressure from above: Agile work is pivotally based on personal organization in teams and Pirate Leadership, which are utterly necessary (according to the Ashby Law) in order to sufficiently depict the external complexity of the environment inside the organization in order to achieve directive authority.
Let me return to the ambidextrous organizations I introduced at the start: If an organization is able to lead lean and agile at the same time, it can really be ambidextrous in handling exploitation and exploration. Our current use of lean approaches, as briefly described above, however, raises a massive barrier for the realization of ambidextrous action in many organizations. Instead of realizing the advantages of being ambidextrous, organizations often involuntarily establish a Janus face and speak with split tongues. When employees are on the one hand expected to organize themselves, communicate without hierarchy and think creatively (in order to realize exploration and agility), but at the same time are pressed into the organization’s efficiency programs with a heavy hand (and experience exploitation only in its truly negative sense), two fundamentally juxtaposed leadership discourses compete with each other in the same organization. This conflict will not make the organization ambidextrous, but it will generate a double bind in the organization’s culture that undermines the employees and stalls the organization.
Such Janus faces can be prevented if organizations conduct lean projects while focusing on an attitude that was originally at the basis of Asian lean philosophy. With this attitude, lean organizations actually empower their employees. The employees are given a wide range of responsibilities of their own in order to raise potential efficiency. The spotlight is on team work and managers consider themselves supporters and coaches to the employees. The resulting culture of transparency is not experienced as a threat (as it is not a tool for control by authoritarian leadership), but really serves constant improvement together with open feedback in a healthy culture of mistakes. All of that is then compatible with agile approaches.
With this attitude, lean and agile approaches in an organization both display the same, valuing and calculable face of management. It speaks with a single tongue in a clear language of reliable organizational culture. Within this environment, the employees are able to use both their hands to have a strong grip on efficiently exploiting the SSSE world while also successfully exploring the VUCA world.
Johannes Ries
10. April 2015
Follow-ups
The leadership situation of today and tomorrow is characterized by planning ambiguities, the demand for faster adaptation and abrupt strategy alterations. VUCA is the term that was coined to describe this situation. Is your organization prepared for it?
Since last year, we have been experimenting with diagnostic tools that will be able to find your position and to provide an answer on how well organizations are really prepared for this situation. A report from inside the development of the tools for a guided future check for organizations.
Rüdiger Müngersdorff
A diagnostics instrument on the issue of VUCA
Is it really true you are in a state of VUCA in your organization? Is the situation of your business really that volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous? How do the employees and managers in your organization see it? Does the context make a difference – the organisation as a whole, a given team, a given individual? Which aspects are considered to be the most challenging? Where have successful coping strategies emerged already?
We have captured the VUCA phenomenon in several blog entries and demonstrated a range strategies to address the situation. Before an organisation or one of its units takes a measure in order to better handle its existence in a world assumed to be in a state of VUCA, it is advisable to find answers to the questions above. It is only once those answers are before us that can we start to think about possible consequences and interventions.
In this context, it is particularly useful to engage in a guided reflection on the status of your own organization. We have therefore taken a step in that direction by designing a questionnaire in preparation for our last SophiaWorkshop. This tool enables us to find out how the people in an organization really experience their situation. It is not concerned with the measurement and evaluation of objective VUCA indicators but rather with capturing subjective and individual perceptions.
VUCA is often employed to describe the outside world or the organizational context of a business: increasing volatility on the markets makes planning more difficult, for example, as it emerges that the required assumptions and predictions do not fully apply. Many such external factors exist. However, internal factors – »home-made« ones – also play an important role. Certain structures, processes, cultural patterns and ways of behaviour can result in, or at least increase the likelihood of, a situation where employees and managers perceive their environment to be lacking the necessary stability, certainty, simplicity and clarity. That can result in a number of dysfunctional behaviours and limit the organization’s ability to react to the above-mentioned uncertainties in the outside world. The questionnaire focuses on these aspects.
We are working together with the University of Manchester and Carolin Hauner in the framework of her Master’s thesis in order to develop the VUCA diagnosis tool and to continue to sharpen the focus of the questionnaire. We will also work together with industry partners in order to make sure that the result will be a useful tool. If you are interested in taking part in this process of co-creation, please be in touch to address details and the means of cooperation!
If you would like to use the VUCA questionnaire for your own organization in order to gain an initial insight into how the VUCA situation is perceived in your organization, please contact us at diagnostics@synnecta.com.
Thomas Meilinger
SYNNECTA Diagnostics
5. March 2015
Some time ago, I presented six basic stances for a new kind of sovereignty in organizations on this blog: VUCA-AIKIDO. These stances outline an AIKIDO mindset that can enable employees to face VUCA situations in organizations with greater confidence and to retain their ability to act in the VUCA situations themselves.
The basic stances I presented received a positive response. I was encouraged to think further after discussions with clients, project partners and colleagues, not least very intensively at the last Sophia. In the context of organizations, it is especially interesting to think about how managers can apply this AIKIDO mindset in their leadership. How can I lead employees who I have been entrusted with through VUCA situations that have been experienced negatively? How, at the same time, can I enable my team to use the positive potential of VUCA?
I have formulated the following principles to cater to the leadership position. I hope that they contain some initial answers to these questions:
AIKIDO Leadership
AGILISE I promote initiative and intrapreneurship. I provide my team with space and support self-monitoring. I make sure that there will be self-reflection.
USE INTUITION I have an authentic leadership style. I enter dialogues with my employees about their feelings. I deal with mistakes constructively and account for them. I invest in play and experiment.
CREATE CLARITY I tell a good management narrative. I create meaning and give values by guiding action. I curate the topics I deem important.
SPONSOR INTERACTION I trust my employees. I give and ask for open feedback. I make a community out of my employees. I lead together with colleagues and foster co-creation.
BUILD DIVERSITY I seek out »misfit« employees and invest in difference. I encourage my employees to engage in constructive contradiction. I maintain and foster thinking and acting in options.
MAINTAINING ORGANISMS I constantly stimulate change and my actions are guided by the process. I create emergence by networking intensively. I make sure that there is balance and rhythm.
Johannes Ries
5. January 2015
The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.
(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)
Our modern, enlightened world no longer has a place for myths – they have been displaced by facts. Myths are generally ostracised as »false consciousness« and an adversary of reason. Reason is focused on reality and its rational processing; myths distort the facts and build fantastic contraptions out of and around them. We may tolerate such a thing in our children’s world as fairy tales. However, we fail to see the value of myths in the normality of daily life.
Accordingly, logic and calculation are always preferential in organizations, too. The world of organizations functions on the basis of facts and data that can be processed conclusively with reason and calculation. A »good feeling«, a »sense« of danger or a »hunch« for an opportunity will not convince any management. Anyone who makes an intuitive statement in business conversation will immediately be forced to prove their instinct at hand of an elaborate business case and valid numbers. Organizations are not only managed by numbers, they are also growing more data-bound. Software-based management cockpits make it possible to perform detailed KPI checks. Performance-related pay depends on logically deduced goals cascades and performance evaluations, which measure achievements or the degree of goals achievement and convert them into bonus payments. Project successes have to be demonstrated even in advance with exact goal definitions and index tables …
Organizations profit from the circumstance that the logical evaluation of our world generates more and more data, including on the markets and in the consumer sectors. Web technology makes people ever more transparent: their consumer profiles, their searches and reading interests, their health, their friends, their travel preferences, etc. The correlation of these data at the same time make the behaviour of profile groups more and more predictable. In consequence, the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson, announced the »end of theory« in 2008: We no longer have a use for theory, as the amounts of data we have at our fingertips are so great that we can simply calculate statistically the answers to questions and simulate prognoses for the future by computer technology. There will no longer be a need for hypotheses, as data can be evaluated straight away. »Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.«
However: The global data volume doubles every two years, growing ever more into Big Data, to use a fashionable phrase to describe one of the business world’s central challenges. A new industry is now working on offering software and technologies to businesses that will endeavour to give them an edge with the evaluation of data sets that are constantly growing and changing and are ever more complex. Logical algorithms attempt to tame the flood of data.
Yet, even in the face of great technological advances, more information does not necessarily spell more knowledge. The increasing calculation of the business world does not necessarily translate into a greater sense of security for its inhabitants. A sense of security and well-being cannot be tied to pure numbers alone. Numbers may be able to illuminate a »what?«, but not the meaningful »why?«, as Microsoft Research’s leading scientist Dannah Boyd has repeatedly stated. Therefore, philosopher Byung Chul Han wrote that »dataism is nihilism«, while »meaning, on the other hand, rests on narration«, on a good story. »Counting is not the same as Recounting. (…) It is recounting, not counting, that results in finding and recognizing the self.« Chaos researcher and psychologist Andreas Huber agrees: he has averred that the increased complexity of our world of VUCA can only be described and understood by thinking in metaphors. From this point of view, Chris Anderson’s praise of data measurement and his discharge of theory constitutes the abolition of meaningful (as in: full, of meaning) work.
This is where the logic of facts and numbers reaches its limits. It cannot recount. It cannot think metaphorically. It cannot ask for meaning. Myths can do these things. I would like to advance the hypothesis that organizations in VUCA situations are in greater need of what Hans Blumenberg called »work on myths« in order to deal with the confusing »absolutism of reality«. I do not want to replace reason with myths. I am simply advocating the notion that deep-seated orientation can be provided to employees not only with the great range of meaningfully used data, measurement and analysis tools but also with a narrative structure. This is also and particularly the case when there is no concrete goal in sight and/or the exact path lies in the dark. I believe that managers can attain guiding clarity by focussing on a narration within their organization that is intuitively graspable for the employees and at the same time allows them the necessary freedom to act.
I posted six AIKIDO principles on this blog. These help people and organizations to more effectively address VUCA. Myths are compatible with the first three basic stances Agility, Clarity and Intuition. Myths have always played a role in defining culture by providing a narrative that has placed the world and existence into a meaningful context. Without providing logical proof, they concentrate on the truth behind the facts. They provide associations in images and symbols and speak of the content as music in words (Kerenyi) in an intuitively graspable and emphatically liveable language. Myths provide a simple basic text that can be continuously altered in its concrete manifestation. »Its substance does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story which it tells«, wrote Claude Levi-Strauss, one of the most renowned researchers of myth. That means: every person can essentially create a myth, tell it in their own personal manner. The content of a myth delivers a meaningful model that provides sense and answers the »why?« question. At the same time, myths help to filter contents, centre employees and focus them on what is relevant. Therein lies its fundamental clarifying force. Simultaneously, myths always provide space for flexible action and thus conform to the third AIKIDO principle: Agility. Myths can only make a statement within the concrete, image-bound event of the narrative; yet they always occur as showcases and permit interpretation. A myth never provides a process description or a rule book, but provides example images of principles that humans themselves have to translate into rules of behaviour in concrete situations.
In VUCA situations, managers can enable the power of myths for intuitively effective, clarifying narratives. I would like to suggest the following storyline as a minimal structure for a management narrative. It has proved its worth in consultancy work in the past:
- Description of the Situation: What is our current challenge?
- Purpose Statement: What is the meaning we create together?
- Value Statement: Which basic values serve as guiding lights for our actions?
- Leadership Statement: How do I lead you onto the path, what are you able to trust in with me?
Note that the management narrative about volatility and uncertainty of the future is not »tangible«. It does not pose concrete questions: What are our goals? Which rules will we apply? What are my expectations? It is deliberately fuzzy when it describes the future with regard to goals, but it does provide behavioural guidance for the given moment.
A good management narrative finds short, incisive answers for questions and its core can be told in no more than a minute. The brevity of the narrative helps sharpen the content and makes it plausible. I have had positive experiences with asking managers to tell each other their management narratives and afterwards give feedback in order to test the effect of their narrative structures.
Management narratives ideally use metaphors to enrich their content. A good narrative opens and ends on an association, a symbol, a motto, a mission statement … The statements on purpose, value and leadership cannot and should not be told only via words as a story, but be illustrated with images, emotionalized with associations, symbolised with objects, made emphatically graspable with experiences.
Myths are never told just once. They live off being told again and again, the same content in ever different ways. Successful communication lives off redundancy, repetition, doubling. Narrative is not the same as holding a power point presentation and providing hand-outs. Or printing a glossy brochure for distribution. Narrative needs oral transmission. In order to be effective, managers have to be able to enter spontaneous conversations with their narrative, inspire meetings, enliven lunchtime chatter, positively seize the office grapevine … While the content will always remain the same, the manner of telling will be spontaneously adapted to each situation. The core of a narrative can proliferate in so many ways wherever tales can be told.
Social Media provide an additional attractive platform of communication for managers. Even given all manners of reservations and aversion to them, they are places where narratives can be successfully placed in order to give narrative guidance to employees. Facebook and Co show the attraction of recounting over counting. Statistics, diagrams, columns of numbers hardly exist on these social media. The social media are dominated by film extracts, images, adages, gossip, short information. Users of social networks type their messages into the computer, but the platforms act according to the laws of the spoken word. In contrast to hierarchical, status-oriented bureaucracies, the communication structure of community-based networks functions with viral effect: The structural similarity of all participants means that the message with the most attractive content is the one that will spread fastest.
This is the precise place where the management narrative can develop its advantage. To use social media in order to continuously post those film clips, adequate quotations, telling images, paradigmatic experiences, discussion-inviting links that conform with the Purpose, Value and Leadership Statement means that managers are able to keep returning to a guiding narrative core again and again, always in a different guise. With this in mind, good managers will require a new skills set in the digital workspace. The interior management team will need not only the logical thinker but also the eloquent men and women of letters, the aesthetic artists and the creative tinkerers.
These thoughts are not meant to advocate stupefying bedazzlement or unethical manipulation of employees! Quite the opposite: I want to oblige the manager. It is important to keep renewing promises of meaning, values and management through narrative leadership. The managers will allow themselves to be measured by these promises in practice. I am convinced that this will make narrative a valuable management tool, which can help to better lead employees in organizations through Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, using the intuitive clarity of myths.
Johannes Ries
