Silence and management - part 3

…text about Silence in organization continues - this is part 3.

 

2.  What is silence - three perspectives on silence

This text as a whole is about silence and in particular about silence in organizations. However I feel that it is valuable to say something more general about silence before we go deep into organizational sphere. My hope is that this general discussion on its part helps us to see more about our specific topic ie., silence in the organizational context.

At the same time this discussion on its part relate to the general idea that it is important to try to examine whole and real people in organizations.  In addition the research should not neglect anything what relates to being a human in organizations. This means because real, complex and manifold emotions and experiences are part of being human and these phenomena are also important research topics in business studies. This kind of comment may sound odd, but perhaps the history of business disciplines has focused rather heavily on technical and rational side of organizational life. Sometimes it may have been difficult to find real people on the pages business literature, or in consulting discussion and also style of discourse within organizations themselves have been permeated with rather technical tone, like let us make strategy and let us implement it and that's it.

So what is silence how is it experienced? Clearly a vast topic and I will approach this subject with a help a very specific and limited empirical material. However, I strongly feel that there is something valuable here - at least the following will confirm that silence appears to be a very strong, very important and deeply emotional phenomenon to us.

The empirical material used here are numerous pictures in internet. I have looked for pictures which people have connected to silence. On that basis I have come to interpretation that in general people seem to approach silence from a three perspectives. Certainly my point here is not present this interpretation as a anything fixed or permanent, it is here more a heuristic[1] tool which helps us to deepen our study of silence. The perspectives are as follows:

 

2.1  Impressive nature makes us silent

 

Quite often people seemed to connect silence to magnificent and marvelous pictures about lakes, mountains, trees or some other beautiful sights or to some awesome elements of nature. Apparently the point was that often nature is so impressive that it silences us. Apparently the silencing happens here in a very good and positive way - we are silenced in front of beauty, tranquility or something else which is so stupenduos and tremendous that it fills us with awe, enthrall and eventually respectful silence.

It seems that it is a far cry to try to connect this kind of approach to silence with any discussion about silence in organizations. Clearly these are different worlds, that world of nature and the world of organizations. Yet, it is interesting to try to think that in organizational context can we think that people would choose silence because they have encountered something so fabulous. Perhaps, this can happen, it is thinkable that the organization operates in a way which creates awe, also organization may have possessions like buildings, factories or so on with create silence because they are so overwhelming.

The other thing is that when, for instance, customer service  reaches extraordinary performance  would organizations prefer that silence would be the result? Probably not. For instance, in case an organization provides astonishing service, the goal would not be silence, but a hope that a very satisfied customer would tell to others. Also for instance the magnificent head quarter buildings are built to create awe, but not silence. Apparently it is hoped that people talk about those landmarks as much as possible and that discussion is hoped to strengthen the brand.

 

2.2  Silence which relates to crimes and wrong doings

 

 

 

These pictures about silence are sometimes very tough to look. They certainly open a

touching and poignant perspective to silence. These pictures tell that there is an array of

wrong doings which have may have happened and which may continue to happen at least

partly because of silence.[2] Sometimes there seem to be wrong doings which are used in

order to create silence.

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Unfortunately it is possible to see that this perspective on silence can relate also to organization life in various forms. The special term in organizational context is “whistle blowing”.   It means that that there is something wrong happening within some organization and perhaps that thing is somehow silently accepted.  And then someone, the whistle blower, breaks the silence. We can anticipate how difficult those situations must be to everyone involved. Certainly these phenomena around whistle blowing would deserve more research in the future. For instance, it would be valuable to examine the scope of whistle blowing. Should we use that concept only in relation to possible crimes or could whistle blowing also refer to all or to some unsatisfactory operation which is for some reason silently accepted.

 

2.3  Silence which relates to internal wisdom

 

There may not be that many actual pictures which relate to this perspective, but there are numerous   quotations which proclaim this message in various forms.[3] Wikipedia entry sums up succinctly how some major religions approach silence from this perspective:

"Silence" in spirituality is often a metaphor for inner stillness. A silent mind, freed from the onslaught of thoughts and thought patterns, is both a goal and an important step in spiritual development. Such "inner silence" is not about the absence of sound; instead, it is understood to bring one in contact with the divine, the ultimate reality, or one's own true self, one's divine nature.  Many religious traditions imply the importance of being quiet and still in mind and spirit for transformative and integral spiritual growth to occur. In Christianity, there is the silence of contemplative prayer such as centering prayer and Christian meditation; in Islam, there are the wisdom writings of the Sufis who insist on the importance of finding silence within. In Buddhism, the descriptions of silence and allowing the mind to become silent are implied as a feature of spiritual enlightenment. In Hinduism, including the teachings of Advaita Vedanta and the many paths of yoga, teachers insist on the importance of silence, Mauna, for inner growth.

 It may be difficult to connect this perspective on silence to the organizational life. Yet, perhaps proponents of self-leadership might suggest that:  “this is it”, meaning that the key element in leadership is self -knowledge and what we are discussing here relates to the highest form of self- understanding which is basis of true leadership.

Also some people might suggest that when we examine on communication more deeply we become aware that in order to hear (understand what the other tries to say) we need some place (silence) in our own mind.

…to be continued

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[1] It is simply beautiful how Wikipedia entry defines heuristic, I have to add it here: Heuristic (pron.: /hjʉˈrɪstɨk/; or /hyoo-ris-tik/; Greek: "Εὑρίσκω", "find" or "discover") refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. Where the exhaustive search is impractical, heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution; mental shortcuts to ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples of this method include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, or common sense.

 

[2] This quote is well known. “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

[3] For instance the following quotes: "Silence is an empty space, space is the home of the awakened mind." - Buddha;  “Silence is a true friend who never betrays”. Confucius; “ Silence is a source of great strength.” Lao Tzu

  

Share your wisdom - tranparency in organizations

Share your wisdom - transparency in organizations

The hottest topic in organizational development today is transparency. It means that can you really think together with your colleagues and coworkers. Are you really willing to think together, are the others willing to think with you - these are crucial questions. The tools, technologies and equipments are here (and already in use in some organizations), but how we decide to work together - that is the question.

The question of transparency and working and thinking together is pivotal in every organization - however organizations are different and these issues manifest themselves differently in every organization. In this blog I will focus on University. It is a very special organization and certainly also Universities are different but I do believe that a lot what I talk here is relevent in many organizations and in particular in many highly professional organization.

I use as a background my experence when I worked as a teacher and as an acting associate professor in Finnish Universities. A lot may have changed during the last years but I would imagine that my experience is still relevant for our purposes here when we examine the issue of transparency.


It is intriguing to realize how the emerging topic of transparency changes to way how you see your work. I remember how I experienced my everyday job as an acting associate professor. It was most interesting work but from the point of view of the transparency I would see the challenges and possibilities of that work rather differently now than how I saw them back then without this transparency framework and without these tools and equipments which we can nowadays use (eg. this blogging system is fabulous)




Could our opening motto here be something like:

the transparency on overhead projector does not cover the whole area of tranparency 

(this tries to be humorous quatation).




Let us take three viewpoints: 1) classroom, 2) organization and 3) network. What the work was like and what would be different when looked through the transparency framework. What follows is an extremely brief elaboration, food for thought kind of discussion.

1) Classroom

The professor went in the classroom and gave his lecture.The students listened (discussed and learned) and then proved their learninng through some exams. The modus operandi at that time, which nicely illuminates how things were seen back then, was that in case someone was absent from some session his friends could deliver him the material (copies and/or notes of the lecture) so that he could also succeed in the exam.

What could be new:

The perspective of transparency makes us think how closed any setting really is and how rapidly and widely the information could/should flow. Perhaps these questions may not appear at the first glance highly relevant for degree students but these are higly relevant issues for executive students. It is important how rapidly and widely the executives are able to share the relevant issues which are discussed in the classroom within their own organizations. We are actually witnessing a period where a transformation is just happening - what is examined in the classroom is almost simultaneously shared in those organizations and in those networks where the executives work.


Of course what we are witnessing here is not a passive delivery of classroom material to a wider audience. Instead, executives play a very active and highly challenging role here. They are transforming the classroom wisdom into wisdom which is relevant in their organization and they also decide to who and to whom that transformed wisdom must be delivered immediately. It is interesting to think what actually constitutes excellent student work nowadays in this world.

The above said should make us think that how we create settings where also the degree students could find as many uses as possible for the knowledge which they get in the classroom. Rewriting the old Las Vegas mantra we could say that what happens in classroon should not stay in the classroom (or in a hermetic setting: input during the lecture - output in the exam = success / mark of wisdom).

2) Organization

The University is professional organization where experts cover certain areas, someone is a marketing professor, the other is strategy professor and some exceptionally lucky fellow is an accounting professor and so on. In hospital someone is expert on some part of human body and other one knows the other part, etc. (By the way Mintzberg's discussion on organizational structures is magnificent work).

What could be new:

Here the perspective of tranparency proposes nothing less than a Copernican Revolution in particular when we examine how we might see the collaboration in the professional organization. In the old world the coordination between experts was accomplished roughly speaking so that everybody knew somehow what was everybody elses area of expertise (what he had studied in his salad days). So everybody did their share in serving customers (students) and some people tried to look after the big picture so that somehow the "whole" customer need was covered. From the perspective of the transparency what was lacking was a continuous dialogue between experts where experts would learn from each other all the time.

Here we are talking about a special attitude towards work where you would all the time think what should I share with my colleagues, what would be most relevant to them to know just now. At least in the past the setting which I encountered was not a living and continuously developing conversation between colleagues which would aim to help each other and the whole organization to achieve even higher level of customer service and expertice. There was excellent discussions but they were sporadic in nature. How these excellent discussions could become the modus operandi? We now have technologies and equipments for that.

3) Network

A scholar makes research and he publishes his work in seminars and through journals and other outlets.

What could be new:

Also here the transparency makes us to think that collaboration could be wider and more intensive than what was/is often the case. One might think that modern technologies would open excellent possibilities to gather goups of colleagues from all over the world to examine certain topics. This is something what certainly happes a lot already, but I would assume that there is still a lot of  new possibilities to share wisdom and to create wisdom in a shared way. We have to be ready to rethink continuously who is close and who could be close, no matter whether he works on the other side of the globe or in the same building. Whether someone is truly approachable may relate a lot on his attitude whereas the role and importance of the physical distance is on the decline.

This is a hot topic - how to become better in thinking together. Let us work with this issue together.

Sunny days,

Ari