EMBA - Star Trek connection

 

We all remember how the adventure starts, the magnificent voice of Patrick Steward as captain Jean-Luc Picard promises that something unforeseen, exciting and often heroic is on its way and the adventure will start soon. Here are the riveting opening words with minor adjustments:

 

to boldly develop what no one has done before

 

 

 

This is what EMBA studies are at their best, they offer a setting where the limits of the usual are pushed a bit further. This is also the setting where the famous connection between theory and practice work as its best, in dialogue theory and practice help the EMBA researcher to reach something new. Here the achieved contribution is both something conceptually new and something concretely real. Both sides of the coin are elementary in real discovery.

In EMBA studies the researcher is both the doer and the scientist. Here the first person perspective is invaluable. It is important to see how the world, ie. organizational reality, opens to a person whose task is to change that world. It cannot be helped but the pressures are different when you are in the driver seat than if you just possess an objective observer status.  When the EMBA student is the captain of change, s/he really feels what organizational warp drive feels.  (Warp drive is a hypothetical faster-than-light (FTL) propulsion system in the setting of many science fiction works, most notably Star Trek - says Wikipedia).

Also it is essential that EMBA captain does not rein her/his spaceship somewhere in some distant galaxy but tightly connected in some specific real context on our dear planet Earth (Dictionary explains nicely what Earth means: Earth is the third planet in order from the Sun, upon which humans live).  That specific context is the reality which is developed further. A close and insightful understanding of the context is the starting point for an excellent EMBA research.

Perhaps there is a human tendency to overlook the reality which is closest to us and what we can change and develop if we can change anything at all. Often it seems to be easier to offer advices to the others, and often the formula seems to be following:

The less a person knows about the context the easier it is to her/him to offer advices and the clearer and stronger her/his recommendations tend to be.

At the end it is another matter whether such advices given from afar are actually sensible or useful. It seems that here the old saying is often true: instant consulting is constant insulting. Also one Dilbert cartoon made point by depicting a boss standing behind Dilbert and saying something like: think carefully Dilbert before you act. Dilbert's response was: thank you a lot, before that advice I was just hitting my keyboard randomly, but now I really start to think what I do.

One might think that there would be a general understand that executives operate in the complex setting where all the easy solutions have been tried and done years and years ago. Yet, it seems to happen that easy solutions are offered to complex situations. It must be remembered that quite often in any context the cognitive side is only part of the picture, it may be pretty clear as looked from the outside what might be wise to do in some situation but sometimes there is a long and arduous journey before things eventually change for the better.

So EMBA researcher goes deep into real context and acts as a captain of change. This is, however, not enough when we are talking about research. Essential part of the research is the ability to tell others what you see and experience. Perhaps here is also a connection to Jean-Luc Picard, the enthralling speaker who is able to tell others what the situation is and what kind of actions are needed so that journey can continue. The EMBA student is also required to be a story teller, a writer. It is expected that s/he sees clearly and insightfully the key elements which relate to her/his organizational reality. In her/his EMBA report s/he is able to depict to others what the change journey entails, involves and what we all can learn from that journey.

At its best EMBA research operates on two fronts. First, it demonstrates the value of the reality which is closest to us and which therefore is the target of well thought change activities. Secondly, it helps us to develop story telling capabilities, the ability to see clearly and insightfully and to tell about those adventures to others.

Could the EMBA research be depicted as follows (using the opening words of Star Trek as source of inspiration):

 

 

 

Organization reality: the true frontier. These are the actions of the EMBA researcher. Her/his continuing mission: to explore new opportunities, to seek out new customers, networks and new efficient systems, to boldly develop what no one has developed before, but what is now is seen as an inspiring vision to all.


To thank Patrick Steward. Magnificent wit and humour in his reflection:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc1GrGO1j9M

 

Silence and management - part 10

…text about Silence in organization continues - this is part 10.

4.5       New work

 

 

 

4.5.1          New way of working is still in its infancy

In every organization and actually in every situation there is also a lot of silence. This is because there is always a lot that could be shared or said but what remains unsaid and unshared. As we have talked in previous texts it is simply impossible to share everything, apparently sharing everything would stop everything.  Whereas sometimes fear in its different forms may cause that something is not said and silence prevails. Again there are situations and moments of frustration when someone has lost her/his enthusiasm to speak and share.

In addition to these three sources of silence, I wish to add one quarter to the silence pie. That part comes with the name “new work”. 

New work is something which does not exist yet, it is just developing.  The hallmark of new work is professional sharing. This means a mode of working where we think all the time what to share to others.  This means that we learn to see professional sharing as an integral and elementary part of our work. 

I use here the term professional sharing with a purpose. The word professional means that we do the sharing as intelligently and wisely as we can. So we are willing to continuously learn to understand better what to share, to whom to share and how to do the sharing. In professional sharing the goal is to increase to success potential of our organization.

It is proposed here that when the “new work” develops to its full potential it will mean a lot more sharing than what happens today. When looked from the perspective of a new work there is a lot of silence everywhere.  In order to illustrate this point it could be said that from the point of view of “new work” we may occupy the same building but we do not really work together. Hence the level of sharing to which we are used to today is actually full of silence.

 

SWOT to think

 

You think what you think, right? Wrong. As wise thinker you should think what you decide to think. In organizational context you certainly decide to think those things which are most relevant to success of your organization. On your free time you think what you wish to think, or perhaps you just give the thoughts to come to you, or perhaps you just rest. But that all interesting what happens in your free time is out of the scope of this blog.

 

 

 

 

Instead our topic is SWOT you decide to think when you operate on your professional mode. What to think is rather broad theme for a blog and therefore I thought that why not use good old SWOT framework in this new context. It helps us to focus on something essential.

 

How that SWOT fits into this picture of thinking? It brings up one angle which is important when you decide what to think. It helps you to see whether your thinking revolves around Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities or Threats. Let us be saved from an executive who would focus almost exclusively on Weaknesses (for those wishing a deeper taste of this are adviced to listen Pínk Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall: intro).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4SKL7f9n58

But similarly, let us be saved from an executive or, God mercy, from a board of directors who would live solely immersed into the beautiful world of endless opportunities. And what is said about focusing solely to W or O, goes similarly with a S and T as well.

 

So, what is point here? You need balance, you need to think, not just O but also S, W and T - right? That is right, that is one point, a relevant point I think. Hence, let us all remember the good old SWOT in our thinking.

 

Having said that I would like to sail back to a bit more troubled waters. Certainly to decide what to think is actually a very challenging task. Balanced use of SWOT is a good start, but perhaps just a star on a life long journey to know what to think.

 

 

At this point I would like to leave you with two thoughts, which on their part suggest that deciding what to think is really a complex task. First, how you decide to balance SWOT in your thinking, to you choose to stress equal amount of every corner or something else. I would imagine that as a leader who wish to create new and inspire people around you decide to be rather generous with O and S. That is just fine. Secondly, are you sure that you decide what you think? What was the most recent issue which thrusted into your mind but which you decide to leave aside or push away? And what was the latest thing which would have never occurred to you unless you had decided to dig it up?

 

Silence and management - part 9

…text about Silence in organization continues - this is part 9.


Change requires vision, energy and action, quite often change also requires voice: new ideas, astute observations and clearly stated facts which must be taken into account. Therefore it is problematic if there is silence where should be a lot of discussion. Understanding reasons of silence opens ways to create more discussion in the future. Let us not give a frustration a possibility to root itself into our organizations, uprooting frustration is everybody's business.

4.4      Frustration

Frustration means here a feeling that for some reason a person has reached a conclusion that it is not worthwhile to break to silence.

4.4.1 Speaking does not provide results

A person can end up choosing silence if s/he comes to conclusion that her/his efforts to raise issues for common discussion do not seem to provide results. Perhaps s/he feels that her/his openings are met with silence or that her/his efforts to change something have not provided results s/he would have liked to see happening.

In case one feels that s/he is being silenced that experience may evidently create even more silence in the future. At the same time we must notice that the experienced disappointment for not getting changes that someone may want is also a complex issue. Perhaps the desired changes are such which are feasible to achieve, then the disappointment of not getting desired changes could be justified. At the same token it is also possible to think that sometimes people wish changes which are very hard to make at least in the short run if not  ever. In both these cases there should be discussions in organizations that why some required changes may not be possible at the certain time, perhaps there are some justifications why even the in principle possible changes are not done at least now. As we can anticipate one problem here is silence, in other words in desired changes are not even discussed openly there is no way to handle these issues. Silence is prone to create more silence.

4.4.2 Lack of genuine interest

Sometimes one reason behind silence is that for some reason a person may have lost her/his genuine interest toward the development and success organization.  When this is a case a person may choose silence also in those occasions where s/he could instead share something valuable with others. Often silence is an easy solution, sharing would require much more, at least you would need to justify your point and make others listen. Sometimes you would have to compete with different views in order to get your voice heard. For someone who has lost her/his genuine interest, this may feel or too heavy burden and s/he just stays silent.

And also here one dictum of this paper rings true - silence create silence. A person who has assumed a silent role is assumed to remain silent by others. So, how s/he might gather the courage and energy to break silence and beat the expectations, not an easy task. In accounting so called zero based budgeting is something which has been proposed in situations where we just build on old expectations and practices without really stopping to evaluate what would be possible now. Could we apply something from zero based budgeting on human encounters, could we always be open for new realities, open that someone who has not been that active could become active today. At least we should check that our expectations towards anyone are not the ones which help the silence to linger.

 

4.4.3 Negative learning

Negative learning is a concept which I have first heard from professor Tapio Aittola, University of Jyväskylä. Negative learning refers to learning experiences which are very different than those experiences which are typically topics of general discussions. Negative learning  means that a person starts to see how difficult and sometimes practically impossible some things really are. S/he may have had, for instance, a basic idea that s/he would like to do something new, for instance s/he would like to change something in her/his organization. S/he may have an idea that when she focus on something and starts to understand it better s/he will learn new things and gradually s/he will be in a position from which s/he can make those planned changes.

However, sometimes it may happen that the world reserves negative learning experiences for any of us. This means that a person learns that for some reason it is far more difficult and perhaps impossible to make the changes s/he would like to make. Sometimes the world just is much more complex than the person had thought and therefore making changes becomes difficult. S/he may notice that s/he does not have the needed capabilities, energy or time to learn all that what would be needed in order to make changes. Sometimes there may some other reasons like political, cultural or some vested personal interests on status quo which make the changing impossible.

In sum, negative learning experiences may also lead to silence and the fewer efforts to make changes and develop new things. From the organizational perspective it might be desirable that people would not give up too easily when they encounter negative learning experiences. Quite often new openings feel at first impossible, and no one may believe that those ideas could be feasible but surprisingly they may turn into new opportunities after persistent effort.

 

Silence and management - series of blog texts

Silence and management - series of blog texts

Silence and management is a series of blog texts which examine issues relating to sharing and active collaboration within organization and in different networks.

Sharing and maximal use of social media tools throughout organizations is a vital topic in year 2014. Ability to share, connect and think together are crucial success factors for organizations and also for individuals. At the same time silence is also an unavoidable part of all organizational life. It is proposed here that deeper understanding of silence creates a more rounded understanding how sharing could be nurtured.

This blog starts by table of contents. Then there is a part which connects the table of contents to the published blogs. In this series already 8 texts have been published.

 

       Silence

Hot but quiet topic on the arena of management and control

1.    Hush, shh, … introduction

  1.1 Money, silence and accounting

  1.2 The level of silence as a success factor in organizations

2.    What is silence - three perspectives on silence

  2.1 Impressive nature makes us silent

  2.2 Silence which relates to crimes and wrong doings

  2.3 Silence which relates to internal wisdom

3.    Silence vs darkness
 
4.    Why people choose silence

  4.1 Silence - the whole picture

  4.2   The impossibility to share everything

    4.2.1 We simply cannot share everything

    4.2.2          Modes of communication we choose use, modes of communication we choose not to use

  4.3      Fear based reasons

    4.3.1.        Fears which relates to you (or to me, or to any individual personally)

       4.3.1.1. Fear of making fool of yourself

      4.3.1.2 Fear of getting more tasks

      4.3.1.3 Fear of becoming labeled “difficult”

    4.3.2          Fears which relate to others

      4.3.2.1. Fear of ruining positive atmosphere

      4.3.2.2 Fear that the connection with others fails

      4.3.2.3 Fear that sharing would ruin customer relationships

  4.4      Frustration

    4.4.1 Speaking does not provide results

    4.4.2 Lack of genuine interest

    4.4.3 Negative learning

   4.5       New work

    4.5.1          New way of working is still in its infancy

  4.6      Whistle blowing

5.         Discussion

Next time when you are just about to choose silence, please think again.

 

 

Table on contents and connection to published blogs.

 

Silence and management - part 1 (chapter 1-1.1)

http://arimanninen.blogspot.fi/2013/05/silence-and-management-part-1.html

Silence and management - part 2 (chapter 1.2)

http://arimanninen.blogspot.fi/2013/05/silence-and-management-part-2.html

Silence and management - part 3 (chapter 2-2.3)

http://arimanninen.blogspot.fi/2013/05/silence-and-management-part-3.html

Silence and management - part 4 (chapter 3)

http://arimanninen.blogspot.fi/2013/06/silence-and-management-part-4.html

Silence and management - part 5 (chapter 4-4.1)

http://arimanninen.blogspot.fi/2013/08/silence-and-management-part-5.html

Silence and management - part 6 (chapter 4.2-4.2.2)

http://arimanninen.blogspot.fi/2013/09/silence-and-management-part-6.html

Silence and management - part 7 (chapter 4.3-4.3.1.3)

http://arimanninen.blogspot.fi/2013/11/silence-and-management-part-7.html

Silence and management - part 8 (chapter 4.3.2-4.3.2.3)

http://arimanninen.blogspot.fi/2013/12/silence-and-management-part-8.html

 

This blog series continues with couple of more texts in 2014. Happy New Year.

Silence and management - part 8

…text about Silence in organization continues - this is part 8.

Best organizations are quick to adopt newest technologies and equipments. That is first step to success in our digital, global era. At the same time the path to genuine sharing in organizations is a demanding route for each of us to proceed. This blog (and other relating blog posts) examines the issues which are important when individuals and organizations strive to develop sharing culture. You find more below:

 

4.3.2          Fears which relate to others

4.3.2.1. Fear of ruining positive atmosphere

Apparently we all wish to work in a pleasant environment, in a nice atmosphere with collaborative colleagues. And certainly nice and supporting atmosphere can be a success factor of its own right, it nurtures creativity, innovation, it energizes and it provides many other positive things to all involved and to whole organization.

In this setting you may anticipate that taking up certain matters might for some reason mildly or perhaps drastically harm the positive general atmosphere. Therefore you may decide to go with the silence and avoid taking up certain matters.

Apparently selecting silence can a reasonable choice if you have reached that conclusion by applying   special kind of a “cost-benefit analysis”. In other words you have estimated what would happen if you would raise certain topic and how things would most likely continue in case you would choose silence. And you have reached a conclusion that in this particular case you go for a silence. That is a decision, and like with all decisions you may have made an excellent or not so excellent decision.

On the other hand when choosing silence relates heavily to maintaining good atmosphere, it can be counterproductive. Often genuine development requires also critique, and in case the need to preserve good atmosphere hampers a possibility to criticize it is time to evaluate what is important what could be less prominent role in organizational life. Perhaps a lot of efforts could be put up so that the capability to give and take constructive criticism would reach a higher level in organizational discussion culture.

 It is, however, understandable that there are situations where any of us might predict that bringing something up might cause a mess and confusion in our organization. We all know that organizations are pretty delicate creatures on what comes to the maintaining trust and keeping discussion channels between people open. It has been said that individual is strong but organization is fragile. This suggests the idea that organization is a trust based network and the trust between actors may brake easily and it is very difficult to restore. So also here we have to conclude that sometimes some level of silence is perhaps the best solution. Perhaps this is no true in ideal world, but it can be very true in real world.

 

4.3.2.2 Fear that the connection with others fails

In his excellent book about relationship marketing (From the 4P’s to 30R) Evert Gummesson writes how he noticed what is the essence of marketing is in professional organization. The crucial challenge is to find a place, position and acceptance among colleagues. Only after adequate acceptance as new member of the network your new colleagues will ask you to join to different projects and you can gradually become part of the functioning network.

In fact, it would be touching (and difficult) to study how many executives and other professionals on different levels of organizations are not really part of the functioning organization. Perhaps, for instance, a boss was fired a long ago, not officially, not publicly but in a way which almost all seem to know - at least silently. Here firing means that working collaboration with others has severed, perhaps not totally but to the extent which seriously reduces the real working possibilities. Also these lines lead us to suggest that sometimes in some organization it may happen that people in a way have gradually fired each other, as a result they inhabit the same organization but the genuine connection between people may have been lost on the way. How could they reach a situation where they in way could recruit each other back to work?

Thus a genuine connection with a network is very important, often a necessary factor before you can actually do anything productive in any organization or in business life in general. Sometimes the network could be a colleague, sometimes few colleagues, sometimes a team or a department, sometimes the whole organization, sometimes some other formation of people. Typically in order to maintain and strengthen your position in any network you are expected to show some loyalty towards your network.

Hence, quite often the deepening collaboration with any network creates also complex configurations which cunningly start to suggest that member of any network should be silent about something. Typically some kind of we-them - setting emerges. Often organizations are divided to different departments and units. It is not rare that these different units start to compete with each other. One negative result of the rivalry which grows intensive is that flow of information between the competing units may not stay at the level where it could be. As a result for instance some new business opportunities may be lost because of unwarranted silence between different organizational units emerges.

In general a person may fear that sharing something which is somehow considered as a secret in her/his network might result in negative reactions and actions by others. Hence a person would be prone to resort to silence on those occasions. In the mild form this can mean that organization does not learn as quickly as it could if information were shared more openly. In a strong form we are talking about more difficult situations where cover up can be serious thing (a short discussion about whistle blowing is in the later blog post).

4.3.2.3 Fear that sharing would ruin customer relationships

It is also important to emphasize that there are a lot of occasions where silence is actually part of proper professional conduct. For instance, even law may require silence about some customer related matters in some businesses. Also, in general prudent handling of customer information is part of any laudable work.

Again we notice that silence is a complex issue. Quite easily there would a tendency to think that silence is something negative and we must get rid of all silence. However, often silence is unavoidably part of the professional work. It is easy to see that some work would be actually impossible without silence, for instance in some cases you have to trust your strategic plans to outsiders and you could not do that if you feared that they would not obey very prudent silence concerning your vital business secrets.

Silence and management - part 7

…text about Silence in organization continues - this is part 7.

Typically people say that there is too much emails, meetings, information and everything in organizations. This blog suggests that there is also a lot of silence in organizations. Sometimes silence is fear based. You find more below:

4.3      Fear based reasons

When you ask that why people choose silence in organizations one answer which you get quite often is: fear.  This is the answer which has emerged in numerous personal discussions in different contexts. I also made a Linkedin poll where I offered two options that why people choose silence. The first option was fear and the other was that speaking does not seem to provide results.  The poll got 9 answers which came from all over the world, therefore the result is not based on anything larger, but nevertheless the result was indicative - a fear was a clear winner with 8 votes (feels somewhat awkward to write that fear was a winner, but in this polling context it was).

 

Apparently fear is one of those words which you seem to know with certainty, but when you try to define it you may notice that as a concept the fear is very, very elusive. Defining fear is not at all simple task. Therefore let us look first how Wikipedia defines fear and after that we will examine different ways of approaching fear in organizational context:

Wikipedia starts its fear entry as follows:

Fear is an emotion induced by a perceived threat which causes entities to quickly pull away from it and usually hide. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger. In short, fear is the ability to recognize danger leading to an urge to confront it or flee from it (also known as the fight-or-flight response) but in extreme cases of fear (horror and terror) a freeze or paralysis response is possible.

In organizational context fear which leads to silence is a phenomenon of its own. In this text I will approach that specific phenomenon from two angles:

1)      Fear which relates to you

2)      Fear which relates to others

Clearly this discussion is tentative and thought provoking by its nature. The point here is to suggest that because a silence is a very important organizational factor which may play a crucial role in determining whether the organization succeeds or not, we must pause to examine that what actually causes silence. One explanation is certainly fear, perhaps that fear is based on real things or perhaps mainly imagined, however fear must be one factor which relates to silence in organizations.

Therefore understanding the roots of fear, and through that understanding being able to reduce silence and increasing communication can be seen a most important managerial task for every executive. But what actually is fear in organizational context, how it can be approached and discussed?  The purpose here is to find new openings which might give new ideas for executives and for each of us how to tackle these issues in our working environment.

 

4.3.1.        Fears which relates to you (or to me, or to any individual personally)

4.3.1.1. Fear of making fool of yourself

Certainly there might be situations where you choose silence because you are afraid that you would make fool of yourself.[1] Perhaps you may feel that you do not know enough of the topic under discussion.  Or perhaps you may feel (know, anticipate) that your position in your organization is such that in those discursive practices which prevail in your organization your effort to participate would only result in difficult and somehow embarrassing  consequences.

Apparently silence is a very different thing in different cultures and reasons for silence are also very different. Examining these cultural issues which relate to silence would be a most intriguing research topic in itself.  However, generally speaking the point here is that each individual has her/his own un avoidable responsibility to participate and share. That is part of work - working is sharing, working well means sharing wisely. On the other hand it is necessary to emphasize that each organization should develop the rules of communication and participating culture to a direction where joining and sharing would be as rewarding as possible.

Also here we have a special challenge for each executive. We may think in our time in this modern society people would feel very free to participate. However, it may be that in organizations there are still a lot hidden rules and discursive practices which hinder participation. Sometimes executives may even think that in these days they even need to emphasize their role and take strong positions in meetings and in different discussion forums. However, this is one place where wise discernment is really needed. Each executive should carefully consider how they on their own part could create an atmosphere where genuine - let it be stressed: genuine - participation will happen as much as possible.

 4.3.1.2 Fear of getting more tasks

Age old truth in army is that movement reveals. Unfortunately something similar may be true in organizational life. Consequently, there seems to be a tendency that a person who opens her/his mouth about something also gets that task on her/his task list. There, let us check in every organization that sharing is as rewarding as possible. If sharing means problems, there is something which must be changed.

Also more generally speaking it may not be always rewarding to try new things. There is always a risk to fail, suggesting new, trying something different means that someone breaks the silence and puts her-/himself to the front. Perhaps organization could develop an attitude where trying new things would be appreciated and also mistakes could be tolerated and viewed as learning possibility.

 

4.3.1.3 Fear of becoming labeled “difficult”

Some of the issues which relate to silence in organizations are very difficult to understand. Also some of these issues are such which we wish not connect to wise adult professionals and to professional organizations. Hence these kinds of topics are easily such which are not discussed (publicly). However, often that is exactly what would be needed - open and honest discussion could be way to improve things.

For instance, there appears to be a lot situations where people are asked to comment freely but for some reason everybody seem to know (rightly or wrongly) that comments would not be candidly welcomed. These kinds of awkward moments relate in particular to many change processes and also to many other situations in our organizations. Let us imagine that the managers have created something new, perhaps they have already started to implement it and then there is a session where people are asked to express their opinion freely.

Quite often these situations are loaded with a lot of tension. Most people are thinking all the time that will happen to me in this change process. This whole setting begs silence with a very load voice. I would assume that in these situations many will think that saying something is easily interpreted that this particular person is resisting the change and s/he might become labeled “difficult”. No one wants to be labeled difficult when there is a lot of uncertainty in the air. No wonder that silence prevails.

The point for managerial perspective is that planning and orchestrating a change process is demanding task. Poorly conceived situations may create unwanted silence and once silence has appeared it may be difficult to push it away.

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[1] Even fools seem smart when they are quiet. -Proverbs 17:28