Beyond Management Workplace_7

Takingontheworkoforganizing 149 unorthodox the practices sound, for others the only acceptable change is gradual,“managedchange,”withthemincharge.Perhapsyouseewhyitis so desirable for activists to be able to read people and why it is important for them to possess a quality like emotional intelligence and to develop close working relationships, so they know how their co-workers think and what they do and don’t like about the way they work. To tell my story about the work of organizing I’ve deliberately stepped quite far to the right. To distance myself from management-speak, I’ve invented a few words like “social spaces” when I couldn’t find any that fit, borrowing others, like “making meaning,” “networks,” and “align-ing,” some associated with organizing and fairly familiar, while others are not. I chose them to paint a picture of knowledge-work, manage-ment, and organizing as I see it and wanted to tell it. But, there is more than one way of telling a story and it might be more sensible to craft new work language around words like “networks” and “aligning,” which probably resonate with anyone accustomed to the technical language of management. There is then the risk, however, of them losing sight of the humanness of organizing. In short, it’s the risk that we’ll soon be right back in management-speak.17 Threewordsthatmustgo:management,organization, leadership It’s clear to me that management-speak has to go and it is clear why it has to go. Words like “efficiency,” “performance,” “productivity,” “train-ing,” and “capital” are factory-talk, devised to make meaning of “factory management” and “factory-work.” Factory-talk legitimizes the view from the top and perpetuates practices that treat work as physical and mindless, which, in factories, turned workers, the subordinates, into largely help-less, hopeless extensions of machines. When you walk factory-talk, albeit unconsciously, you are either a factory manager who holds the key to mak-ing workers more productive, or you’re a factory worker waiting to be told what to do, when, and how. In the age of knowledge-work, neither of these is acceptable. Language allows us to make distinctions. When we have them, see they matter, and change the way we talk about people or events, we’re inclined to do things differently. So, to evolve new practices, we need the words, or a new language, to distinguish factory-work from knowledge-work and old from new management, not only to see that they are different but also to understand how they are different and appreciate why this matters.18 150 BeyondManagement In this vein, there are three words in particular that need to be jettisoned: “management,” “organization,” and “leadership”. “Management” has to go because every time anyone speaks it they breathe high control into the conversation. It is impossible to separate this word from industrial-age practices and doing things the MBA way, because this is what everyone associates with management. What should we put in its place? I propose that “organizing” becomes the new “man-agement.” Organizing is what knowledge workers do and it makes sense to use it, at least until another one comes along. Anyone who does this work, irrespective of their official title or role, is an organizer, as we all are. Moving “organization” from centerstage to backstage is another prior-ity. Its prominence in work talk is a combination of high control and the view from the top: people’s desire to be in control; the mistaken belief that there is something to control; and the equally spurious idea that everyone ought to be doing in lock-step fashion, whatever is going on (e.g. buying into the same “vision” or “mission”). Everywhere you turn, people claim to be doing something because the organization needs it (e.g. a strategic plan, an integrated IT system, or a mission statement) or because it’s in the organization’s interests (e.g. to give executives exorbitant remuneration packages, to seal a merger, or to have a uniform culture). An organiza-tion is abstract and definitely inanimate. Organizations don’t have needs or interests and paying all this attention to the organization distracts us from thinking about how and how well people are organizing to get things done. It’s the zing not the zation that really counts, so, here again is a case for having the word “organizing” centerstage in the new language of new management.19 “Leadership,” unfortunately, perpetuates the idea that organizations have tops and bottoms. The word doesn’t have to mean this, but, by con-vention, leaders are at the top. Reuniting work and organizing means shaking off the old “top-and-bottom” mindset and jettisoning leadership in the process. In the new work stories, the answer to “Who leads?” has to become: “It depends on circumstances and on matters such as people’s experience, their support, and cooperation, but not on their positions or titles.” The kind of leading I’m describing isn’t from the top, the bottom, or the middle, as these are all view-from-the-top images, which tell us there is a set structure to work and that organizing and leading is more like base-ball than rugby or football. Think of what I’m describing as leading from “inside,” from action, or from practice, or as stewardship.20 The essence of stewardship is that it speaks of a relationship between a leader and oth-ers: a relationship of responsibility and care. You are responsible for your Takingontheworkoforganizing 151 actions and are committed to taking care of their interests. Responsibil-ity and accountability, which describe people’s willingness to meet their commitments to one another and to hold each other to these, are watch-words of stewards, and it is useful, in this context, to recall a traditional meaning of the word. “Stewardship” has to do with the responsibilities of all humans, because they are human, for taking care of the world they inhabit. For animists, responsibility is reciprocal in that the earth will take care of good stewards, providing them with everything that sustains them. So, whether it’s a simple task or a major undertaking, anyone with suitable experience, who is responsible, capable, and shows insight and foresight, who is in a position to make sensible decisions and take practi-cal action, could and should guide what the group does, with the support and encouragement of those he or she is working with. As it’s his or her job to find support and his or her colleagues’ job to give it to whoever is in a good position to lead, everyone needs emotional intelligence, with the savvy to appraise people and situations and, seeing what is possible, assess whether to step into the role of leading or to encourage a colleague to “take the lead” and then support them. Activists, willing to take on the work of organizing, put themselves in the role of stewards, leading from inside and committed to encourag-ing others—everyone else—to do the same. In hierarchical organizations, what I’ve described is completely unnatural, which means you need a variety of out-of-the-ordinary skills, as well as conviction, courage, and cunning to win through. Besides thinking and acting cooperatively, which may take some getting used to, your job is also to dismantle the pyramid of management from the inside, while working with people whose posi-tions, power, incomes, and identities are tied to this structure. Some will be amenable to taking a new direction, others skeptical, and still others passionately opposed to anything that appears to threaten the status quo. As stewards, activists also have to learn to recognize when to put or to leave the ball in someone else’s court, because he or she either is better placed to offer advice, give guidance, and make decisions, or can help you to do all this. In the spirit of cooperation which is so important for good organizing, they have to learn to be generous about allowing others to help them, too, by putting their colleagues—their partners—in the best position to provide guidance or offer help. And they need to be skilled in rhetoric, because the work of organizing begins with new conversations. CHAPTER 12 Conversationsforaligning: openness,commitments, andaccountability Aligning Organizing is often hard work. Aligning, which I’ve called the “bottom-line of organizing,” takes experience, ingenuity, and, sometimes, tough bargaining. Assignments that seem perfectly straightforward turn out to hide wicked problems that reveal themselves only when you are trying to clarify something or when you are looking for agreement from the team about what still needs to be done. Reaching agreement may take all kinds of compromises and could depend on knowing: which rules and procedures to follow, which you can bend, and how to circumvent oth-ers entirely; when to sidestep long-winded procedures even though you’ve been told “this is the way we do things here”; what you can do to free up funds, yet stay within budget. When a diverse group of stakeholders is trying to align, however, semi-technical matters like these are not usually the toughest nuts to crack. Some of the really taxing ones include: reaching consensus about the problems you are dealing with and how to tackle them; settling on whose position to support; obtaining permission or approval; ensuring that asso-ciates in diverse locations, with different affiliations and interests, follow through with the commitment to their work and one another required to do a good job. Even when their activities and roles intersect and they need to collaborate, the chances are that participants aren’t all on the same page. Perhaps, it is those varied interests. One or two just don’t seem particu-larly involved. It is hard to get their attention and, when you do, they have their own ideas about what needs to be done. There are more headaches when something goes wrong in the middle of an assignment or project and you have to reorganize to put things right. Who is responsible? What do we do about them and the breakdown, and prevent this from happening 152 Conversationsforaligning 153 again? When they hit one of these problems, in order to move forward, the participants have to work at realigning. Aligning has to do with attitudes, motives, values, and interpersonal relationships. It is adaptive, not technical, work. Besides a willingness to compromise, or, if the going gets particularly tough, to accept some form of mediation or arbitration, working through issues like these takes com-mitment, patience, and determination, which are just some of the qualities activists may need to take on the work of organizing. The practical route to aligning is always for participants to engage and talk things through, to find out what the others think, to look for common ground, to test each other’s suppositions and resolve, and to see where colleagues dig in their heels and where they are accommodating. Wouldn’t it be nice if, whenever we found ourselves floundering, we could turn to a repertoire of conversa-tions to help us move ahead—conversations that would help us negotiate through the thicket of tough problems, get unstuck, and align? Perhaps the idea of a repertoire of conversations sounds to you sus-piciously like turning talk—the discussions in which people align for action—into a set of tools. Didn’t I warn against relying on tools, empha-sizing a number of times that talk and tools, though complementary, must never be confused (Chapter 5)? Having criticized standard management practices for doing just this (Chapter 8) I must avoid falling into the same trap. I am going to describe a set of conversations for aligning that will help you and the groups or teams you work with to align. My aim is nothing more, nor less, than to encourage organizers to keep talking, but productively. Reminding everyone that conversations are the heart of the work of organizing, conversations for aligning constitute a framework that identifies and explains the kinds of conversations you ought to have when you are organizing. How will this help you? Once you know what they are andwhytheymatter,youshouldbeabletellwhetheryou’repayingenough attention to particular issues and, if not, what you and your colleagues ought to be talking about. Threedomainsofconversations When people are making meaning together—sharing knowledge to get something done—three types of conversations make up their organizing talk. Each comprises a domain of conversations: • In one domain the conversations have to do with interpersonal connec-tions, or relationshipsin the broadest sense of that word. They introduce ... - tailieumienphi.vn