Beyond Management Workplace_8

172 BeyondManagement These moves are commitments. Everyone getting into organizing has to make commitments, but the first is what differentiates people when they’re doing this from the top or bottom (the other moves are somewhat similar wherever you are). Lettinggo “Control” is a frame of mind (that it is necessary as well as practical to direct the whole enterprise), coupled with procedures and practices (such as positions or grades, rules, rewards, and penalties), which give certain individuals both formal authority and power over others.4 Together, they delineate the view from the top. A commitment to organizing means relin-quishing the mindset and the practices, which explains why the first move is possibly the most difficult. Letting go takes sacrifice and courage, espe-cially because people who dislike what you are doing will try to thwart you. Earlier, to dramatize what it takes to get from management to orga-nizing, I used the metaphor of a trapeze, suggesting that there is a moment when you let go in mid-air. At that point you have nothing to hold onto except your faith that what you’re doing is right, that others have suc-ceeded, and there are still others who want you to succeed and you will do so with their help. The fact that organizing means sharing responsibility for handling tasks and solving problems should make the first move much more appealing if you’re one of the many who find themselves saddled with responsibilities that are basically impossible for one person to fulfill and are depressed— literally, weighed down—by this burden. In high-control organizations the combination of hierarchy and bureaucracy makes every problem an indi-vidual’s responsibility. When you understand the distinction between tame (technical) and wicked (adaptive) problems an obvious downside of this arrangement is that individuals are responsible for things they don’t con-trol and cannot and should not handle alone, which can cast a huge shadow over their lives, both at work and at home. Work-related problems are truly collective and social. Whenever there are differences in attitudes or beliefs about what needs to be done, when, how, or by whom, the problems are wicked and, the higher you are, the more likely you are to feel the burden of not being able to handle problems effectively because when you carry more formal authority the problems you deal with seem to get wickeder. But feeling that problems are too big and one’s responsibilities are too onerous isn’t reserved for people at the top. When a “routine” task becomes unexpectedly complicated and a Organizingmoves 173 backlog of work starts to accumulate, so it is no longer practical for one person to handle “his or her work” alone, the most obvious thing to do is to ask for help, guidance, or advice. But under the rules of management you can’t. Saying “I can’t manage this on my own,” “I could really do with some help,” or “this is too much for me to handle” is admitting that you aren’t competent to do your own work. Give up control and the burden of being a superman or a superwoman disappears! Organizing practices cater to the collective nature of knowl-edge work. Activists commit to being jointly responsible and accountable for what they’re doing, open to asking one another for help or advice, and expecting to get it. Transformingrelationships As long as there is hierarchy, organizing cannot be a fully cooperative practice and collective experience, with joint accountability. Hierarchy takes away the voices of those “below,” robbing them of responsibility and accountability. Subordinates are supposed to listen and comply, but not speak, except to acknowledge and accept instructions and, unless they have cleared it with their superiors and have their permission, they aren’t supposed to think or do anything for themselves. So, the second move involvessweepingawaysuperior–subordinaterelationships.Yourpersonal commitment is to give back others’ voices and let them take responsibility again, by cultivating social spaces where everyone around the table who is involved in the task or problem can speak and act and expect to be taken seriously. Promotingaccountability How do you spread responsibility around when organizations aren’t geared to assigning collective responsibility? The answer is in the third move, replacing top-down compliance with peer-to-peer accountability. A necessary counterpart to the second, it includes putting yourself in a position of accountability to the people you work with, just as they are accountable to you. Replacing compliance with mutual or peer-to-peer accountability high-lights the riskiness of taking on the work of organizing. If you were coming at it from the top and knew everyone else was fully behind the idea and had the same kind of commitment, you’d only have to think of your 174 BeyondManagement responsibilities and commitments to and relationships with those further down the ladder. You’d be asking questions like, “What is the role I play now—what can I do differently—so everyone participates?” and “What concrete steps can we take to achieve mutual accountability?” It is difficult enough to find answers to these kinds of questions, but getting into organizing from the top is never simple or clean. There is always another layer of hierarchy above you to deal with, and the chances are that, whatever you do, you’ll find yourself sandwiched in the middle: between subordinates-turning-peers who are taking on new responsibili-ties and need support for what they’re doing, on the one hand, and people above you who are into high control and not willing to let go. You’ll be working both sides of the room, so you can create a space for movement, via conversations for aligning, in the middle. Organizingmovesfrombelow:extricatingyourself andyourwork From above, your personal commitment in saying “yes” to organizing is to give up high control. From below, it is the other side of the coin: extricat-ing yourself from hierarchy: saying “no” to having your work directed by remote control and saying “yes” to taking responsibility and being jointly accountable for what you do. Accepting this challenge requires just as much of a commitment, courage, and sacrifice as getting into organizing from the top. One impor-tant difference, though, is that, in my experience, at the bottom there is less push-back from one’s peers. People at the top, who feel they, personally, have a lot to lose by letting go, are upset when they see their colleagues doing just that. At the bottom, people are usually quicker to appreciate the possibilities of saying “no” to top-down control and keener to say “yes” to taking responsibility. There the problem isn’t finding support among one’s peers but, rather, what to do about your bosses. When I think about who could and should make this commitment and why, my clearest image (now conjuring up an org chart) is of a size-able band of mid-to-upper level administrators in government departments (who, in the USA, would qualify for GS 9 or 10 administrative positions and above). Most are making careers in the public sector and some have many years of public-service experience. They understand, well, how gov-ernment departments and agencies function and are keen to “take charge” in their departments or units (i.e. to have responsibility for what they do). All are fit to do so, too. Organizingmoves 175 The combination of rigid hierarchy and unyielding and uncompromis-ing bureaucracy, created originally to regulate and control work, takes away responsibility from everyone except the person in charge, so these government employees live with decisions made higher up (in some cases, much, much higher up), and they follow rules. The combination is perni-cious. Without a say in what gets done or how it gets done and unable to do things that they know will make a difference, they stand by, often frus-trated. They know this because they are in the thick of the action, able to see what is being done and what is not; or how it is being done and how it could be done. Getting into organizing from below (and out of being managed) is about extricating yourself, others who work with you, and your work from this straitjacket, in the interests of doing creative, productive, and useful work. But, in government, the buck is supposed to go all the way to the top before it stops: all the way to elected officials who—the theory goes— are responsible because they are accountable to taxpayers, the electorate.5 Fromabove,thisistoofarfromtheworkthatthemajorityofemployeesdo to know what they are doing and too far to care. From below, it means that, to take responsibility, you probably have to move aside layers and layers of hierarchy while working your way around all manner of bureaucratic red tape. The predicament shared by thousands of public servants makes it clear that, while it is vital to take on the work of organizing, there are no instant solutions or even short cuts to changing hierarchical relationships into collaborative ones from below. Once again, three moves highlight the personal commitments for getting into organizing: • Speaking metaphorically, “moving up” and taking responsibility for organizing. • Holding a space for anyone in your network, including supervisors and bosses, to engage and interact as peers. • Encouraging people you work with to allow the others to hold them to account and have them hold each other accountable and being willing, yourself, to do both. Movingup Coming from below, the first move is still the most difficult: both tricky to handle and potentially risky. Your goal is to show up as a peer, not a sub-ordinate, as you work with others, so everyone is engaged, participating 176 BeyondManagement in the work—talking, listening, and doing—on the same level, as it were. I use the expression “moving up” because control-oriented and status-conscious bosses and supervisors are the main obstacles, not your immediate colleagues. It’s the former, who insist on your using their titles when you address them, who use these and their formal positions to main-tain a distance between you, who see your efforts to take on the work of organizing as “stepping out of line.” One way of keeping people in their place is to require them to get per-mission. It is a means of ensuring compliance, which is why it is a vital principle and practice of high-control organizations. Anyone who is going to do anything out of the ordinary is expected to ask permission before hand. But having to follow protocol is a problem when coming at organiz-ing from below. As you aim to take responsibility for your work, get out from under high-control management practices and structures, and change the way things are done, the act of asking permission is deeply contra-dictory. By asking permission, you would be encouraging and supporting precisely the practices you wish to change! Whether or not to forgo getting permission is often a major dilemma. Shortly, I’ll describe how people struggle with this dilemma when deal-ing with hierarchy. But a dilemma it is, and there are only two options. Either you negotiate your way into a role you don’t usually play or a position you don’t normally occupy. (You have to be prepared for disap-pointment and there is the possibility that, if you don’t succeed, you’ll be at an additional disadvantage for having declared your ambitions to move up.) Or you are willing to eschew authority and press on regardless; acting as if you have permission when you don’t and, if it comes down to this, asking for forgiveness and hoping you get it. With these considerations in mind, moving up involves a declaration to yourself and others working with you that you’ll do what is sensible and appropriate in order to do your work well. You’ll take on the work of organizing by negotiation, talking to people above you who now have the formal authority to make decisions and, if you judge it to be the sensible thing to do in the circumstances, you’ll act without permission, taking responsibility for doing things that you don’t have permission to do. Facilitatingopendiscussion Here is another dilemma. Let’s suppose you’ve seen an opportunity to pro-mote knowledge sharing inside your organization. You have no doubt that it is the sort of initiative that management will support, but on what terms? ... - tailieumienphi.vn