Tag: culture

The Language of Change : Who Is It For?

Sometimes we overcomplicate things, and that’s not OK. One way of helping to mitigate that, is to pay attention to the language of change, to make it clear, inclusive, and when possible, uncomplicated.

A lot of my work is about change, being comfortable with not knowing. Change often creates uncertainty – an unnerving feeling which stifles thinking, feeling, and doing. One way of helping to mitigate that is to pay attention to the language of change, to make it clear, inclusive, and when possible, uncomplicated. Some of the most interesting and useful inquiries I’ve been involved with have started with the simplest of questions.

Someone I follow on Twitter recently shared a few ‘good practice-based questions’ relating to transformation, from a business school event they were attending.

Principles of Action Research for Transformation (ART)

How does/could your purpose help support our collective thinking?

How does/could your knowledge creation include and transcend rationalist empiricism to acknowledge your whole self as relational beings?

How does/could your knowledge creation expand to include stakeholders – and with it a willingness to develop toward mutually transforming power?

How does/could your knowledge creation include multiple ways of knowing-for-action?

How does/could your knowledge creation integrate personal/reflexive with interpersonal/relational and impersonal knowledge

I spent time reading and re-reading these questions, several of which leave me cold. They seem foggy – lacking clarity and accessibility. Are these questions designed to exclude people? I would hope not – but that is how they feel to me. I grumbled for a while about becoming lost in the business school fog, then got on with something more useful, expecting to quickly forget about this little episode. Only I didn’t forget, I kept coming back to the question of why – why would someone who seeks to inquire about change, pose questions which seem to reinforce the stifling unnerving uncertainty I mentioned earlier?

The Times Higher Education website has recently published a piece titled, ‘Do business schools still have brand value?’ The article opens suggesting five golden rules for academic writing in management studies. These include:

‘…never use a short word where a long one will do; this prevents anyone understanding what you mean, further insuring you against criticism.’

‘…bamboozle people with jargon, and plenty of well-known names. This further paralyzes their critical senses: if Bourdieu or Heidegger said it, then it must be right. Right?’

One of the contributors to the article, Dennis Tourish, goes on to say:

“Those who write like this have one primary goal: building their careers, via publishing papers. They are not interested – at least, not primarily – in shaping public discourse, and helping to change the world. But they should be.

We in business and management studies need to put theory development back in its rightful place. Good theory is certainly important, but the insistence that every paper must do it – rather than, say, develop insights for practice or discuss a genuinely important issue – is rendering us irrelevant to any serious discussion of the multiple problems affecting our world.”

Once I finished reading the piece, I got involved in an exchange with a couple of folk on Twitter who are involved in higher education and research, and when I shared the questions I quoted earlier, freely admitting I am struggling to make sense of them, I received this as a reply:

“Often ‘the club’ uses its jargon to give sense of belonging to those in it and keep outsiders at arm’s length by creating mystery. Good business educators speak plainly and demystify the technically academic stuff.”

I agree, and it’s not just business schools where this obfuscation (see what I did there?) emanates from.

This classic piece of consultancy bamboozlement from Deloitte frequently gets highlighted as a piece of intentional complexity. The ‘You couldn’t possibly navigate this without us’ approach.

Change can be hard, and the process of exploring how we do things differently needs to acknowledge this, seeking clarity and inclusion as ways of engaging people in the process. Questions like ‘How does/could your knowledge creation include and transcend rationalist empiricism to acknowledge your whole self as relational beings?’ are not designed to be clear or inclusive. We need to do better.

Working With Uncertainty In Our Organisations

Developing artistic practices to respond to business challenges

I recently spent time talking with Ross Dickie and James McLuckie from Good Practice, about working with uncertainty. The conversation will be released on their podcast soon. Even though uncertainty is all around us all the time, the very nature of it means we tend to shy away from working with it, often preferring to seek to exercise control instead (which bizarrely, often seems to lead to even more of the stuff).

One of the questions James raised in our conversation was how can we help people move past that reluctance? It’s a good question, and I was reminded of some work done by Stephanie Barnes and Age of Artists, who developed a framework to help make it easier to engage with uncertainty. I’ve drawn a version* of it here:

Stephanie wrote a really useful piece on how to engage with and explore this framework, and has kindly agreed to me reproducing her work here.

“The framework works from the outside in towards the middle, using artistic practices and attitudes to offer alternative responses to business challenges. In the model, the organisational situation appears on the left-hand side, while the artistic practices and attitudes are on the right. Possible transformational activities connect the two sides and allow the artistic activities to act upon the situations on the left side.

Circumstances such as dealing with a market, that are complex, changing quickly, uncertain, or volatile are all considered. The traditional response in these situations might be to try to simplify things, in the case of complexity; slow them down, in the case of acceleration; control them, when they are uncertain; or approach them with resistance in the case of volatility. However, by using artistic practices and attitudes in a transformational approach, we can move our organisations to a place which can provide a more balanced, engaged result. We can have diversity instead of simplicity; a sense of purpose instead of deceleration; autonomy in the place of control; and elasticity rather than numerous rules and exceptions, in the case of volatility. 

In adapting a creative mindset, and applying artistic practices to an organisational situation, we start by identifying the business problem we are trying to solve, then decide which practice we want to start with: perceiving, reflecting, creating, or performing. We can start with any of the activities and move through the others as part of the process of arriving at the response/resolution of the problem.

In arriving at a resolution, it often helps if we adopt artistic attitudes, like curiosity (asking why five times, or challenging assumptions), being passionate about what we are working on, being confident there is a solution, and being resilient enough to bounce back when we experience failures or set-backs. The persistence which develops through these activities is often key to finding a solution.

Artists across all genres display a particular artistic attitude, that is increasingly and highly relevant in other disciplines as well. This attitude often consists of:

Curiosity. A general readiness to perceive, receive and to learn.
Position. Holding a personal belief that is articulated with integrity.
Passion. Pursuing what matters with initiative, determination, courage and persistence.
Resilience. Appreciating uncertainty, flexible towards change, robust in conflict and crisis.
Transcendence. Ability to surpass limitations of ego and self-interest in order to create something new.

Curiosity, position, passion, resilience, and transcendence often characterise artists – and these things are clearly not exclusive to them. Everyone can develop several or all of these features since they will emerge through the ongoing artistic practices in which a person engages over time.

Artistic Practice is a non-linear, iterative process that consists of recurring creative patterns that can be observed across most or all art genres and that are applicable to other disciplines. This process includes:

Perceiving. Observing, Listening, Communicating, Exploring, Collecting, Sensing.
Reflecting. Abstracting, Deconstructing, Reframing, Ideating, Challenging, Contemplating, Reasoning.
Playing. Experimenting, Composing, Improvising, Bricolage, Cooperating, Designing, Rehearsing, Doubting, Critique, Orchestrating.
Performing. Creating awareness, Stimulating emotions, Evoking meaning, Inspiring.

Going through this process will enable people to eventually build and extend generic skills in addition to their core expertise.

Acquiring perception skills.
Gaining mindfulness and understanding.
Learning problem solving, design and collaborative creation.
Understanding how to create awareness, stimulate emotion, and evoke meaning.

Artistic attitude and artistic process amplify each other. An artistic attitude enables experiencing the artistic process more profoundly and as a result leads to higher competence levels. Going through the artistic process can change your attitude.”

There are other artistic ways to embrace uncertainty too, including the excellent draw for the bin method, and for those who like a little more structure, at least at the start of the exploration, I think that what Stephanie and Age of Artists have come up with, is very useful.


*Since I drew the sketch, a new version of the framework has emerged, helping to demonstrate the changeable nature of work. In addition, Age of Artists have published a book, Creative Company (currently available in German – English translation expected later in 2019), which describes some of their research in greater detail.

The Kindness of Strangers

My trip to the exhibition in Minden last week was great fun. Even though unplanned changes to my travel arrangements there and back did their best to derail me, I resolved not to let any delays get me down – after all, what can I do about it anyway?

Outward Bound

After rerouting into London from home to avoid a fallen tree on a line, a 100 minute delay departing London, and a 30 minute hold up in Rotterdam meant I missed my connection to Minden from Amsterdam Central. Arriving at Amsterdam I visited the international ticket desk, where a very helpful person allocated me a new reservation on a later train. The same person wrote me a note to show the guard, explaining the reasons for delay were beyond my control, so would they please honour my now expired ticket. He stickered and stamped the note and with a smile, assured me everything would be OK. He was right – the guard on the train happily accepted my unofficial travel documentation and on we went. The kindness of strangers.

I disembarked at Minden, feeling a little tired and disoriented having passed through England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands prior to my arrival in Germany. I was greeted on the platform by Ulrich – someone who I had met briefly last November when the idea of this adventure was first suggested. I’d no idea Ulrich was going to be there, and a huge smile and a warm welcome were just what I needed. An invitation to the house to meet Irene was gratefully accepted and soon we were enjoying a late dinner, a glass of wine, and an excellent conversation. Ulrich dropped me back at my hotel later that evening. The kindness of strangers.

On Location

I met many friendly people while orming* about town, all of whom were helpful and tolerant of my lousy German, but hey, at least I tried…ich spreche nur ein bischen Deutsch. The friendly atmosphere at the exhibition was outstanding. A genuine appreciation of the work by all of the artists, reciprocated to the organisers who had worked hard to set everything up. Lots of guests milling about, enjoying our time together. I was introduced to Josephine, who had found a piece of free art I made. The art had been sent on ahead, and news of it was in the local paper. Josephine gave me a lovely framed photograph and we spent time talking and laughing.

Homeward Bound

Before we parted company, Josephine asked about my plans to travel home. I described the route, 08:15 departure from Minden to Dormund, Dortmund to Dusseldorf, Dusselfdorf to London, London to home. ‘I don’t think you can get from Minden to Dortmund tomorrow…one of the stations on that line is closed this weekend’. Sure enough, Josephine was correct, one of the stations on the line was closed for engineering works. The train was still running but it was taking a two hour detour, just enough delay for me to miss my flight out of Dusseldorf. Fortunately – there was an earlier train leaving at 05:15, so I got up at 04:30 and six hours later, boarded the flight. If it hadn’t been for that conversation I might still be abroad somewhere. The kindness of strangers.

The flight was duly delayed a while after we boarded, and when I eventually got to London Victoria, I discovered my local train station was shut for engineering works – you couldn’t make it up! I travelled to Croydon instead, and Carole kindly came to pick me up from the station.

I (just about) succeeded in keeping a smile on my face through the delays, and more importantly – I benefitted from the kindness of people I did not know, which all helped turn a good trip in to an excellent one.

*”orming” – wandering without intent, meandering, walking with pleasurable aimlessness (English regional, esp. Lincolnshire; supposedly derived from the Norse word for “worm”). With thanks to Robert Macfarlane for the definition.