Richard Veryard's Blog, page 12
October 23, 2012
Plan versus Policy - Badgers Reprieved
The UK government has withdrawn from its PLAN to cull badgers, but remains committed to its POLICY of culling badgers.
Badger cull postponed until 2013 (Guardian 23 October 2012)
Here's a stab at a VPEC-t analysis ...
Values: We love badgers, they are so cute. But we also want to feed our children with TB-free milk.
Policy: The government policy is to kill badgers, in order to protect cows from TB. But in order for the cull to be effective, it has to eliminate 70% of badgers in a given area within 2 weeks.
Events: The conditions are not right for the cull this autumn.
Content: But we are definitely going to slaughter the badgers next year, oh yes.
Trust: So if you were a badger, would you trust humans?
Badger cull postponed until 2013 (Guardian 23 October 2012)
Here's a stab at a VPEC-t analysis ...
Values: We love badgers, they are so cute. But we also want to feed our children with TB-free milk.
Policy: The government policy is to kill badgers, in order to protect cows from TB. But in order for the cull to be effective, it has to eliminate 70% of badgers in a given area within 2 weeks.
Events: The conditions are not right for the cull this autumn.
Content: But we are definitely going to slaughter the badgers next year, oh yes.
Trust: So if you were a badger, would you trust humans?
October 12, 2012
A question of organizational identity
When the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded the Peace Prize to President Obama in 2009, commentators wondered which Obama was being honoured - the actual man who had been in office for less than a year and had as yet made little impact on world peace, or the symbolic hope for the future that America's first black president represented.
Today's announcement that the Peace Prize would be awarded to the European Union has provoked no less surprise. Europe has clearly achieved some extraordinary achievements over the past sixty years, including forming a bond between France and Germany and intervening in Namibia and the Balkans.
But which organization was responsible for these achievements? The European Union was only created in 1993. Many of the achievements lauded by the Nobel committee and by other commentators were done by previous organizations that no longer exist, including the European Coal and Steel Community and the EEC. And arguably the state of Europe has relied as much on other organizations, including the European Court of Justice, the European Central Bank and NATO. (Lord Owen praised the role of NATO on the radio today, but acknowledged that NATO would be an unlikely future winner.)
The Nobel committee praises the EU and its forerunners. Of course that's not quite the same as giving the prize to Obama and praising him for his handling of the Cuban Missile crisis, but it should still remind us that organizational identity is often fluid and complex. Even if an organization does keep the same name, that doesn't mean it has remained the same for sixty years.
Press Announcement
Today's announcement that the Peace Prize would be awarded to the European Union has provoked no less surprise. Europe has clearly achieved some extraordinary achievements over the past sixty years, including forming a bond between France and Germany and intervening in Namibia and the Balkans.
But which organization was responsible for these achievements? The European Union was only created in 1993. Many of the achievements lauded by the Nobel committee and by other commentators were done by previous organizations that no longer exist, including the European Coal and Steel Community and the EEC. And arguably the state of Europe has relied as much on other organizations, including the European Court of Justice, the European Central Bank and NATO. (Lord Owen praised the role of NATO on the radio today, but acknowledged that NATO would be an unlikely future winner.)
The Nobel committee praises the EU and its forerunners. Of course that's not quite the same as giving the prize to Obama and praising him for his handling of the Cuban Missile crisis, but it should still remind us that organizational identity is often fluid and complex. Even if an organization does keep the same name, that doesn't mean it has remained the same for sixty years.
Press Announcement
October 9, 2012
Whose target is it anyway?
"The IMF downgrades its growth forecasts and casts further doubt on Osborne meeting his debt target" reports @JJ_159 via @Spectator_CH. @EmmaLangman suggests (sadly) that that it is 'our' debt target by association. "What Chancellor chooses, the country lives through."
So let me consider perhaps the most famous target of all time - the apple which the Swiss tyrant Gessler required William Tell to shoot from his son Walter's head. Gessler sets the target, William Tell hits the target, the son survives, Tell subsequently assassinates Gessler, and the Swiss people achieve their freedom.
Wikipedia: William Tell
Altogether now: dadadum dadadum dadadumdumdum ...
So let me consider perhaps the most famous target of all time - the apple which the Swiss tyrant Gessler required William Tell to shoot from his son Walter's head. Gessler sets the target, William Tell hits the target, the son survives, Tell subsequently assassinates Gessler, and the Swiss people achieve their freedom.
Wikipedia: William Tell
Altogether now: dadadum dadadum dadadumdumdum ...
September 28, 2012
Convergence - Symbolic, Imaginary or Real?
@Christian_BB responded to my post Does Rigour Matter? with a comment "Rigour matters when building. It matters less when trying to get people converging." I replied, "Rigour matters when building consensus. Unless you just want people to have a warm feeling of convergence."
Roughly speaking, there are three modes of convergence and consensus.
1. Symbolic. We have a formal agreement, and maybe set up some formal structures that perpetuate this agreement, but there is enough loophole and exception and wriggle-room that we don't need take it seriously.
2. Imaginary. We have a warm impression that we are all in agreement about something, and a vague hope that all the details will sort themselves out somehow.
3. Real. We have a tough negotiation around the details, and acknowledge the practical trade-offs and compromises that are required to implement the agreement.
Christian may be perfectly correct that a warm feeling (imaginary convergence) may be a useful and motivating step towards real convergence. But I have seen the converse too many times - when a meeting or workshop evades or fudges the details of some plan, leaves the details to be sorted out later, and then fails to follow through. This is a common feature of Management-by-Powerpoint, as notoriously practised by the Pentagon before the US invasion of Iraq.
And where there is a lot of mutual hostility and mistrust, it is probably unrealistic to expect warm feelings to emerge until long after a real agreement has been forged and implemented.
So an imaginary agreement is neither necessary not sufficient as a precondition for a real agreement.
Roughly speaking, there are three modes of convergence and consensus.
1. Symbolic. We have a formal agreement, and maybe set up some formal structures that perpetuate this agreement, but there is enough loophole and exception and wriggle-room that we don't need take it seriously.
2. Imaginary. We have a warm impression that we are all in agreement about something, and a vague hope that all the details will sort themselves out somehow.
3. Real. We have a tough negotiation around the details, and acknowledge the practical trade-offs and compromises that are required to implement the agreement.
Christian may be perfectly correct that a warm feeling (imaginary convergence) may be a useful and motivating step towards real convergence. But I have seen the converse too many times - when a meeting or workshop evades or fudges the details of some plan, leaves the details to be sorted out later, and then fails to follow through. This is a common feature of Management-by-Powerpoint, as notoriously practised by the Pentagon before the US invasion of Iraq.
And where there is a lot of mutual hostility and mistrust, it is probably unrealistic to expect warm feelings to emerge until long after a real agreement has been forged and implemented.
So an imaginary agreement is neither necessary not sufficient as a precondition for a real agreement.
September 11, 2012
CoProduction and OrgIntelligence in Healthcare
At @TheKingsFund today for a workshop on implementing healthcare reforms, with particular focus on the introduction of Health and Well-Being Boards. In this blogpost, I want to pick up the topic of Co-Production, which may appear at three logical levels:
Healthcare delivery (orchestration and service delivery)
Healthcare planning (commissioning and service design)
Strategic healthcare development (experimentation, innovation and learning)
There are various versions of Co-Production in the literature, in Healthcare and in other domains, but there are several related themes.
Services rely as much upon the unacknowledged knowledge, assets and efforts of service ‘users’ as the expertise of professional providers (Elinor Ostrom, via Wikipedia)
Collaborative co-production requires users to be experts in their own circumstances and
capable of making decisions, while professionals must move from being fixers to facilitators. (Health Foundation)
Sharing experiences, mutual aid, mutual problem-solving, shared ownership (Guardian)
Combining professional and lay perpectives (Owens)
Patient voice and engagement (Leeds Institute of Medical Education)
Coproduction provides a very interesting example of what I call organizational intelligence, involving a connected set of information gathering, feedback and learning loops. Paying attention to these collective intelligence loops helps us see how effective patient participation and coproduction should contribute to the quality and productivity of healthcare delivery, healthcare planning and healthcare strategy.
@BenP1972 tweeted that this sounded like a job for @patientopinion ... "must b other existing models where feedback and user experience transformed service offering". Meanwhile @PatientVoicesUK quoted Donald Schön (1988) "Storytelling is the mode of description best suited to transformation in new situations of action."
Storytelling and sensemaking are vital elements of organizational intelligence. Professionals are trained to see the world according to a fairly prescribed set of narratives. These narratives give them considerable expertise and power, but they may also constrain thinking. For example, so-called "evidence-based medicine" may be dominated by professionally approved modes of evidence (double blind or triple blind studies) and it may be hard to accommodate the patient experience in this process. Interaction between different professional disciplines, together with the interjection of the (lay) patient voice, potentially brings in a much richer diversity of narratives.
But this diversity in turn calls for greater organizational intelligence - the collective ability to create a meaningful synthesis. What are the (organizational, political, cultural) conditions for successfully and flexibly integrating patient thinking with professional thinking?
Sources
Becky Malby, Involving service users in design: Four steps to co-production (Guardian, Aug 2012)
John Owens, Conflict in medical co-production: The challenge of combining professional and lay perspectives (Centre for Public Policy Research)
Alba Realpe and Louise M Wallace, What is co-production? (Health Foundation, 2010)
Wikipedia: Coproduction (public services)
Richard Veryard, Organizational Intelligence Primer (LeanPub, 2012)
Healthcare delivery (orchestration and service delivery)
Healthcare planning (commissioning and service design)
Strategic healthcare development (experimentation, innovation and learning)
There are various versions of Co-Production in the literature, in Healthcare and in other domains, but there are several related themes.
Services rely as much upon the unacknowledged knowledge, assets and efforts of service ‘users’ as the expertise of professional providers (Elinor Ostrom, via Wikipedia)
Collaborative co-production requires users to be experts in their own circumstances and
capable of making decisions, while professionals must move from being fixers to facilitators. (Health Foundation)
Sharing experiences, mutual aid, mutual problem-solving, shared ownership (Guardian)
Combining professional and lay perpectives (Owens)
Patient voice and engagement (Leeds Institute of Medical Education)
Coproduction provides a very interesting example of what I call organizational intelligence, involving a connected set of information gathering, feedback and learning loops. Paying attention to these collective intelligence loops helps us see how effective patient participation and coproduction should contribute to the quality and productivity of healthcare delivery, healthcare planning and healthcare strategy.
@BenP1972 tweeted that this sounded like a job for @patientopinion ... "must b other existing models where feedback and user experience transformed service offering". Meanwhile @PatientVoicesUK quoted Donald Schön (1988) "Storytelling is the mode of description best suited to transformation in new situations of action."
Storytelling and sensemaking are vital elements of organizational intelligence. Professionals are trained to see the world according to a fairly prescribed set of narratives. These narratives give them considerable expertise and power, but they may also constrain thinking. For example, so-called "evidence-based medicine" may be dominated by professionally approved modes of evidence (double blind or triple blind studies) and it may be hard to accommodate the patient experience in this process. Interaction between different professional disciplines, together with the interjection of the (lay) patient voice, potentially brings in a much richer diversity of narratives.
But this diversity in turn calls for greater organizational intelligence - the collective ability to create a meaningful synthesis. What are the (organizational, political, cultural) conditions for successfully and flexibly integrating patient thinking with professional thinking?
Sources
Becky Malby, Involving service users in design: Four steps to co-production (Guardian, Aug 2012)
John Owens, Conflict in medical co-production: The challenge of combining professional and lay perspectives (Centre for Public Policy Research)
Alba Realpe and Louise M Wallace, What is co-production? (Health Foundation, 2010)
Wikipedia: Coproduction (public services)
Richard Veryard, Organizational Intelligence Primer (LeanPub, 2012)
August 28, 2012
Gillian Stamp on Effective Decision-Making
#orgintelligence I found an interesting chart on @GillianStamp 's blog.
The chart illustrates two observations
"Organizational well-being depends on the interplay between challenges
and decision-making capabilities."
"Where challenges exceed capabilities,
financial and human costs rise; where capabilities exceed challenges,
resources are wasted."
Source:
Stamp sees decision-making primarily as an individual activity, and seeks to understand the conditions for effective decision-making by individuals within organizations. She is particularly concerned about levels of individual stress and anxiety caused by a mismatch betwen individual capability and individual responsibility, and advocates a process she calls Career Path Appreciation to improve the alignment between capability and responsibility over the course of an individual's career.
Similar thinking could be applied to the collective decision-making capability of groups, teams and whole organizations. The collective capabilities for decision-making need to match the scale of the challenges facing the organization, and we might reasonably expect some symptoms of anxiety to manifest themselves in organizations that are under-endowed or over-endowed with organizational intelligence. (For a detailed account of organizational anxiety and its symptoms, see Larry Hirschhorn's Workplace Within.)
The chart illustrates two observations
"Organizational well-being depends on the interplay between challenges
and decision-making capabilities."
"Where challenges exceed capabilities,
financial and human costs rise; where capabilities exceed challenges,
resources are wasted."
Source:
Stamp sees decision-making primarily as an individual activity, and seeks to understand the conditions for effective decision-making by individuals within organizations. She is particularly concerned about levels of individual stress and anxiety caused by a mismatch betwen individual capability and individual responsibility, and advocates a process she calls Career Path Appreciation to improve the alignment between capability and responsibility over the course of an individual's career.
Similar thinking could be applied to the collective decision-making capability of groups, teams and whole organizations. The collective capabilities for decision-making need to match the scale of the challenges facing the organization, and we might reasonably expect some symptoms of anxiety to manifest themselves in organizations that are under-endowed or over-endowed with organizational intelligence. (For a detailed account of organizational anxiety and its symptoms, see Larry Hirschhorn's Workplace Within.)
August 5, 2012
Intelligence Failures at Barclays Bank
#orgintelligence @larryhirschhorn has produced a very detailed analysis of Barclays Bank, Robert Diamond and the LIBOR scandal (July 2012). He asks why Marcus Agius (Barclays Chair) and Bob Diamond (Barclays CEO) were stunned at the Bank of England's demand for Diamond's resignation, and suggests it was because they lacked something he calls a “political imagination”.
There is a lot of interesting material in Larry's blog from the perspective of organizational psychology, and I don't want to reproduce it all here. What I do want to explore is whether what Larry calls "political imagination" is an aspect of what I call organizational intelligence.
Central to Larry's narrative is a cryptic note, written by Bob Diamond after a telephone conversation with Paul Tucker, the Bank of England’s executive director for markets. This note appears to have been interpreted by one of Diamond's subordinates as an coded instruction from the Bank of England to lower its LIBOR submissions. However, Diamond later denied that this was the meaning of the note. As Larry points out, this kind of deniability is all too common in and between organizations.
What is more complicated is the decision by Barclays to include this note in its published account of the LIBOR affair. Why was this note relevant to the LIBOR affair, if it didn't mean what it appeared to mean? Diamond's self-justification and repudiation looks like what Freud called Kettle Logic - "we didn't fix the LIBOR rate ... and anyway you hinted we should fix it ... and anyway it wasn't a hint".
The Bank of England was undoubtedly sensitive to the allegation that it had been complicit in the LIBOR affair, and seems to have reacted angrily to the publication of this note. Diamond and his colleagues may have decided to include the note as a coded message to other banks, but failed to anticipate the reaction of the Bank of England. And as one of the highest paid bankers in London, Diamond may also have failed to appreciate the extent to which the Bank of England disapproved of overpaid London bankers.
According to the Wall Street Journal, there were differences of opinion within Barclays as to whether it was a good idea to include this note in its report, and there were some who worried about the reaction. However, the decision was taken to include it. At the time, this might have seemed like a fairly small detail, but such details can sometimes have very significant consequences.
(Of course, we cannot know for sure that it was this detail that triggered the Bank of England's demand for Diamond's resignation, but it is a highly plausible interpretation of events.)
One of the most common limitations of organizational intelligence is that all decisions are taken within a fixed frame of reference - which I regard as a failure of sensemaking. Larry suggests that Bob Diamond was operating within a frame of reference based on "technical rationality", within which the publication of the controversial note seemed perfectly reasonable, and that he lacked the imagination to move outside this frame of reference. Larry also indicates some of the organizational mechanisms that may have helped to reinforce Diamond's limited worldview, including his experience of being protected by his subordinates.
In that regard, there are some strong parallels with the Murdoch empire and its recent troubles. When Diamond said (speaking to the House of Commons Treasury Committee), "When I read the e-mails from those traders I got physically ill" (BBC News, 4 July 2012), I was convinced I had heard either Rupert or James Murdoch saying much the same thing a few weeks earlier. They are obviously using the same scriptwriter.
Doubtless there will be a stage play at the Royal Court before long, showing us the tragic fall of these doomed heros.
There is a lot of interesting material in Larry's blog from the perspective of organizational psychology, and I don't want to reproduce it all here. What I do want to explore is whether what Larry calls "political imagination" is an aspect of what I call organizational intelligence.
Central to Larry's narrative is a cryptic note, written by Bob Diamond after a telephone conversation with Paul Tucker, the Bank of England’s executive director for markets. This note appears to have been interpreted by one of Diamond's subordinates as an coded instruction from the Bank of England to lower its LIBOR submissions. However, Diamond later denied that this was the meaning of the note. As Larry points out, this kind of deniability is all too common in and between organizations.
What is more complicated is the decision by Barclays to include this note in its published account of the LIBOR affair. Why was this note relevant to the LIBOR affair, if it didn't mean what it appeared to mean? Diamond's self-justification and repudiation looks like what Freud called Kettle Logic - "we didn't fix the LIBOR rate ... and anyway you hinted we should fix it ... and anyway it wasn't a hint".
The Bank of England was undoubtedly sensitive to the allegation that it had been complicit in the LIBOR affair, and seems to have reacted angrily to the publication of this note. Diamond and his colleagues may have decided to include the note as a coded message to other banks, but failed to anticipate the reaction of the Bank of England. And as one of the highest paid bankers in London, Diamond may also have failed to appreciate the extent to which the Bank of England disapproved of overpaid London bankers.
According to the Wall Street Journal, there were differences of opinion within Barclays as to whether it was a good idea to include this note in its report, and there were some who worried about the reaction. However, the decision was taken to include it. At the time, this might have seemed like a fairly small detail, but such details can sometimes have very significant consequences.
(Of course, we cannot know for sure that it was this detail that triggered the Bank of England's demand for Diamond's resignation, but it is a highly plausible interpretation of events.)
One of the most common limitations of organizational intelligence is that all decisions are taken within a fixed frame of reference - which I regard as a failure of sensemaking. Larry suggests that Bob Diamond was operating within a frame of reference based on "technical rationality", within which the publication of the controversial note seemed perfectly reasonable, and that he lacked the imagination to move outside this frame of reference. Larry also indicates some of the organizational mechanisms that may have helped to reinforce Diamond's limited worldview, including his experience of being protected by his subordinates.
In that regard, there are some strong parallels with the Murdoch empire and its recent troubles. When Diamond said (speaking to the House of Commons Treasury Committee), "When I read the e-mails from those traders I got physically ill" (BBC News, 4 July 2012), I was convinced I had heard either Rupert or James Murdoch saying much the same thing a few weeks earlier. They are obviously using the same scriptwriter.
Doubtless there will be a stage play at the Royal Court before long, showing us the tragic fall of these doomed heros.
May 26, 2012
Organizational Intelligence in the Roman Catholic Church II
In my piece on Organizational Intelligence in the Roman Catholic Church (April 2010), I discussed the crisis the Church is currently facing in relation to its handling of child
abuse cases, and explored some of the implications of this crisis for organizational intelligence within the Catholic hierarchy.
In his piece on Crisis in the Catholic Church (May 2012), Professor Tony Coady, himself a Catholic, argues that the handling of child abuse cases is only one of several major issues currently facing the Church hierarchy. Coady produces statistics indicating that the Vatican is increasingly out of step with the beliefs of lay catholics around the world, on a range of issues from the biological (artificial contraception, abortion and stem cell research) to the social (married priests, female clergy and gay relationships). The Vatican's response is to become increasingly strident and doctrinaire, and to discipline any clergy who step out of line.
But this discipline contrasts uncomfortably with the gross lack of discipline in child abuse cases, and leads many catholics to worry whether the Vatican has its priorities right.
The Victorian historian Thomas Macaulay wrote admiringly of the Church of Rome and the
Papacy commending their ancient lineage and current vitality. Professor Coady thinks Macauley’s assessment now seems unduly optimistic.
Coady sees a growing clash between authority and sincerity, which makes this repair seem increasingly difficult.
It is difficult to see how organizational intelligence can be maintained in this climate. But doubtless the Church has survived crises like this before, and may survive this crisis as well.
Declaration of interest: I am not a Catholic. My analysis is based largely on pro-Catholic sources, and I presume these are people who want the Church to survive and thrive.
Tony Coady, Crisis in the Catholic Church (Practical Ethics, May 2012)
#orgintelligence @ethicsinthenews
abuse cases, and explored some of the implications of this crisis for organizational intelligence within the Catholic hierarchy.
In his piece on Crisis in the Catholic Church (May 2012), Professor Tony Coady, himself a Catholic, argues that the handling of child abuse cases is only one of several major issues currently facing the Church hierarchy. Coady produces statistics indicating that the Vatican is increasingly out of step with the beliefs of lay catholics around the world, on a range of issues from the biological (artificial contraception, abortion and stem cell research) to the social (married priests, female clergy and gay relationships). The Vatican's response is to become increasingly strident and doctrinaire, and to discipline any clergy who step out of line.
But this discipline contrasts uncomfortably with the gross lack of discipline in child abuse cases, and leads many catholics to worry whether the Vatican has its priorities right.
The Victorian historian Thomas Macaulay wrote admiringly of the Church of Rome and the
Papacy commending their ancient lineage and current vitality. Professor Coady thinks Macauley’s assessment now seems unduly optimistic.
"Scandals about
clerical sexual abuse of children and the associated official evasion of
responsibility as well as inflexible attitudes to so many of the values
and dilemmas of the contemporary world have combined to undermine to a
large extent the confident self-image and apparent cohesion that helped
sustain the durability and vigour that enchanted Macaulay. ... The Catholic Church may well prove as vigorous and durable as Macaulay
anticipated, but that is likely only if the edifice is subject to
extensive repair."
Coady sees a growing clash between authority and sincerity, which makes this repair seem increasingly difficult.
"There are more and more voices within the Church urging the revisiting
of the total ban on abortion but they are not being listened to by the
authorities. In this they face the same wall of disapproval and
potential sanction that confronts many other serious dissenting voices
on other rigorist bans, such as those on contraception, divorce,
clerical marriage, homosexuality, women priests, and most matters
involving human sexuality. The fact is that the Catholic Church’s
authorities do not want their arguments and rulings on these issues
contested because they have been backed into a corner."
It is difficult to see how organizational intelligence can be maintained in this climate. But doubtless the Church has survived crises like this before, and may survive this crisis as well.
Declaration of interest: I am not a Catholic. My analysis is based largely on pro-Catholic sources, and I presume these are people who want the Church to survive and thrive.
Tony Coady, Crisis in the Catholic Church (Practical Ethics, May 2012)
#orgintelligence @ethicsinthenews
Political parties and organizational intelligence
Political parties are very unusual kinds of
organizations, whose collective intelligence could be very
interesting to look at. They consist of professional politicians, paid party
workers and volunteer members, together with an ecosystem of think tanks
and other hangers-on.
The question of organizational intelligence is about the power of an
organization to think powerfully and coherently, and the power to learn
and solve problems quickly. How does a political party become aware of
new opportunities and threats in the socioeconomic environment, or new
situations that call for a coordinated political response? How does a
party develop and evolve stories and narratives, to make sense of new
situations? How are policies developed, tested and agreed? How do new
ideas (including new problems and new solutions) travel through a
political organization, and is this different from the way ideas travel
through other kinds of organization? How do different communication
mechanisms and technologies (e.g. meetings, internet forums, social
networking) affect the development of a coherent political consensus?
We are more accustomed to looking at these questions in relation to large commercial
organizations or government bodies. Enron is a fascinating example, because it was packed
with talented people, but the business was incoherent. Microsoft is
another fascinating example, because everyone imagines (wrongly) that
the decisions are all taken at the top. Perhaps party organizations
would like to be like Microsoft, but end up more like Enron. So how can
parties get better at thinking?
I am keen to make contact with anyone who would be interested in exploring
this question - either from within one of the political parties, or as
an outside observer.
organizations, whose collective intelligence could be very
interesting to look at. They consist of professional politicians, paid party
workers and volunteer members, together with an ecosystem of think tanks
and other hangers-on.
The question of organizational intelligence is about the power of an
organization to think powerfully and coherently, and the power to learn
and solve problems quickly. How does a political party become aware of
new opportunities and threats in the socioeconomic environment, or new
situations that call for a coordinated political response? How does a
party develop and evolve stories and narratives, to make sense of new
situations? How are policies developed, tested and agreed? How do new
ideas (including new problems and new solutions) travel through a
political organization, and is this different from the way ideas travel
through other kinds of organization? How do different communication
mechanisms and technologies (e.g. meetings, internet forums, social
networking) affect the development of a coherent political consensus?
We are more accustomed to looking at these questions in relation to large commercial
organizations or government bodies. Enron is a fascinating example, because it was packed
with talented people, but the business was incoherent. Microsoft is
another fascinating example, because everyone imagines (wrongly) that
the decisions are all taken at the top. Perhaps party organizations
would like to be like Microsoft, but end up more like Enron. So how can
parties get better at thinking?
I am keen to make contact with anyone who would be interested in exploring
this question - either from within one of the political parties, or as
an outside observer.
May 10, 2012
Leadership and Organizational Intelligence
Chief Knowledge Officer
Joseph Goedert, Expert says it's time for Health Care to create ‘Chief Knowledge Officer’ position. Health Data Management, Oct 2011
Chief Learning Officer
CLO Magazine
Josh Bersin, Today's Chief Learning Officer (November 2010)
Chief Sensemaking Officer
Peter Flemming Teunissen Sjoelin, Making Sense: One of the Components of Achieving Holistic Management (Jan 2011); Holistic Management in a Context of Enterprise IT Management and Organizational Leadership (May 2011)
Chief Collaboration Officer
Morten T. Hansen, Scott Tapp, Who Should be Your Chief Collaboration Officer? HBR Oct 2010
Lydia Dishman, Why Your Company Needs A Chief Collaboration Officer. Fast Company, May 2012
Is this several different (but overlapping) positions, or several labels for the same position? I believe these are all aspects of Organizational Intelligence, and call for coordinated leadership. That doesn't necessarily mean a single position, but certainly not a set of disconnected or rival initiatives.
And who will take such positions? Hansen and Tapp suggest that the responsibilities should be added to one of the existing C-level roles - probably one of the following five.
The current CIO.
The current HR head.
The current COO.
The current CFO.
The current head of strategy.
I agree that organizational intelligence might reasonably be added to any of these disciplines, but it would undoubtedly represent a radical shift for the traditional disciplines that dominate these functions. Leadership indeed.
Joseph Goedert, Expert says it's time for Health Care to create ‘Chief Knowledge Officer’ position. Health Data Management, Oct 2011
Chief Learning Officer
CLO Magazine
Josh Bersin, Today's Chief Learning Officer (November 2010)
"A few years ago I wrote an article about how the CLO is really three people: A Chief Culture Officer (driving engagement, learning, and collaboration), A Chief Performance Officer (driving employee performance, alignment, and skills); and a Chief Change Officer
(vigilantly driving change, seeing the future, and helping the CEO and
other leaders transform the workforce as the business and workforce
changes). Today, more than ever, the CLO must be all three."
Chief Sensemaking Officer
Peter Flemming Teunissen Sjoelin, Making Sense: One of the Components of Achieving Holistic Management (Jan 2011); Holistic Management in a Context of Enterprise IT Management and Organizational Leadership (May 2011)
Chief Collaboration Officer
Morten T. Hansen, Scott Tapp, Who Should be Your Chief Collaboration Officer? HBR Oct 2010
Lydia Dishman, Why Your Company Needs A Chief Collaboration Officer. Fast Company, May 2012
Is this several different (but overlapping) positions, or several labels for the same position? I believe these are all aspects of Organizational Intelligence, and call for coordinated leadership. That doesn't necessarily mean a single position, but certainly not a set of disconnected or rival initiatives.
And who will take such positions? Hansen and Tapp suggest that the responsibilities should be added to one of the existing C-level roles - probably one of the following five.
The current CIO.
The current HR head.
The current COO.
The current CFO.
The current head of strategy.
I agree that organizational intelligence might reasonably be added to any of these disciplines, but it would undoubtedly represent a radical shift for the traditional disciplines that dominate these functions. Leadership indeed.
