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Beyond Management 172 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). Letting go “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 relinquishing the mindset and the practices, which explains why the first move is possibly the most difficult. Letting go takes sacrifice and courage, especially because people who dislike what you are doing will try to thwart you. Earlier, to dramatize what it takes to get from management to organizing, 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 succeeded, 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 individual’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 control 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 Organizing moves 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 knowledge 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. Transforming relationships 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 involves sweeping away superior–subordinate relationships. Your personal 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. Promoting accountability 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 highlights 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 173 174 Beyond Management 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 responsibilities 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. Organizing moves from below: extricating yourself and your work 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: extricating 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 important 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 sizeable 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 government 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. Organizing moves The combination of rigid hierarchy and unyielding and uncompromising 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 pernicious. 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 frustrated. 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 From above, this is too far from the work that the majority of employees do 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. Moving up 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 subordinate, as you work with others, so everyone is engaged, participating 175 176 Beyond Management 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 maintain 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 permission. 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 organizing 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 contradictory. 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 dealing 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 disappointment 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. Facilitating open discussion Here is another dilemma. Let’s suppose you’ve seen an opportunity to promote knowledge sharing inside your organization. You have no doubt that it is the sort of initiative that management will support, but on what terms? Organizing moves This is a project without borders, which touches on the culture, embraces IT, and runs right across formal boundaries and layers of authority. To take on the work of organizing and get it off the ground you are looking for lots of latitude, or, as you are in a high-control environment, a lot more authority. The challenge in negotiating your way into a new role, with new authority and responsibilities, isn’t in defining your role (although management, always with an eye on structure, may see it this way). Roles come later. They are defined and redefined as people interact. The initial crunch in taking on a new role has to do with something more basic: negotiating from below in an environment where most of what happens is not negotiated—but is directed—and it isn’t normal for superiors to negotiate with subordinates. You know you could put together a team to start the work, but what is missing is a social space where everyone has room to discuss and debate options and negotiate positions, so it’s possible to gauge people’s interest, identify the level of support, and reveal roadblocks, all part of the work of organizing. What is needed is a space where superiors and subordinates, departments and units, aren’t automatically set against one another. What do you do? One of the commitments you make in getting into organizing is to act as facilitator, creating and holding an open space that enables people to talk and align. And how do you create that space? This, too, isn’t easy but, essentially, by getting into conversations for openness: conversations about “what we would like to see,” “what is possible,” and, moving in this direction on delicately as you need to, “what is likely to trip us up.” Negotiating accountability The third move, the counterpart to the second, is a reminder of how closely interwoven are organizing moves and the conversations for organizing (which I discussed in Chapter 12). In moving up, negotiating your way into new roles, the question organizers invariably get from above is “Who is going to be responsible?” Coming from above, it is a fair question. With high control the answer is clear in principle (although never in practice): “look for the chain of command on the org chart.” To make low-control organizing work there has to be a practical alternative to compliance, where individuals are not put in a position either of having to ask or give permission. What we’re looking for may sound like a contradiction. Knowledgework thrives on independence and openness. These serve the creative spirit and the need for people to share knowledge. At the same time, 177 178 Beyond Management work practices have to acknowledge and satisfy the collective nature of knowledge-work. Knowledge workers depend on one another to get things done. The practical way of allowing people a great deal of latitude in deciding what to do, when, and how while, at the same time, trying to ensure they act responsibly by supporting one another, meeting their commitments, keeping their promises, and doing a good job in the process, is to have them acknowledge that they are accountable to each other and have them actually hold one another to account whenever they feel it is desirable to do so. So, the third commitment you have in coming into organizing from below is to try to talk both peers and bosses into allowing the people they work with to hold them accountable and everyone into taking joint responsibility for holding others to account. This is usually a tough sell. Among your peers, the reason for this is that the idea of mutual, peer-topeer accountability is unfamiliar and untried and they’re being encouraged to act collectively and commit to practices that go against the ideology of individualism they’ve grown up with. For bosses, you can add their understandable reluctance to turn over “their authority” (actually power) and their skepticism that mutual accountability is a workable substitute for compliance. CHAPTER 14 Handling hierarchy and more Change that pushes all the buttons Like the word “change”, “change management”—meaning actions at the top to change the whole organization (“whole system change”)—is a mantra in the world of management consulting.1 It is also a myth. There is no whole to change. Departments, divisions, and organizations are not made of Lego blocks, which can be rearranged to create a new and different structure. The kinds of moves I’ve outlined are the opposite of whole systems change. They are practical, piecemeal, and personal. Responding to the need to organize differently to do their work better, people improvise. They find or create whatever openings they can, as they do whenever they work. Change happens in or through action, when they act and speak differently. It is not the kind of change you put on an org chart, saying “look, we changed the organization!” It is neither rapid nor grand and ambitious. It is both gradual and localized, confined to contexts where people are actually doing things differently. You feel (or experience) this kind of change, because it touches you when you are involved or associated with it.2 Chipping away at high-control practices is not only about how organizations function and who runs them, but also has to do with people’s identities and interpersonal relationships that are tied to titles, roles, and positions on the social ladder, who they work with, and how they deal with one another. In short, we’re talking about reforming work culture, which means anything and everything to do with the way we currently organize work, including values and beliefs, pay-scales and working relationships, and the way we speak about our work and talk to one another.3 Whether it is a directive, systems of rewards and incentives, or the silos that isolate departments, activists will try to alter, circumvent, eliminate, or, possibly, just ignore it. If it stands in the way of working cooperatively, then networking, sharing knowledge, and aligning it is a candidate for change. 179 Beyond Management 180 But, whatever you do, someone, somewhere, who is attached to the status quo, is bound to feel affronted. As Hamlet might have put it, “there’s the rub.” All sorts of people are attached to management practices for all kinds of reasons and, if you are, the idea of moving into organizing can very be troubling. Many have faith in management, believing it is the right way to run organizations (i.e. to organize work). Others, though less convinced, can’t imagine a viable alternative to high control, with someone “in charge.” Or they are quite content with the way things are and, possibly, are quite determined to keep them this way. Organizing moves seem to push everyone’s buttons, all at once. You need an appetite for this kind of work because it takes a lot of effort. Yet organizing is intensely social and calls for cooperation and collective action. Where do you find allies? Let’s look at what is involved, including the complications and hurdles. Handling hierarchy Handling hierarchy is the trickiest and most important part of taking charge at work. You have to do it. It is no secret that collaboration hinges on good working relationships and that our work environments permit both good and bad ones. Reciprocal relationships characterized by mutual respect, care, and collegiality or friendship are good ones for organizing, because people are open to one another’s suggestions and criticisms, feel accountable to each other, share knowledge, and align easily. Superior–subordinate relationships, which come with hierarchy, are bad for collaboration—hence for organizing—and it is even worse when hierarchy and bureaucracy are combined. So for the sake of good work we want to get these relationships and the formal apparatus that supports them (e.g. job classifications, positions on the org chart, and the idea of “going through proper channels”) out of the picture when people organize. By “out of the picture” I don’t mean toning them down or making them less obtrusive. I mean out of the way completely. This is asking a lot, because almost everything we do under the umbrella of management, from pay structures to parking privileges and who gets to sit where in meetings, reinforces hierarchy. But, with commitment, we can go a long way toward the goal. What exactly is the goal? Ideally, when people are talking to one another they’re thinking about what they’re doing and should be doing together, not about structures, regulations, their positions, or protecting Handling hierarchy and more their authority or their turf. These become reasons for not doing things: shields to inaction, masks to hide behind, and means of avoiding responsibility and accountability. Can they engage one another about the work they’re doing as peers and colleagues who are jointly responsible for what they’re doing, open to the other’s circumstances, experience, and suggestions—and able to challenge them if needs be? Are they interested in what the others are doing, and are they willing, as well as able, to hold each other to account for what they do (or don’t do) together? If they can do all this and do it with the intention of doing their best work, they’re handling hierarchy successfully.4 “Orbiting” is not a solution Gordon MacKenzie’s book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball, is about responding to the dreadful concoction of bureaucracy and hierarchy, which he describes as a “Hairball” of “policy, procedure, conformity, compliance, rigidity, and submission to the status quo.”5 He sees this combination as “an originality-suppression agency that permeates our lives,” which once “tyrannized Galileo into recanting . . . put a match to Joan of Arc” and has since colonized corporate governance.6 His antidote, “Orbiting,” is “responsible creativity” that includes “vigorously exploring and operating beyond the hairball of the corporate mind set, beyond ‘accepted models, patterns or standards’—all the while connecting to the spirit of the corporate mission.”7 The idea of finding “orbit around a corporate hairball . . . a place of balance where you benefit from the physical, intellectual, and philosophical resources of the organization without becoming entombed in the bureaucracy of the institution” is very appealing.8 At Hallmark, the greeting cards manufacturer where he worked, MacKenzie tried it himself and seems to have succeeded. The ability to orbit, however, depends on the attitudes of those around you, who have the power to keep you in the hairball, or, if you manage to escape and they don’t want you to, to pull you out of orbit and get you back in line. In his journal (Chapter 4) Jeff tells us why it is so difficult to orbit, pointing to perpetual tension between people organizing themselves and (top-down) management. When a single individual like MacKenzie is engulfed and smothered by a hairball, she or he might be permitted to orbit in certain circumstances, but groups, teams, departments, and whole divisions almost certainly won’t be allowed to do it en masse. In a hierarchy, where conformity is essential to “order” and “efficiency,” orbiting threatens the status quo. Whenever and wherever it is 181