Selling ice to Eskimos? - Leadership development in very successful organizations

How do we sell leadership development solutions to an organization that has been very successful without having invested in leadership development? Should we even try to do that? Wouldn’t tinkering with the leadership capability and/or style of such an organization risk ruining the 'alchemy of the magic' of the organization’s success? If an organization has been very successful, shouldn’t we be learning from it instead of trying to change it? 

These questions are very important both for external consultants and for internal learning partners. They can also be quite tricky to answer, though many answers are indeed possible. Let’s look at seven of them.

• “What got you here won’t get you there” kind of answers – They argue that the game is changing and hence you need a different set of leadership capabilities or at least a much higher level of the current set of leadership capabilities to achieve your vision or even to sustain the current position. 

• "Good to great" kind of answers  - This is more of a 'there is always room for improvement' kind of argument, while fully acknowledging the consistent record of success so far. While the customer is unlikely to disagree with this philosophically, it might not be compelling enough to prompt action on the part of the customer, especially when the customer is already 'great' (or quite close to it) in their own opinion.       

• “Success sweeps a lot of things under the carpet” kind of answers – Here the basic argument is that while the organization has been successful there are still a lot of things to fix in terms of the leadership capability and/or leadership style. For example, the leadership style might not be aligned to the espoused values or the target culture of the organization. Warning : If this is not  done very skillfully, it can degenerate into an unpleasant conversation with the customer very quickly (unless the customer has a very high levels of self-awareness and humility or has masochistic tendencies)!  

• “A few great men and women” kind of answers – They argue that the success of the organization has been because of a particular set of leaders and that the others in the organization can benefit from leadership development inputs.  If the person who buys the leadership development solution considers himself/herself to be part of the ‘a few great men and women group', it works even better!

• "We are just making you scalable" kind of answers - In this case, the argument becomes more like 'we are just helping you to decode your own success so that it becomes scalable'. This argument works best when the organization is growing rapidly. The advantage of this answer is that it avoids the concern related to tampering with what made the organization successful. 

• “Let good thoughts come to us from all sides” kind of answers – They argue that while the organization might not need the skill building aspect of leadership development, just listening to the latest ideas/thinking can be useful or at least entertaining. It can also give the satisfaction that “we have implemented all these ‘latest’ ideas a million years ago”!

• “Leadership development serves many purposes” kind of answers – Here the essential argument is that leadership development interventions serve many other useful purposes in addition to building leadership capabilities. Please see ‘The many lives of capability building programs’ for a comprehensive list of the ‘alternative uses.

Of course, many more such answers are possible. The all-important question is:  How will a particular organization respond to a particular answer/a particular line of argument? To a great extent, the response will depend on 'what the organization attributes its success to' and 'if the answer is in alignment with that attribution'.

So, where do all these leave us?

It is indeed possible that an organization has got many pieces of the leadership development puzzle right, even if they haven't formalized them as 'leadership development solutions'. For example, they might be using 'action learning projects', 'crucible roles' and 'on the job coaching' even when they are not using these terms. Therefore, a bit of 'Appreciative Inquiry' won't hurt. Afterall, humility is as relevant to the learning partners (internal/external) as it is to their clients!  We must also remember that leadership development is not mainly about 'leadership training programs' though they are the most visible part. I would even say that, in some instances, leadership training efforts are more like 'corporate rain dances'!

Logically speaking, the most important aspect here is the 'perceived net value' that the leadership development solution can add - in the short term and in the long term. This perception of value need not necessarily be purely rational (See 'Of reasons, rationalizations and collective delusions' for details). However, the point remains that 'what is valuable is defined by the customer'. Similarly, unless the customer acknowledges the 'need' or the 'opportunity' the discussion on the solutions (including leadership development solutions) can't really start. Of course, while highlighting the 'net value' that the leadership development solution can add, it is equally important to anticipate/address any stated or unstated concerns the customers might have about the leadership development solution or its implementation. 

Organizations, especially the successful organizations, have a tendency to think that they are unique and that they have figured out a unique way to be successful. Yes, it is possible that an organization has been successful because of, irrespective of or even in spite of the leadership capability it has. Also, attribution errors are quite common (for example, attributing success to internal factors and attributing failures to external factors). Yes, ‘time will tell’ – but it might be too late for the people who are trying to sell leadership development solutions to a particular organization! 

Chris Argyris in his seminal article ‘Teaching smart people how to learn’, argues that people who have been consistently successful tend to become very good at ‘single-loop learning’ and that they don’t develop the capability for ‘double-loop learning’ which becomes essential when the fundamental assumptions they have been using for problem solving/responding to the environment are no longer valid. I guess, it applies to organizations too! Therefore, 'facilitating double-loop learning' kind of approaches do have their place in this context also! In the case of internal consultants, 'acting as some sort of a 'court jester in the corporate context' can also be helpful in this endeavor (See 'Organization Development Managers as Court Jesters' for details)!

Can you think of any other answers to the question that we started this post with?

Any other comments/ideas?  

Magical and not so marginal!

Management Consultants are often seen as ‘magical outsiders’ who possess powers that the employees in the organization lack. I have often wondered why this happens!

Some of the reasons are very much rational. Consultants often have specialized  skill-sets that the employees don't have. Consultants also have better access to databases, industry benchmark information and to ‘best practices’. In some domains (e.g. Job Evaluation) consultants do bring in proprietary methodologies.

But there are other (not so rational) factors also. Many of the organizations are not optimized for effectiveness. Organizations tend to gravitate towards a way of working that is most comfortable for the people who run it – even if it takes away from the effectiveness and efficiency. This can make it very easy for an external consultant to walk into an organization, do a diagnosis and find many areas where there was potential for significant improvement. While the fresh eyes’, specialized diagnostic tools and 'learning from other contexts' that the external consultant brings in are indeed helpful in doing this, one key advantage the external consultants have over the employees is the very fact that the consultants are 'outsiders' - who have not been part of the system and hence the problems that it is trying to solve.

Just having been part of the organization can become a liability as that can get the employees perceived as ‘part of the problem to be solved’ (even if they haven’t contributed to it). Sometimes, not disturbing the ‘convenient collective delusions’ in the organization becomes an unstated expectation for being an ‘insider’. ‘Remaining some sort of an outsider while being a full member of the organization’ is what can help internal consultants to  avoid this unfortunate situation. This is a tricky 'tightrope walk' and it might need somewhat unorthodox approaches (see ‘Organization Development Managers as Court Jesters’ for an example).

Another key factor here is that the external consultants can afford to sell/promise more ambitious possibilities (as compared to what the employees of the organization can) because what is at risk for the external consultant is an occasional success fee and not their jobs. Employees have more skin in the game. This can make the employees look ‘less ambitious’, ‘lacking in vision’, ‘change resistant’’ etc. Of course, this becomes a double whammy for the employees if they (and not the consultants) have to implement the over-ambitious plans that the consultants have sold.

Quite a bit of the consultant credibility falls into the ‘presumed credibility’ category which is based on the assumptions others hold about them (say, based on the consulting firm they work for and their educational qualifications). This can also lead to situations where consultants project expertise that they don’t really have.This is done by being deliberately vague, use of jargon, somber expressions, hiding behind proprietary tools and methodologies, making open-ended statements, doing name-dropping, using great-looking analysis and presentation templates, 'casual benchmarking'* etc. The risks arising from presumed credibility are more when one is working with a large consulting firm (as the consulting firms might deploy not so competent consultants especially if the client has negotiated hard on the consulting fee and/or the client is not too 'prestigious' for the consulting firm). Yes, this is also qualifies as magic - in the sense of 'creating an illusion' (of competence)!

Many of the consultants have also this great skill to see only the 'possibilities' during the proposal stage and to see only the 'limitations' after the assignment starts(till they start seeing possibilities that can lead to the next assignment). 

Of course, not all consultants do any of this. I have also come across consultants (e.g. some very senior OD consultants) who have refused to take up the consulting assignment and by doing so forced the client to rethink the way they are looking at the 'problem'. See ‘Truth and Beauty : Motivations and Elegance in HR’ for one such example. 

So there are both rational and not so rational aspects to the alchemy of the magic of external consultants! Now, let’s look at the 'marginality' dimension!

From a process consulting perspective, external consultants are supposed to remain marginal so that the clients can play the central role in solving their own problems. Of course, in content/expertise heavy consulting assignments the consultants have to play a more direct role. The problem happens when the clients ‘outsource’ all the thinking to the consultants and become dependent on the consultants for a long period of time.

Sometimes, the consultants become so central and influential that the business leaders will listen only to the consultants. Some consultants are very effective in creating some sort of 'learned helplessness' among the business leaders by making them believe that only the consultants would be able to convince the CEO. This situation becomes more unfortunate when the consultants (after establishing the dire need for consulting help at the diagnosis stage) gravitate towards telling the business leaders what they want to hear as the solution (typically something that minimizes the discomfort to the business leaders and places the most of the change requirement on the rest of the organization)! Yes, this can prove to be the royal road to influence and to more consulting assignments!

So, where does this leave us? There are right reasons (e.g. expertise, internal capability building, as an additional pair of hands etc.) and wrong reasons (e.g. to avoid blame, for the trophy value, based on unrealistic expectations on what a consultant can do etc) to hire external consultants. If one hires the right consultant for the right reason they can add a lot of value. Employees also can learn a lot from the consultants – especially in terms of enhancing their skills, establishing credibility and projecting their expertise. It is most important that the clients shouldn’t relinquish their central role in solving their own problems and they should remain in charge. If the clients look to the consultants for salvation and allow the consultants to dictate the consulting agenda (instead of the clients choosing when to bring in a consultant, which consultant to bring in and what should be the mandate given to the consultant), trouble can’t be too far behind!

Any comments/observations? 

*Note: 'Casual benchmarking' refers to the practice of doing comparisons across organizations (on select parameters of interest) without paying adequate attention to the underlying differences between the contexts. This can lead to misleading inferences. 

OD Managers and the unconscious of the organization!

"I represent the unconscious of this organization!", said the Organization Development (OD) Manager. "That is why we have so many nightmares!!", retorted the business leader. 
 

In this blog, we have been exploring the many hats worn by the OD Managers (see Organization Development Managers as Court Jesters, The OD Quest series and Architects of Meaning for some of the examples).

Coming back to the conversation that we started this post with, it can definitely be said that tapping into the unconscious of the organization and bringing more of that into conscious awareness is part of the OD role. As Carl Jung said, “one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making darkness conscious”. One of the key functions of OD is to facilitate greater awareness, integration and authenticity.

Before we go deep into our discussion, let's look at a fundamental question. Does it make sense to talk about the unconscious of the organization? If we observe behavior of organizations (internal functioning and external response) and people in organizations (as individuals and as groups), there is a lot that can't be explained by purely rational models of organization behavior(that assume that that a person works to earn money and to satisfy the need for material possessions). Organization behavior appears to be mysterious, unpredictable or even irrational. It appears that our thoughts and actions are influenced also by energies that are outside our conscious awareness. Hence, ‘unconscious of the organization’ is a 'useful model' for understanding and influencing the behavior patterns in organizations ('All models are wrong; some are useful!').

In a way, the employees don't leave their ‘inner drama’ at the door when they come to work. Also groups are held together not only by formal structures but also by stories/fiction, ’group think’ or even by 'convenient collective delusions' . Some of this fiction is unconscious. Organizations behave as if they have a ‘personality’ - sustained patterns of behavior internally and externally - often referred to as the organization culture. If we look at the most popular model of organization culture (Edgar Schein's model), the deepest level of culture is that of the ‘basic underlying assumptions’ that are deeply embedded in the organizational psyche and are experienced as self-evident and unconscious behavior (and are hard to recognize from within the organization). 

Now, let's look at this question from the point of OD Managers. When they come across this kind of strange behavior  patterns in organizations the OD/HR Managers are aware that something peculiar is happening  but can’t understand what exactly is happening and why. This can cause them to feel ineffective, uninformed, and helpless in many dynamic organizational situations such as meetings, team building, and leadership interactions. That is why 'psychodynamics' of the organization (that is essentially based on the unconscious, at individual and collective levels) become useful for OD Managers for understanding, predicting and influencing organization behavior. To put it in another way, since OD is essentially about facilitating change, OD interventions often have to tap into this unconscious level of organization culture. 

The unconscious in the organization manifests in terms of ‘apparently irrational behavior’, myths, stories, metaphors, images, symbols, artifacts etc. All these can be useful starting points for exploring the unconscious of the organization. For example, understanding unconscious patterns can happen through exploration of the organization’s (defining) myth. Myths are based on the inter-subjective reality in the organization and they can be 'more powerful than history and can resist or distort facts with great tenacity'. 

Repression of uncomfortable facts, thoughts, ideas and experiences causes organization members to resist change and become trapped in dysfunctional behavior patterns. OD Manager can enable the key relationships between organization members to be more effective by revealing the hidden, unconscious and inter subjective dimensions of organization life. The collective unconscious of the organization can be influenced by the use of 'generative metaphors' (that help to alter the socially constructed organization reality) and by re-purposing the prominent stories in the organization (retelling the stories to convey a different 'moral of the story' that is aligned to the new change agenda). Hence, tapping into the collective unconscious of the organization is very useful not only for accurate diagnosis of the problems in the organization but also for facilitating organization change and renewal.

In business organizations, OD often degenerates into a series of initiatives. But at the most fundamental level, OD is about facilitating better conversations that can help the organization to better understand what really is happening and to find better solutions. Hence, giving voice to the unspoken and even the unspeakable is very much part of the OD role! Apart from enabling better solutions, it would also lead to better buy-in and ownership and avoid passive resistance. It can also be said that OD Managers are in a better position (as compared to HR Business Partners who are embedded in the different business units) to do this task.

Yes, this process of making the unconscious conscious can bring out some of the ‘uncomfortable truths’ and that in turn can create quite a few ‘headaches’ (if not nightmares) for the business leaders. This can also destroy some of the convenient collective delusions in the organization. The discomfort created by this process is most problematic during the initial period, before the fruits of the integration of the unconscious with the conscious of the organization like higher levels of integrity in the organization (in terms of integration of thought, words and deeds) and  increased creativity and organization effectiveness become apparent.That is why the OD Managers need some sort of ‘diplomatic immunity’ similar to that was enjoyed by the Court Jesters. This diplomatic immunity and some sort of ‘licensed stupidity’ (the license to ask child-like or even naïve questions) is also important for the OD Managers to act as coaches for senior leaders.

So where does this leave us? There are recurring patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that are evident in the behavior of individuals, groups and organizations and sometimes they don't make sense- especially to an outsider. Tapping into the individual and collective unconscious in organizations can be highly beneficial both for addressing dysfunctions and for enhancing creativity and authenticity in organizations. In the elegant words of Carl Jung, 'until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate'!

The OD managers (especially those who have expertise in the psychodynamics of organizations) can add a lot of value in this domain. Yes, the OD managers should develop a high degree of self-awareness, apart from understanding the psychodynamics of organizations, to meaningfully intervene. They should always keep in mind that OD is an invitation (and not compulsion) for change and that it is the responsibility of the OD Manager to help the client see the potential value in the exploration. Yes, the OD Managers also need some sort of 'diplomatic immunity' or 'licensed stupidity' to make all this work!

Any comments/ideas?