Of Organization Development Managers and Court Jesters

“Can I request you to give me an additional role?”, the Organization Development Manager asked the CEO. Noticing that the CEO was looking a bit confused and apprehensive, the Organization Development (OD) Manager continued;  “No, I am not asking you to add me to the senior leadership team. I am also not asking for any role that someone else is doing in our company. The additional role that I am asking for is that of a court jester – in the business context”!

Prima facie, roles of OD Managers and Court Jesters appear to be ‘strange bedfellows’. However, based on my 15 years of experience in OD (10 years of which in internal HR), I am increasingly realizing that one of the roles that an internal OD consultant (OD Manager in a business organization) needs to play is that of a ‘court jester’. 

Though the word 'jester' is often (incorrectly) interpreted to mean 'a fool', a jester (like Tenali Rama in the court of King Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara empire in India or William Sommers in the court of King Henry VIII in England) is a much more profound creature than a fool. At a superficial level, both a fool and a jester might appear quite similar. When we look at them more deeply, these similarities vanish.

While a fool entertains others by 'making a fool of himself', a jester enables others to laugh at themselves. While the techniques of a fool focuses mainly on the physical plane (doing funny things, acting in a funny manner etc.), jester operates mainly in the mental and/or spiritual plane (generating insights). We can also say that fools represent ‘simplicity on this side of complexity' (or simplicity that ignores the complexity) while jesters represent ‘simplicity on the other side of complexity’ (simplicity after working through the complexity). In terms of impact, a fool leaves his audience 'entertained' while the jester leaves his audience 'enlightened'. In terms of their influence, fools are quite 'peripheral' while jesters are quite 'central'. Jesters had the right (or even the 'duty') to criticize the king and get away with that (or even get rewarded for that!). Often, Jesters possess 'shibumi' (great refinement underlying commonplace appearances).

An OD professional is supposed to facilitate change. This change also involves ‘mindset change’ and ‘questioning deeply-held assumptions’. Again (with due respect to the ‘good press’ that ‘bottom up culture change’ enjoys), change often needs to begin 'at the top of the pyramid’ in business organizations because the role modeling behavior of the leaders is the most important factor that drives and sustains behavioral/culture change. So, one of the key requirements for OD professionals is to enable very senior people to change their mindsets and deeply held assumptions.

Sometimes, these mindsets and assumptions are very change resistant – even to the extent of being funny. For example, once I was invited by a business leader to transform the mindsets of the leaders in his organization. During the diagnosis when it was becoming increasingly clear that he was a major contributor to the problem and that he would need to make significant changes to his pattern of behavior, he made himself unavailable for the intervention saying that he was very busy and that it was his team members who needs to change. In another context, the HR head came to me and suggested that as the business leader can’t change his behavior (and as he won’t move out of the organization for the next few years), we need to train his team to enable them to work with him better. While it is an interesting idea ( to train the team to be better followers if the leader is immune to any leadership development efforts) it highlights two problems that are important for us here – the difficulty in getting the senior leaders to change and the high degree of fear that many of the HR leaders have when it comes to attempting any ‘change interventions on the business leaders’. Hence, OD professionals need to find ways to encourage business leaders to examine their decisions and their behavior/mindsets/deeply-held assumptions without offending them and without making the HR leaders too jittery.

This becomes even more important for an internal OD consultant (OD Manager in a business organization), as these senior people he needs to influence are higher up in the reporting chain (food chain!) of the organization. Often, there is an organization layer between the OD Manager and the business leaders (i.e. the OD Manager reports to the HR Head who in turn reports into the CEO). This makes influencing the business leaders on their mindsets and deeply held assumptions  very difficult (if not impossible) for the OD Manager, as it would require a lot of deep interactions with the business leaders that too over a long period of time. The OD managers might not get such an opportunity because of the way of functioning of the organization (‘organization culture’)  and as the HR Head might get threatened by such direct connection efforts!  Again, one of the de facto expectations from the layer below the CEO (e.g. in HR Head in this case) might be to protect the CEO from unpleasant information/interactions and even to maintain convenient collective delusions . If this is the case, it becomes very difficult for the HR Head to allow this kind of interactions between the OD Manager and the CEO as the HR Head (and may be the entire HR function) might have to suffer the possible ripple effects of such interactions!  

This is where the role of the jester comes in.  Jesters can draw attention to the blinds pots without making people defensive. Humor can go through the emotional defenses more easily as compared logic. Jesters can help the leaders to laugh at themselves. Jesters are less threatening because what the they say can be taken as a joke if the leader is not yet ready to accept the truth (and hence the jesters' 'intervention’ is an 'invitation to change' that does not ‘put the leader in a spot’).

Now, let us explore how we can make the role of the jester work in the context of business organizations. The way of the jester requires a high level of wisdom and refinement as the jesters need to walk a very thin line between causing enlightenment and causing offense. Also, this line is a dynamic one and walking it requires a very high degree of situational and interpersonal awareness. To avoid becoming a threat to other functionaries in the court (read the direct reports of the CEO -including the HR Head) the jester should always remain as some sort of an underdog or a wild card and should also remain detached from the office politics. Some of the concepts outlined in ‘Wisdom-level consulting' and ‘A political paradox for OD and HR' might be useful in this endeavor.

From a sustainability point of view, it would be best to create some sort of a formal mandate for the role  of the jester and provide it some sort of ‘diplomatic immunity’(so that the messenger does not get shot). Unless the OD Manager is mandated to be a ‘full-time jester’ (which might not be feasible as there are many other roles that the OD Managers play), we would also need some sort of  a signaling mechanism (corporate equivalent to the costume of the medieval jester) to indicate when the OD Manager is in the jester role.  Since elaborate costumes are not easy to put on and take off, maybe we can settle for a simple cap! If the organization is not willing to let the jester intervene whenever he wants to do so, there can be a designated 15 minutes ‘jester time’ in the middle of a business review meeting (where the jester gets to be an observer/'fly on the wall')!

If the business leader is not open to the interventions from the jester in the context of a meeting (where his direct reports are also present), this can be done on a one-to-one basis (at least to begin with). To be sustainable, the jester has to become a cherished rather than a tolerated presence. This can be accomplished by helping the business leaders to realize their mistakes by allowing them to see it for themselves. Rather than directly contradicting/confronting the business leader, the jester can encourage the business leader (by showing enthusiasm for the idea that the business leader has come up with) to think through the idea to its logical conclusion, so that the business leader herself/himself can realize its absurdity.  To make this happen, the jester should have high degree of business understanding (insight to the organizational truth) in addition to perceptiveness, wit and interpersonal sensitivity/awareness.

 It has to be noted that the jester is not just for the CEO. The jester is for the entire company. This role is relevant for facilitating change at all levels. Jesters can also facilitate creative problem solving – as creative problem solving requires questioning basic assumptions and exploring new (unusual) ways to look at old problems. Since these need to be facilitated across the organization, we might have to create 'jesters at all levels' or enable the employees to 'discover the jesters in themselves'!!   

So my fellow OD professionals, what do you think about this? Can the ‘jester role’ be made a part of the OD Manager’s job description?  Is it likely to work?  Do you want to explore the art of being a jester?

Daydreams of an OD Mechanic

After making a living in the Organization Development (OD) field for more than a decade, I have realized that my primary role so far has been that of an 'OD Mechanic'. There is nothing inherently wrong with being an 'OD Mechanic'. Every field requires skilled technicians. It is just that it was very different from what I had set out to become.

Having started my career as an Aerospace Engineer, my objective while making the quantum jump into the Behavioral Science domain, was to become a 'Scientist' in that domain. I must admit that I had very limited understanding of what my ‘Picture of Success’ looks like (as a scientist in the HR/OD domain) – some sort of a 'Corporate Anthropologist' was my best guess!

Once I started handling real life roles in HR and OD, I more or less forgot about this. I did get fascinated by the idea of 'thought leadership' and investigated ‘Thought Leadership in HR in India’ I have also been aware of the importance of (and the difficulties in) maintaining the link between theory and practice (see 'HR professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder') and I feel that this ‘OD Mechanic’ might have emerged as a result of my attempt to avoid that ‘Multiple Personality Disorder’ (talking about behavior science theories/principles in meetings/seminars but carrying out the day-to-day work without applying any of those theories/principles). I do wonder if it has been more of a convenient compromise as opposed to being an optimal solution that emerges from constantly living in the creative tension between the two polarities. You see, creating and using tools allows me to feel that I am applying behavioral science knowledge/principles though the creation/use of tools might not necessarily need a lot of behavioral science knowledge!

Now let us take a closer look at the terms ‘Mechanic’ and ‘Scientist’. We will also look at another related term - ‘Engineer’. A Mechanic is a skilled worker who practices some trade or craft. The defining feature of a Mechanic is the high degree of skill in the use of tools. A Scientist is a person who studies any of the sciences, uses scientific methods and develops deep expertise. What characterizes the work of a Scientist is the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. An Engineer is a person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problems. As Randy Pausch says, Engineering is not about perfect solutions; it is about optimizing within constraints. Engineering also has the connotation of shrewdly managing an enterprise/task (as in the phrase 'he engineered the election campaign beautifully').

Over the last decade, I have learned and applied a large number of tools and techniques in the HR/OD domain – tools and techniques for diagnosis, process facilitation, solution design, action planning, program management etc - that too in various contexts like increasing individual and team effectiveness, managing change, employee engagement/culture building, organization design, development of frameworks/systems/processes, capability building, career development etc. I have also learned to select the most appropriate tools for a particular problem, customize tools/techniques/approaches, and also to create my own tools (remember: ‘Man is a tool-making animal’!).

Of course, these tools were required and useful. Unless people saw value in what was accomplished through the use of those tools and techniques I wouldn’t have been able to survive in the field. I have also done significant amount of 'optimizing within constraints' -that is the essence of the work of an Engineer (and this activity is of at most importance in adding value in the context of business organizations). The problem is just that I haven’t done enough of ‘observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena’ that characterizes the work of a Scientist. Yes, I have done these sporadically (as reflected in some of the posts that I have written in this blog over the last 4 years). But the extent of manifestation of my 'OD Scientist self' has been significantly less as compared to my 'OD Engineer self' or 'OD Mechanic self'!!!

Considering that OD is a planned, organization-wide effort using behavioral science principles to increase an organization's effectiveness, real life OD initiatives and OD roles are likely to require a mix of Mechanic, Engineer & Scientist. My daydreams were about my attempts (and their outcomes) to significantly increase the percentage of ‘Scientist’ in the mix as I progress in my career as an OD professional.

Daydreams apart, one key part of this endeavor is to be more ‘mindful’ (in general, even while doing the 'OD Mechanic's job'!) so that I will do a better job of observing and then later reflecting on the behavior of individuals and groups in organizations. Another key part is focusing more on 'why' questions ('hypothesis generation and testing') and 'what if' questions ('thought experiments')as opposed to 'how' questions (which are the primary focus of the Mechanic). In a way, I am more clear about mission as an OD professional - to stand at the intersection of theory and practice and inform both by deriving theory from practice and practice from theory. I have discovered that this is somewhat similar to the work of (what Edgar Schein refers to as) the 'scholar practitioner' (who is more concerned about 'middle-level theory'). On a more fundamental level, I have also understood that one can't truly do OD unless one takes it as a calling and not just as a profession.

I do think that these insights might help me to identify 'leverage points' in the system and even to do 'Wisdom level consulting' (another daydream, I must say!). I feel that identifying and acting on leverage points (where a small change can create big impact on the overall system) is critical for OD professionals in order to make a tangible/significant impact on the system/organization (as opposed to doing isolated 'OD interventions' here and there!). You see, one of the 'occupational hazards' of handling a Corporate OD role is to land up in a 'mouse in a maze' kind of situation - 'running here and there (doing OD interventions here and there !), feeling extremely busy, but getting nowhere -in terms of creating a significant and lasting impact at the level of the entire organization! (Please see 'OD Managers and Court Jesters' for a detailed discussion on the occupational hazards of internal OD consultants). Considering the above discussion, my initial idea of becoming a ‘Corporate Anthropologist’ might not have been too far off the mark! May be I was right for the wrong reason!!!

Now, let us come back to daydreams. Dreams (including daydreams) are in a way 'stories that we tell ourselves'. Similar to what I had mentioned in 'Architects of meaning', I think that by analyzing my OD daydreams (stories)and by consciously introducing subtle changes to the stories (and the truths/meanings embedded in those the stories)I might be able to improve my effectiveness as an OD professional. I also think that daydreams (and 'lucid dreams') have great potential in serving as effective methods for conducting 'thought experiments' in OD. But that is another story (or shall I say, another post)!!!

Any comments/ideas?