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In
spite of a growing reluctance and a belief in being too busy to think
things out together, better joint thinking and decision-making can
actually happen for responsible groups of people, such as boards of
directors. Incredibly effective methods of group
facilitation are available. It
is simply a matter of getting the right people together at the right
times to expose the real issues, problems, threats and opportunities
in order to adjust the forward course. This
adjustment is organisational and strategic planning, which
must be done if the organisation is to be viable. Yet nowadays there is indeed a lot of
muddled thinking about these simple things, coupled with a lack of
enlightened leadership, which is causing many organisations to
lurch from one crisis to the next in a state of organisational and
strategic blindness. In
fact, we often see a great deal of cognitive dissonance toward real problems
and trends of the future. Facing
facts and correcting behaviour are very difficult
for some groups of decision-makers. This
incompetence is not of course always as obvious and blatant as that
of the idiot, George W. Bush and his group of deceitful fumblers on
things like global warming or capturing the oil reserves of Iraq, which
is connected to the threat of Peak Oil as Saudi oil-fields dry up sooner
than the Saudis try to claim. Of
course, even these obvious things are often spoken about as if they
are not obvious, which is the
inbuilt, innate nature of politics. And any organisation gets
surrounded by political forces, which do affect the quality of decision-making
in and around the organization.
What,
then, is to be done? We
see this pervasive undermining force of organisational politics acting
upon virtually all organisational and strategic
planning. Better thinking
and decision-making can happen, but getting the right discussion about
these things and actually getting it together are notoriously difficult. Any reasonably intelligent and harmonious
manager wants to see the organisation achieve
better thinking and decision-making all around, but there are always
agents of anti-improvement working against the intelligent and harmonious
change agents, seeing to it that such change agents are isolated and
rendered ineffective. Incompetence
and disharmonious agendas in high places in the organisation have
a suffocating effect on harmonious intelligence. The lack of cognitive skills in places
of authority never leads to an authoritative initiative toward the
acquisition of cognitive skills that would enable, say, successful
Scenario Planning or Systems Thinking, even where these things are
imperative for the future viability. The
lack of cognitive skills will create an inevitable politics of suppression
of cognitive skills. This is the natural agenda of stupidity
and incompetence in positions of power and authority. Wherever an increase of intelligence and
harmonious decision-making are most necessary and urgent is where they
will be most resisted. Those
who can think at all will always see how this works, but it is always
unwise to discuss it or complain about it too openly and loudly, for
that could cost one one’s job.
Now,
again, what is to be done? It
is not actually a matter of explaining the techniques and benefits
of things like Goal-Oriented-Problem-Solving, for instance. Such things are confusing or difficult
to understand only where cognitive dissonance and bad politics want them
to be confusing and difficult to understand. When those who are intelligent begin to
imagine they have not explained themselves well enough to
those in key decision-making circles, they do not realize that they
have fallen into a trap. No explanation
ever reaches the “Heart of Darkness”, the stubborn centre
of wrongness in an incompetent, evasive and abusive position of power
and authority. Anti-cognitive people are not swayed by
brilliantly cognitive persuasions. Reading
a book on philosophy to a wolf will not dissuade it from attacking
the sheep.
Better
thinking and decision-making can happen for groups of decision-makers,
but they have to volunteer for the improvement, which
is not something anyone can force. Most senior brains did not achieve their
position through humility or the ability to learn in a cognitive sense,
but rather through ambition and the ability to learn politics. So, before we do group mental modeling
of scenarios of the future, we better learn to do Stakeholders Modeling of
the actual Dynamical System of Political Power in and around the organisation in question. This is the most crucial bridge between
cognitive facilitation and organization politics where the strategy-for-change-and-improvement
can become effective. Unfortunately, the vast majority of consultants,
planners and well-intentioned line-managers do not understand Stakeholders Modeling and
do not want to understand it. They
are either basically blind to the issues of it due to a blinkered and
vainglorious idealism or they are just plain afraid of it. For years and years, armed with Henry Mintzberg’s, Power In and Around Organizations,
I have attempted to introduce the cognitive facilitation of Stakeholders
Modeling to consultants, planners and managers without success. No
one will take up the crucial technique of getting better thinking and
decision-making for the organization.
If
we can actually manage to look at the Dynamical System of Power In and Around the Organization, we can then see
when and where we can make useful interventions through generating
the right dialogues with semi-receptive key players who have the potential
to face the full truth of the situation and awaken a desire for better
thinking and decision-making. The
entire process will always boil down to certain individuals and how
much they are willing to learn anew where they already thought they
knew. This has nothing whatsoever to do with general persuasions given out
to all and sundry as in lectures, seminars, presentations and pamphleteering. Naïve change-idealism virtually never
wants to understand this fundamental principle. Organisational Learning
depends wholly on the learning potential of specific individuals within
the organisation in crucial areas of responsibility. Learning
of masses of people in general groupings cannot and will not take place. Everything
depends on a network of crucial learners connecting together in or
near the organisation as a Community of Change Practice. These people will be ever updating their Stakeholders Model,
which will be their number one shared learning area.
The
potential is there. Better
thinking and decision-making can happen. But who really
wants to learn how it really works?
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