HEADWAY - brainfood

Paying Forward and Sharing Responsibility

2011-12-30T18:32:00.005+11:00

Larry May, in 1992, gave a perspective on responsibility that I think is worth revisiting. His main argument is that people should see themselves as sharing responsibility for various harms perpetuated by, or occurring within, their communities that might be professional associations, work places, neighbourhoods, etc.

"...members of communities should come to see themselves as personally sharing in responsibility for the harms of their communities, even when these members did not participate directly in the harm and even in some cases, when these members could not have prevented the harm."

"The notion of shared responsibility underlies this claim and involves an enriching as well as an expanding of the domain of moral and political responsibility."

"Seeing ourselves as sharing in responsibility for what our communities do will cause us to look closely at our roles, attitudes, and omissions as we currently look at our explicit behaviour."

"Seeing responsibility as shared also causes an expansion of our vocabulary to account for various gradations of fault of the disparate members of a community. In this sense, shame, regret, and taint are as important as guilt."

Small steps start the journey ... paying forward not just paying back.

"As members of communities (whether they be professional associations, universities, or larger social groups), we derive various benefits, which change the the scope of our responsibilities. The shared responsibility we should feel for the harms perpetuated within our communities is precisely the cost we incur by being members of those communities."

"But because we rarely think about responsibility in communal terms, it is difficult for most of us to accept these responsibilities."

We might think of moral responsibilities as shared rather than individual.

Happy New Year.

Reference: Sharing Responsibility, Larry May, 1992, The University of Chicago Press

Management Mis-management: Organisations are really communities of human beings, not collections of 'human resources'

2011-09-11T16:08:00.003+10:00

‎Quote: "Organisations are really communities of human beings, not collections of 'human resources'. That sense of community has been lost in many cases, largely because of successive waves of downsizing. The focus on leadership puts too much attention on particular individuals as opposed to the whole organism, especially when there are very large salaries and bonus for a few at the top."

"That is entirely the wrong way around. Anyone who is demanding one of these remuneration packages is obviously demonstrating that they are not a team player and do not have the long-term interests of the company in mind."

"Perhaps we should be appreciating that reasonably normal people can get on with managing and leading, and be rather successful at it, if those above them are not constantly badgering them with performance reviews and irrelevant targets."

Mintzberg believes [as I do] that management does not receive the attention it deserves, having been replaced by studies of leadership. "Management is not a science or a profession, it's a practice".

What is management?

Despite what the ‘how-to’ books suggest, experienced managers do not attempt to understand familiar problems and opportunities in purely analytic terms using calculative, computerised rationality, but realise that detached deliberation about the validity of intuitions will improve their decision-making. Common as it is, little has been written about consciously thinking about intuitive management understanding. It seems important to consider two issues: 1. how managers learn and 2. how managers could manage in organisations to foster desirable organisation-wide learning and enhancement.

What managers do

Given the intuitive and expert aspects of management it is understandable why managers cannot articulate clearly what it is that they do. The investigation of managerial work is problematic because so many different perspectives exist. The “how to” books may raise some awareness to the activities of managers, however, the descriptive, quick-fix, one-size-fits-all mentality soon stifles any real usefulness. An often cited example to try and understand the manager’s work is Mintzberg’s research conducted in 1989, that concluded that managers describe what they do as “plan, organise, coordinate and control”. In his view this did not provide any enlightenment on what managers actually do. Accordingly, he conducted focused research into the “activities” of managers.

Mintzberg’s findings showed how the manager’s job is often overburdening, enormously complicated and difficult, not easily delegated, leads to overwork and sometimes forced superficiality, with brief, fragmented oral communications commonplace. It is no wonder that it is difficult to pinpoint what managers do beyond the more easily analysed procedural and quantifiable data aspects of their work. Mintzberg subsequently categorised roles that are attributed to managers, including formal and status roles, interpersonal roles, informational roles and decisional roles.

How managers learn

An MBA does not necessarily make a manager. In Mintzberg’s view, managers’ effectiveness is significantly influenced by their insight into their own work. Despite the wealth of formal training and education available to managers today, it is apparent that managers themselves have to learn in the same way as other organisation members; implicit and explicit means. Managerial practise needs to be considered more in terms of individual organisational cultures and environments.

Additionally it is important that managers are aware of contemporary views of what constitutes learning”. They need to be more aware of tacit knowledge and the implicit aspects of learning that apply to themselves and those they manage. Managers also need to recognise that the provision of formal learning activities, that may or may not generate a change in employees’ behaviour, do not necessarily correspond to “true learning” or enhancement to an organisation overall. Managers who understand how they learn as distinct from what they learn and also how groups of people learn, will be in a far better position to manage more effectively.

In addition to experiential and work-based learning that are gaining support, the formal elements of the training of managers could include subjects that explore the way people learn, including themselves, using the best current understanding of learning and knowledge in this age of human brain-structure understanding, active brain scans and parallel computing models (i.e. as distinct from traditional serial computing models). This idea could easily be extended to the view of “manager as learner and manager as teacher”. Managers with a contemporary understanding of the generation of knowledge (i.e. learning) and storage of knowledge in the human brain, which is well beyond the now traditional “knowledge management”, “data-type” view, will most likely adopt a different approach to their management practise.

Confronting "downsizing" and "rightsizing"

Managers could go about their business differently if they have an understanding of their employees’ inability to articulate accurately all of their knowledge, especially as it applies to skills and thought processes, and that some knowledge may only exist within a group as whole (i.e. not everyone can know everything). Such a view places a confronting perspective on “downsizing” and “rightsizing” of organisations that would recognise the enormous loss of knowledge to the overall detriment of the organisation. It also supports the view that constructive “bottom-up” management might facilitate the finding of answers to difficult management and organisational problems so far suppressed. Managers could, at last, develop a view of organisations as “whole units” rather than fragmented cost-centres in which an understanding emerges of a “net” of dynamic learning and knowledge that interconnects all individuals throughout an organisation at all levels of contribution.

Where are your untapped, stifled resources?

When it comes to fostering desirable management practise and the related organisation-wide learning, the implications are significant. There is a need to rigorously challenge the common top-down management structure of organisations. This is because in a new view of management practise and organisation-wide learning there is recognition of the important role that implicit learning and tacit knowledge take in any organisation. The notion of learning and knowledge distributed throughout all participants in an organisation and that each organisation has its own, individual cultural, operational environment and social perspective puts to rest the idea of a transferable “all knowing” manager or CEO at the top of the hierarchy. Just imagine the untapped, stifled resource existing in the traditional hierarchical structure of so many organisations right now.

Valid Validation

2011-07-12T19:48:00.010+10:00

Management Today (June 2011) recently reported that "The overwhelming majority of consultants do not deliver on client expectations, new research reveals. The Consulting Client Satisfaction Survey from the RFP Company, which examines the factors behind clients' overall satisfaction with results achieved when working with management consultants, shows that more than 70% of consultant engagements do not meet, let alone exceed, the results the client expected. Although respondents acknowledged the strengths of consulting firms in the areas of budget management and familiarity with project content, results show that these do not contribute strongly their probability for delivering results that meet or exceed client expectations. The quality of the individual consultants assigned and their focus on the assignment were identified as areas for improvement. But it was not all finger pointing, with clients acknowledging their responsibility to select an appropriate consulting firm for their needs and to proactively engage with them."

With this in mind I ran a simple online quiz on a discussion thread and asked professional people who considered themselves strategic planning consultants to respond to this statement: "I am interested to learn what processes people in this group use in determining the validity of the advice and management tools/techniques that they promote."

After about three weeks, I collated and categorised the responses:

Category 1: "It's not my responsibility"

*none

*fairly relaxed about the 'validity' of techniques or advice

*results are the ultimate measure of a performance

*what the client wants

*it is the client's responsibility

*consider [client] unique capabilities i.e. define what they do better than their competitor

*It is the customer that must be able to validate the resource that it is being acquired

Category 2: "I know".

*use intuition

*infer or surmise

*common-sense

*evaluate own resources and achieve whatever goal must be achieved

*don't promote anything that I haven't used and tested, and been satisfied with the results.

* try to look behind others' conclusions about causes and effects to see if my learning offers alternative interpretations; which I tend to trust more.

Category 3: "What's the evidence?"

*evidenced-based methodologies
*testing propositions and references through checking into previous results achieved
*avoid offering services to people who seem captivated by things like the 7 habits (and most other generalisations which look only at the successes, i.e. ignore cases where exactly the same behaviour was followed by failure. ... exceptions for those who clearly have deep understanding of their business, especially if they are prepared to work together.

Category 4: "Mainstream fashions"

*marketing promotes the thinking

Category 5: "Empirical evidence"

*grounding in peer reviewed empirical research (but has limitations)
*introduce me to someone who has done this, so we can discuss their circumstance and experience

Validation goes beyond surmising (i.e., suppose that something is true without having evidence to confirm it.) and inference (i.e., the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true). Validation goes beyond personal experience, knowledge and skills, which can all be easily biased and incomplete.

Validity generally refers to the extent to which a concept, conclusion or measurement is well-founded and corresponds accurately to the real world without just relying on an individual interpretation. There is nothing trivial or easy about methods of validation. There is always some form of theoretical construct (mental models and attributions) through which an individual’s observations are interpreted.

Therefore, when considering, suggesting or promoting management tools and techniques, some courses of validation action might include:

Looking beyond only personal experience - challenge ingrained theoretical constructs.

Consider the credentials of the author/s? (e.g., "management guru" rhetorical author, academic, practitioner or researcher?)

Seek out peer group assessment or review of the method/tool.

Find the evidenced-base (e.g., academic and/or empirical evidence?)

Evaluate the level of data that supports the claim (i.e., validated data, hearsay or evidence-based?)

Search for actual implementations of a method/tool and outcomes evaluation.

Determine if the method/tool is based on generalisations and platitudes (e.g., 7 habits, Excellence,) and overlooks anything contextual? (e.g., Not-for-Profit oganisation compared with For-profit Organisation)

Recommended reading: Client-Consultant Collaboration: Coping with Complexity and Change. Eds. Anthony F. Buono and Flemming Poulfelt, 2009

The consequences of gobbledegook. It's rife.

2011-05-15T23:32:00.009+10:00

Barabba, Pourdehnad and Ackoff (2002) explore the 'misleading of management' in detail in their article "On misdirecting management" (Strategy and Leadership, 30, 2, pp. 5-9). The reality is that corporations now lash back with lawsuits against their outside consultants because of their large fees and 'no substance'. I follow discussion threads on professional websites and I am astounded at the assumptions, quick-fix mentality and, frankly, the gobbledegook that is presumably meant to pass for 'good advice' and useful 'knowledge'.

There are numerous misguided attempts at promoting panaceas that are diverting attention, resources and even common sense that could potentially produce real competitive advantages and truly knowledgeable managers.

To give an example. Covey suggests "The 7 Habits of highly effective people" in his book. There is no evidence for the recommendations. Using Covey as an example (and many other writers for that matter):

The 'seven habits' are -

1. Be proactive

2. Begin with the end in mind

3. Put first things first

4. Think win/win

5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood

6. Synergise

7. Sharpen the saw

Realistically, they are trite because imagine anyone asserting the opposite, even to conduct a validating experiment:

* do not be proactive

* begin without any idea about the end

* put first things last

* seek to be understood before you understand

* avoid synergy

* operate with a dull blade.

Citing individuals and companies who have specific attributes and 'are effective' (by some measure unexplained) doesn't constitute evidence for wider application.

Tom Peter's book "In search of excellence" identified 43 'excellent' companies and "distilled" his beliefs to explain their excellence. Within 5 years two thirds of the companies were no longer "excellent". Beliefs - distilled or not - are not evidence.

Beliefs do not constitute evidence - they fall more into the realm of 'folk psychology' - an important hallmark of a folk theory is that it is not subject to the rigorous experimentation characteristic of empirical science.

I am interested to learn what processes people use in determining the validity of the advice and management tools/techniques that they promote or use. There is an ethical component to this discussion. Promoting advice and techniques based on platitudes and questionable research methodologies puts consultants at risk if they use them unquestionably, not to mention the clients they are meant to be helping. The concern for me is so much of the gobbledegook seems to be recycled ad nauseum.

Someone needs to break the cycle. Imagine if all consultants and advisers aspired to a new approach, with a resolution made to at least start looking at contributing to developing knowledgeable and effective managers rather than simply and unquestionably recycling the same old gobbledegook.

To help keep the focus........ What processes do you use in determining the validity of the advice and management tools/techniques that you use, that you recommend or that your consultants recommend?

Special Commendation Awarded to Heads Together

2011-05-04T17:55:00.000+10:00

A Crisis. What to Do.

2011-03-14T17:39:00.010+11:00

In my work in the community sector, in particular, I often hear about crisis and crisis intervention. What I don't hear is complete understandings of what crisis and crisis intervention are. At one level, not being able to pay the electricity bill is a crisis. A crisis of a different magnitude, such as bushfire, flood or hurricane, is a different problem all together. Both types of crisis are complex but in different ways. Further confusion exists surrounding "emergency relief" and "crisis intervention". They are different services but would benefit from a close relationship. There is no panacea to help to restore the equilibrium but here are some thoughts to help in your planning or understanding.

What is crisis?

Using six different definitions of "crisis", James, (2008), concluded that crisis is "a perception or experiencing of an event or situation as an intolerable difficulty that exceeds the person's current resources and coping mechanisms".

Rather than viewing crisis as a pathological condition, basic crisis theory relates crisis to situations or human development. This can be expanded by incorporating elements of psychoanalysis, general systems, ecosystems, adaptation, interpersonal, chaos, and development theory.

Some examples of crisis situations include: suicide, sexual assault, partner violence, addiction, bereavement, grief, violent behaviour in institutions, hostage negotiations, burnout, compassion fatigue, natural disasters.

Crisis Intervention Models

James describes five fundamental crisis intervention models: equilibrium, cognitive, psychosocial transition, developmental-ecological, and contextual-ecological.

1. "The equilibrium model ... defines equilibrium as an emotional state in which the person is stable, in control, or psychologically mobile. It also defines disequilibrium as an emotional state that accompanies instability, loss of control, and psychological immobility.

2. The cognitive model views the crisis state as resulting from faulty thinking and belief about life's dilemmas and traumas.

3. The psychosocial transition model assumes that people are products of both hereditary endowment and environmental learning and that crisis may be caused by psychological, social, or environmental factors.

4. The developmental-ecological model combines developmental stages in relationship to the ecological system within which the individual develops. A contextual-ecological model looks at layers, relationships, and time when it examines a crisis.

5. An eclectic theoretical position incorporates and integrates all valid concepts of crisis intervention.

Crisis Intervention Service Provision

The most common complaint I have heard from people seeking crisis intervention assistance is that they invariably have to travel to multiple sites to receive different types of crisis intervention service. In this regard, the concept of Community Hubs has developed.

Community Hub is a commonly used term in community planning. However, as with many commonly used terms, it can mean different things in different contexts and there is no widely accepted definition. However, it is fair to assume that in very general terms a Community Hub refers to a centrally located, publicly owned place where a variety of activities and services come together for the purposes of addressing the needs of a local population.

Individual Community Hubs should focus on the needs and desired outcomes of the host community rather than being constrained by a pre-determined notion of what a Community Hub should be. Therefore, to be effective a community Hub needs to respond to the social, economic, cultural and environmental opportunities and constraints that exist in a particular local community. While crisis intervention and support services are distinct they are related activities. Therefore a Community Hub might contribute to addressing the often fragmented funding and structural arrangements for the planning, delivery and coordination of emergency relief, material aid and crisis intervention services.

Every community is unique and every disaster/crisis presents unique problems. In a small community, where the mental health centre is the "only game in town," its role as a direct service provider will be increased. In a large metropolitan area, where coordination of agencies is going to be difficult, the role of facilitator via coordination and consultation will take precedence. In all cases, however, planning for the provision of services under various circumstances should be a central focus of intervention and relief efforts.

My extensive work with community organisations has made me acutely aware of the need for an easily accessible and seamless support experience for members of the community who are in crisis.

There are numerous models that could be considered. Some Hubs attempt to cluster with private commercial uses that draw in activity. Others have promoted some form of social enterprise so that profit/surplus can be reinvested back into the enterprise. It is both the range and clustering of people generating and attracting activities whereby community hubs become more than just multipurpose community centres. They can be catalysts for community building, community activity and social interaction. It is all very well having a Community Hub, but it has to be attractive at many levels for people to feel comfortable using it. For example, not everyone feels comfortable being seen walking into a building with a sign that says "emergency relief" or "mental health services". In some cultures, even admitting to mental illness is still taboo.

There may be no panacea to help to restore the equilibrium in a crisis, but dignified, easy accessibility of emergency relief, material aid and crisis intervention services would have to rate highly in any planning project. Followed by easy follow-on linkages that might prevent a compounding crisis. For example, having received emergency relief to pay an overdue telephone bill is helpful in itself, but a dignified, automatic referral to crisis intervention support close by might also avoid a domestic violence situation.

What is your policy on policy and projects?

2011-02-07T19:47:00.003+11:00

The debate about defining policy is largely futile. “In short, the debate about definitions has largely dissipated without result. Australian academics, pragmatic to the end, gave up the endless definitional jostling to get on with substantive policy work. (1) ” I agree. I think we are too harsh in our desire for ‘black and white’ categorising and labelling. The same goes for the word ‘project’.

The common uses of the word policy include: policy as a label for a field of activity (for example, foreign policy); policy as an expression of general purpose or desired state of affairs; policy as a specific proposal; policy as a decision of government; policy as a formal authorisation (for example, legislation); policy as a program of activity; policy as outputs or what governments actually deliver and policy as a theory or model (if we do X then Y will follow).

A project may be explained as a temporary process, which has a clearly defined start and end time, a set of tasks, and a budget, that is developed to solve a well-defined goal or objective. But there is more to it than that. A project often results from the identification of a problem or need that requires resolving. The resolution is not simply a list of tasks to be ticked off but more about the processes to achieve a desired outcome. Some projects never end because no-one thought to explain what ‘complete’ is in the first place.

I don’t subscribe to the notion that policy and projects are on separate sides of a fence. But that is a common misunderstanding that tends to develop in the organisational world. It is a little like the ‘theory’ versus ‘practice/experience’ argument in academia – the reality is that both are needed and usually an integration of the two works best because one is dependent on the other.
In my view, the fence often found to divide policy and projects comes from an over-reliance on systems thinking and a narrow view of policy. We can easily see this in a typical policy cycle:

Like so many systems thinking models, the cycle is idealised to a point where it does not match human processing of information. It might work well for a manufacturing line but to get somewhere close to human information processing all of the arrows would need to be doubled ended. We don't think of or process information linearly.

I like Colebatch's argument that there is a fundamentally different conception that he calls the structured interaction model:

“The structured interaction perspective does not assume a single decision-maker, addressing a clear policy problem: it focuses on the range of participants in the game, the diversity of their understandings of the situation and the problem, the ways in which they interact with one another, and the outcomes of this interaction. It does not assume that this pattern of activity is a collective effort to achieve known and shared goals.” (2)

According to this view, policy is not about the promulgation of formal statements but the processes of negotiation and influence; indeed, “it is concerned with relating the activities of different bodies to one another, with stabilizing practice and expectations across organizations, and with responding to challenge, contest and uncertainty”.

Considine argues, “policy is the continuing work done by groups of policy actors who use available public institutions to articulate and express the things they value”. It is the of deals, alliances and attempts at finding solutions involving individuals and groups including elected officials, bureaucrats, political parties, the media, interest groups and social movements; each with values, assumptions, categories, stories and languages.” (3)

“In a sense everything in the policy world is really just process, the movement of people and programs around common problems such as education, transport and employment. None of the initiatives in these fields stays fixed for very long because the problems themselves keep moving and changing. We cannot afford, therefore, to view policy as just a study of decisions or programs. The specific decisions which often interest us are merely important punctuation marks within this flow - not the thing itself.”

In this view the fence between projects and policy is dismantled. In fact, it can be argued that they are interdependent on each other. Worthwhile policies are dynamic, not set in stone like the Ten Commandments, and project work is the means by which policies can be refined and updated. In my view policy (i.e., guidance to decisions and outcomes) already informs the pursuit and support of projects. And vice versa, project outcomes can inform the development or redevelopment of policy. The balancing considerations might be “What policies need review/updating? What projects will help achieve this? What projects will address the development of new policy?” I think this is where the evidence-based approach to my work fits.

An issue arises where the link between the policy and project functions is non-existent or tenuous. If sourcing projects is perceived as simply to “make money” it will usually impinge on some core organisational values and the overall intent of an organisation. Projects therefore need to be thought of as informing relevant policy rather than as a separate activity. “To describe something as ‘policy’ is to give it special significance… The term is not a scientific absolute, but a socially constructed variable. Policy is a concept which we use to make sense of the world - but we have to work with it…. [the real task of policy analysis is not to examine policy as products, but to find out] what determines how things are done? "
1. H. K. Colebatch, Policy, Buckingham U.K., Open University Press, 1998

2. M. Considine, Public Policy: A critical approach, Melbourne, McMillan, 1994

3. G Davis et al, Public Policy in Australia, 2nd ed., Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1993

"Community": beware, it might be counterfeit or just another commodity.

2010-11-27T21:08:00.010+11:00

The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are. (Machiavelli 1950)

We are in danger of losing the plot on "community". A successful housing developer who uses the concept of community extensively in his marketing was asked what the word “community" meant to him and he responded, “It doesn’t mean anything more than a marketing term.”

On a weekly basis in the course of my work, I see the commodification of community - and the rise and rise of counterfeit community. It's happening due to the never ending proliferation of out-moded managerialism techniques together with a type of propaganda that hypnotises people into lofty ideas, political actions, naive reasoning and sometimes the plain ridiculous. It does a huge disservice to, .... well,... the community.

Community has regrettably become a product to be advertised, marketed and sold. It makes no difference whether genuine community exists or not. As long as it appears to exist. Consequently, we are subjected to planned communities that are advertised as “truly a special place”, “we’ve made the dream a reality” and “the tasteful community you deserve” with a “neighbourhood bar and grill” (in the multi-story shopping centre complex).

Definitions usually identify what the definer thinks is worthy and necessary – what is thought to be irrelevant can be ignored. That said it is well known that there is little agreement on what “community” is. Its true nature has become clouded and easily manipulated for commodification and marketing.

While recognising the difficulty in defining “community”, John Freie says it is, “organic, not contractual or artificial. In a sense it is a living organism that is continually changing and adapting to challenges in the environment”…. “it is not possible to impose communal structures upon people and expect them to become a community” … “Community is not formed by people who get together and agree to sign their names to a document to form a community; rather, it is created over time as people form connections with each other, develop trust and respect for each other, and create a sense of common purpose.”

Too often we are made to see a spirit of community without accepting the complex interactions that must occur for it to be realised. We would be better placed to think about community as:

"… an interlocking pattern of just human relationships in which people have at least a minimal sense of consensus within a definable territory. People in a community actively participate and cooperate with others to create their own self-worth, a sense of caring about others, and a feeling for the spirit of connectedness." (Freie, 1998).

Counterfeit or commoditised community has a serious hollowness about it. It separates us all from reality. All instances of counterfeit community are intentional and ignore the interconnected relationships that link us to each other and the environment. Without the relationships we are left only with a yearning and attraction to anything that appears to suggest a feeling of being connected.

Counterfeit community is inherently exploitive. “It has mutated like a cancer, extending into virtually all sectors of … life, subtly undermining the possibility of genuine community while masquerading as the very thing it prevents.” (Freie, 1998).

Counterfeit community superficially and symbolically links us to others but can never be fully satisfying. It never requires an act of responsibility to understand and maintain relationships necessary for genuine community. Counterfeit community extends the power and expands the wealth of those who create it.

While I have seen attempts at community engagement with multicultural and minority groups that often do not fare well outside of their own communities, the processes are far too bureaucratic and led by managerial techniques outcomes. The relationship aspect is largely ignored but the managerial technique scorecard is usually achieved.

Bureaucrats enthusiastically describe their numerous funded projects and multicultural community “town meetings” or "focus groups" for example, without having done the homework or deep research required beforehand. The community development I describe here is the development of counterfeit community – thoughtless, commoditised and predominantly a performance or glitzy spectacle for society at large. The format and approach is so compelling in our managerialistic hypnotised society that positive, lasting community results are actually thought to be possible. They are not.

“Mistaking counterfeit community for the “real” thing has significant implications … we will use resources to distance ourselves from social concerns, from our psychological needs, and even from reality. Such a “communal” experience leaves us feeling alone, empty and bewildered as to what has gone wrong.” (Freie, 1998).

Community is not a place or a thing: it is a calling, a struggle a journey. (Robert Booth Fowler, 1991)

What does HEADS TOGETHER DO?

2010-10-23T20:01:00.008+11:00

The short answer is: organisational development

Our approach is evidence-based in recognised specialty disciplines and their interplay rather than 'guru-based fashions' (fads) of the time or folk psychology.

Evidence-based research involves looking at and valuing all of the evidence on a particular topic, not just the evidence found in a few papers published in large, easy-to-find journals. Evidence-based practice refers to the use of research and scientific studies as a base for determining the best practices in a field. The movement began in the 1990s with a focus on the medical profession. It has since crossed the line to other professions, including education. The basic premise of the movement is to provide transparency and to assure that techniques and procedures will provide the best possible interventions or treatments. http://bit.ly/bhNfB7

What does 'organisational development' mean?

It is not something that became very popular in the short term, and then was forgotten about at the same speed. It does, however, change as new information and greater understanding develops.

At the core of HEADS TOGETHER organisation development is the concept of organisation (of course), defined as two or more people working together toward one or more shared outcomes. Therefore, an organisation might be a department, community, club, unit, team, board, committee, cooperative, group, collective, local council, State department,....etc.

'Development' in this context is the notion that an organisation may become more effective over time at achieving its purpose - as distinct from its Vision or Mission, which I think have very limited and over-rated practical use.

HEADS TOGETHER organisation development includes short and long range efforts to improve an organisation's problem-solving and renewal processes, particularly through more effective and collaborative management of organisational culture, often with the assistance of a catalyst/facilitator and the use of a contemporary understanding of organisational learning.

Although behavioural science provided the basic foundation for the study and practice of organisational development, new and emerging fields of study have made their presence known. Experts in systems thinking, organisational management, and organisational learning (to name a few), whose perspective is not steeped in the behavioural sciences, but a much more multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approach, have emerged as recognised organisational development catalysts.

For HEADS TOGETHER a contemporary understanding of organisational learning is the primary influence because many of the other fields are far too bounded by a 'one-size-fits-all' mentality. Even "leadership" as a concept, in my view, is much less helpful than most people believe. (See my article from 2004 'The Mystery of Leadership' http://www.headstogether.com.au/headway/04a2004.htm and Peter Drucker's more recent comment http://lnkd.in/-tsKxk)

The HEADS TOGETHER organisation development perspective generally views an effective organisation as the holistic interplay of individual and collective learning rather than fragmented silos each trying to outdo each other.

HEADS TOGETHER organisation development is interdisciplinary in nature and draws on such fields as sociology, psychology, and a contemporary understanding of individual and collective learning.

HEADS TOGETHER organisation development:
You will not get lost in complexity. It is very effective.

Clients say:

"I was really impressed with his performance. Very good communication and listening skills. Really understood what we needed and what he needed to do to meet those needs."

"Extremely professional service. Very high calibre presentations and they deliver high standard written materials and reports. The reports are relevant to the requirements that we have asked to be undertaken."

"They are exceptional in terms of the way they take time to talk with me and try to really understand what we offer to people and how we provide for them. They have adapted to this and then been flexible in a way which makes them able to help us and our clients."

http://www.headstogether.com.au/

Video of the Australian Achiever Award 2010 presentation

2010-08-20T17:32:00.000+10:00

Media Release - Australian Achiever Award

2010-07-15T14:43:00.000+10:00

Heads Together WINS Australian Achiever Award

2010-06-30T19:19:00.001+10:00

Following judging of the 2010 Australian Achiever awards for Victoria's Employment, Training and Consultancy Services, Heads Together achieved a 99.89% score for customer relations and service. Geoff Harwood, Director, Australian Achiever Awards, said that this was an outstanding result at a level very few achieve and shows that maximum effort is being put into a quality customer service strategy.

The result also means that Heads Together is the overall winner of the 2010 Australian Achiever Award for Victoria's Employment, Training and Consultancy Services.

A presentation will take place in coming weeks. This event will be held in the local community and arts centre, as a reminder of the service provision Heads Together set out to provide in the community and not-for-profit sectors over 10 years ago.

The next Blog entry will report on the event and provide a link to an online video clip.

The human brain - profound, new discoveries. All of the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences, are affected, as are all forms of training.

2010-05-04T20:44:00.003+10:00

Extracts from "The Brain that Changes Itself", Norman Doig, MD, Scribe 2010

...The neuroplastic revolution [i.e., the brain can change itself] has implications for, among other things, our understanding of how love, sex, grief, relationships, learning, addictions, culture, technology, and psychotherapies change our brains. All of the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences, insofar as they deal with human nature, are affected, as are all forms of training. All of these disciplines will have to come to terms with the fact of the self-changing brain and with the realization that the architecture of the brain differs from one person to the next and that it changes in the course of our individual lives...

The human brain can change itself, as told through the stories of the scientists, doctors, and patients who have together brought about these astonishing transformations. Without operations or medications, they have made use of the brain's hitherto unknown ability to change. Some were patients who had what were thought to be incurable brain problems; others were people without specific problems who simply wanted to improve the functioning of their brains or preserve them as they aged. For four hundred years this venture would have been inconceivable because mainstream medicine and science believed that brain anatomy was fixed. The common wisdom was that after childhood the brain changed only when it began the long process of decline; that when brain cells failed to develop properly, or were injured, or died, they could not be replaced. Nor could the brain ever alter its structure and find a new way to function if part of it was damaged.

The theory of the unchanging brain decreed that people who were born with brain or mental limitations, or who sustained brain damage, would be limited or damaged for life. Scientists who wondered if the healthy brain might be improved or preserved through activity or mental exercise were told not to waste their time. A neurological nihilism—a sense that treatment for many brain problems was ineffective or even unwarranted—had taken hold, and it spread through our culture, even stunting our overall view of human nature. Since the brain could not change, human nature, which emerges from it, seemed necessarily fixed and unalterable as well.

The belief that the brain could not change had three major sources: the fact that brain-damaged patients could so rarely make full recoveries; our inability to observe the living brain's microscopic activities; and the idea—dating back to the beginnings of modern science—that the brain is like a glorious machine. And while machines do many extraordinary things, they don't change and grow.

I became interested in the idea of a changing brain because of my work as a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. When patients did not progress psychologically as much as hoped, often the conventional medical wisdom was that their problems were deeply "hardwired" into an unchangeable brain. "Hardwiring" was another machine metaphor coming from the idea of the brain as computer hardware, with permanently connected circuits, each designed to perform a specific, unchangeable function.

When I first heard news that the human brain might not be hardwired, I had to investigate and weigh the evidence for myself. These investigations took me far from my consulting room.

I began a series of travels, and in the process I met a band of brilliant scientists, at the frontiers of brain science, who had, in the late 1960s or early 1970s, made a series of unexpected discoveries. They showed that the brain changed its very structure with each different activity it performed, perfecting its circuits so it was better suited to the task at hand. If certain "parts" failed, then other parts could sometimes take over. The machine metaphor, of the brain as an organ with specialized parts, could not fully account for changes the scientists were seeing. They began to call this fundamental brain property "neuroplasticity."

Neuro is for "neuron," the nerve cells in our brains and nervous systems. Plastic is for "changeable, malleable, modifiable:' At first many of the scientists didn't dare use the word "neuroplasticity" in their publications, and their peers belittled them for promoting a fanciful notion. Yet they persisted, slowly overturning the doctrine of the unchanging brain. They showed that children are not always stuck with the mental abilities they are born with; that the damaged brain can often reorganize itself so that when one part fails, another can often substitute; that if brain cells die, they can at times be replaced; that many "circuits" and even basic reflexes that we think are hardwired are not. One of these scientists even showed that thinking, learning, and acting can turn our genes on or off, thus shaping our brain anatomy and our behavior—surely one of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century.

In the course of my travels I met a scientist who enabled people who had been blind since birth to begin to see, another who enabled the deaf to hear; I spoke with people who had had strokes decades before and had been declared incurable, who were helped to recover with neuroplastic treatments; I met people whose learning disorders were cured and whose IQs were raised; I saw evidence that it is possible for eighty-year-olds to sharpen their memories to function the way they did when they were fifty-five. I saw people rewire their brains with their thoughts, to cure previously incurable obsessions and traumas. I spoke with Nobel laureates who were hotly debating how we must rethink our model of the brain now that we know it is ever changing.

While the human brain has apparently underestimated itself, neuroplasticity isn't all good news; it renders our brains not only more resourceful but also more vulnerable to outside influences. Neuroplasticity has the power to produce more flexible but also more rigid behaviors—a phenomenon I call "the plastic paradox:' Ironically, some of our most stubborn habits and disorders are products of our plasticity. Once a particular plastic change occurs in the brain and becomes well established, it can prevent other changes from occurring. It is by understanding both the positive and negative effects of plasticity that we can truly understand the extent of human possibilities.

Because a new word is useful for those who do a new thing, I call the practitioners of this new science of changing brains "neuroplasticians."

Civically engaged scholarship

2010-03-23T17:42:00.002+11:00

An extract from "The Civically Engaged Scholar", Hank Liese, in Finding meaning in civically engaged scholarship, 2009, Edited by Diener and Liese

Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity
Martin Buber

When I think of civically engaged scholarship, I think of a Buber-like connection, between me and my students, between colleagues doing similar work, between me and my discipline (social work), and, most importantly, between all of these constituencies and communities-small and largeoutside the geographic boundaries of the university.

In a similar vein, engaged scholarship, for me, is about reciprocity, defined by our dear friend Webster as "mutual exchange." Everyone engaged in this work, it seems to me, gives something to someone or something else, willingly and without artifice (see authenticity below). My expectation in giving is, quite simply, that a little will go a long way and that just as much, if not more, of what I give will come back to me in return. Old-school pedagogical methodology is too unidirectional in nature, as Paulo Freire (1970) observed. Reciprocity can and should take academicians and students alike outside themselves and quell a tendency toward egocentricity, a malaise that can unbalance both our personal and professional lives.

For authenticity, I return to the sixties, when the somewhat pejorative phrase "get real" was popularized. Demonstrating against the Vietnam War, we could have easily delivered that phrase to what we believed to be clueless and stubborn university administrations. Several generations later, college and university campuses look and feel much different. Protest is muted, if it exists at all. However, there seems to be a greater self-awareness among students today, the so-called "millennials," who seem to have a growing sense of who they are and what they must do to make the world a better place. In my college days, I might have designed a lapel button that read, "Get real." Today, I, and I think many of my students, would wear buttons reading, "Be real." To make civically engaged scholarship work, we must be real, we must be genuine-true to ourselves, true to others.

Taking yet another historical perspective, I hope we have forever banished the "me" generation; I like to think we're in the "us" generation. Service is quite different if approached with an "us," rather than a "me," mentality. We have to get outside ourselves to truly-authentically-serve others. One of my first jobs out of college was working in public relations for the prep school I attended in the Midwest. I wrote a feature article for the school's alumni magazine about a group of theater students who traveled by bus to area nursing homes to perform short plays for the residents. It was a wonderful intermingling of the generations; in fact, the young students (this was 1972) were ahead of their time-they were, quite literally, acting in an "us" fashion before "us" was fashionable. The theater director who organized and supervised these traveling minstrels held this motto up for his troupe: "Service above self." It was about transcendence. It was an antidote to egocentricity.

www.headstogether.com.au

CEOs tend to seek narrow advice

2009-11-19T00:52:00.000+11:00

In their review of the literature concerning firms' strategic responses to poor performance, McDonald and Westphal found that there are a range of perceptual distortions that top executives often adhere to in the face of organisational adversity. In particular, they are thought to over attribute poor performance to external factors, such as competitive industry environment, and under attribute performance problems to weaknesses in their current strategy, even when competitors have performed better under the same industry conditions.

The literature also suggests that stress brought on by poor performance prompts executives to reduce information processing activity, which decreases their consideration of strategic alternatives. This restriction is attributed in part to the centralization of decision making in response to poor performance and an associated decrease in communication between lower-level managers and top executives. While this literature has significantly advanced our understanding of strategic inertia by demonstrating how managers' thoughts can help explain firm's responses (or lack thereof) to economic adversity, important gaps in our understanding of this phenomenon remain.

Personal Sources for Information

Research on strategic decision making and executive scanning has shown that executives assign greater weight to information from personal sources, such as colleagues, than to impersonal sources, such as written reports and recommendations or the output of management information systems, in making strategic decisions. Another large body of knowledge shows that people often persevere in their beliefs even when the evidential basis for those beliefs has been largely disconfirmed - executives' confidence in their strategies often persists despite negative performance outcomes. When people's beliefs are challenged, they tend to then seek information from sources that are likely to affirm those beliefs, particularly personal sources of information, and avoid sources that might disconfirm those beliefs.

The uncertainty that results from relatively poor firm performance may prompt CEOs to seek more advice from executives from other firms who they would categorise as "in-group" members because they share a common professional background, friendship ties, or employment in the same industry. In-group managers are especially likely to offer information and points of view that confirm CEOs' pre-existing strategic beliefs. When executives' advice seeking resources restores their confidence in the correctness of their strategic beliefs, they will be less likely to change firm strategy.

Limited "Social Input” = Organisational Decline

In the authors' research they seek insight into the role that executives' social networks could play in firms' strategic responses to economic adversity. The initial evidence is that the:

1. ... findings suggest that an increased tendency toward social identification would heighten CEOs' susceptibilities to a number of positive biases in their perceptions of in-group member executives and that these biases would ultimately be manifested in high levels of strategic advice seeking from managers who are socially similar to the CEO, and low levels of advice seeking from managers without the same social ties.

2. ... greater the CEO advice seeking from socially similar managers, and the less advice seeking from managers without the same social ties, have the effect of reducing subsequent change in the focal firm's corporate strategy in response to poor performance.

3. ... consequences of this pattern of CEO advice seeking shows that when prior firm performance is relatively low, advice seeking from friends and similar others is negatively related to subsequent performance, and these effects are mediated by lack of change in diversification strategy.

4. ... role of executive social networks could contribute to patterns of organisational decline and downward spirals - negative consequences for strategic decision making and ultimate firm performance.

M. L. MacDonald & J. D. Westphal, Administrative Science Quarterly, 48 (2003): 1- 32

Civility in a cynical age.

2009-09-25T22:52:00.000+10:00

I love to hear a choir. I love the humanity to see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music. I like the teamwork. It makes me feel optimistic about the human race when I see them cooperating like that. (Paul McCartney, 1942-, British Pop Star, Composer, Member of ''Beatles'')

Union gives strength. (Aesop 620-560 BC, Greek Fabulist)

I tend to have a deepening frustration with the current tone of many conversations and debates. A growing incapacity for people to deal with a broad range of problems is largely attributable to the destructive ways in which issues are being addressed. People need to be able to raise tough questions and present their cases when important interests are being questioned. Avoiding the tough issues because they are unpleasant to address simply means the problems remain to surface another day. I often think we need to take stock that thoughtful and caring people may have very different views on how best to address their group's, community's or business's many complex problems. Constructive dialogue and debate needs to focus on solutions which are most likely to be successful, and not upon personal attacks leveled by adversaries against one another - even though that is what we are pervasively indoctrinated with by television programs, movies and sporting events. When this is not done, conflicts tend to escalate to a point where key decisions are not made on the merits of challenging approaches or strategies. In my work I have often seen adults proceed into group dialogue on the basis of very inaccurate (and usually unjustifiably evil) images of the interests, positions, and actions of other people without even testing for the facts. A more civil approach would lean towards all players making an honest and continuing effort to understand the views and reasoning of their opponents and avoiding personal attacks. Any group, community or business needs to condemn the deliberate distortion of information and the presentation of unbalanced views as unacceptable. Also, to realise that personal attacks usually signal that something else is under the surface, probably best exposed and dealt with. We have all, more than likely, witnessed a destructive confrontational escalation, when unintentional or intentional provocations result in even bigger counter-provocations in an intensifying cycle, that transforms a dialogue or debate into one in which mutual loathing becomes the primary motive. We tend to live in an age where winning at all costs is the done thing for some misguided self esteem. What ultimately is achieved or achievable in such conditions? Wherever possible, the parties should try to look at the particular issue in ways which change win-lose confrontations into win-win opportunities. In cases where this is not possible, the parties might need to recognise the democratic processes and legal institutions that exist to make the tough decisions and break a stalemate. That done, it is time to move on - not produce yet another backlash. Some broadly acceptable principles of fairness determined at the start of a dialogue or debate, which all group members have an interest in supporting, will at least provide a framework and help to avoid purely selfish objectives getting a grip. One crucial element of civility is recognition by all that it is possible that they are wrong and that the suggestions put before them are better. This entails an obligation to seriously consider the arguments made by opponents and to carefully try to explain and justify one's own own objections. The best ways to produce stable, long-term change is through exchange in which the parties negotiate mutually beneficial win-win trade-offs. Basic civility requires that any issues are addressed by a fair process in appearance and fact. Useful and binding decisions can only be made on the basis of substantive arguments, and assertively dealing upfront with advocates of the status quo who try and introduce endless procedural delays which prevent moving forward. Appointing an experienced, external facilitator has been shown to help address many of the issues briefly described here.

Older workers could help deal with aging population problems

2009-07-09T21:31:00.000+10:00

Extract from Fifty~Plus News, July 2009 THE report of a landmark study, 'Still Putting in, commissioned by National Seniors Australia (NSA) and undertaken by the Eidos Institute, has found that the challenges of coping with many problems posed by Australia's ageing society could be met in part by older workers. But this would require age discrimination in the workplace to be stamped out and mature age jobseekers given a chance. The report's findings are particularly important at a time when plans are in train to increase the pension eligibility age from 65 to 67. "If we are to work longer, it is critical the opportunities for mature age employment are there," says NSA chief executive Michael O'Neill. 'It is time for government, unions and business to stand up, show leadership and tackle age discrimination head-on so a person over 50 has the same chance of getting a job as someone much younger." The report's major findings include: • Nearly 2 million older Australians (over 55) are willing to work, could be encouraged to work or are unemployed and looking for work. • The Australian economy is losing $10.8 billion a year by not utilising the skills and experience of those over 55 who want to work. • More than 160,000 older Australians wanted to work but were not looking, of these 30 per cent believed employers considered them too old. • Older Australians working full-time make an economic contribution of $59.6 billion a year to the nation's GDP. • An economic contribution of $2 billion a year by older Australians working as volunteers. • A cost to the economy of $911 million a year if 637,962 older Australians providing unpaid childcare were replaced with paid workers. • A cost to the economy of $3.9 billion a year if 587,794 older Australians providing unpaid assistance to people with a disability were replaced with paid workers. • A social contribution of $1.2 billion a year by 844,068 older Australians who participated in civic and political groups in 2006. Mr. O'Neill says the report shows that not only does workplace age discrimination need to be tackled at all levels, but there needs to a recognition and celebration of the contribution older people make to the nation's wellbeing. There also needs to be a "seismic shift" in how we view retirement and how developing ageing policy is approached. He says this approach must integrate government supports such as health, transport and social security and also allow for new flexible models of work and transition to retirement. "The raising of the pension age helped awaken the nation's consciousness to an issue which affects every single one of us; this report enables us to go a step further and offer a pragmatic approach to planning for the challenges which lie ahead,"