TOWARDS ORGANIC ORGANISATION

Much evolution has taken place in many organisations. Whether it is as a result of competitive market, fast changing technology or simply getting caught in the changing tidal wave, most organisation realise that they cannot afford to remain static. The evolution has taken place in many different shapes and forms. This paper examines the deliberate attempts by organisations to make changes in response to changing environment, business needs or merely due to a compelling concept or philosophy.

After a significant economic impact created by Japanese Quality movement that had awakened the world, much awareness is created in organisations to organise and manage business in different ways. There are many experimentation carried out leading to proliferation of many new management practices or fads : TQC, TQM, ReEngineering, Benchmarking, ISO 9000 / 14000, 7-Habit, Learning Organisation, etc.

In any of the above attempt to bring about a change in an organisation, there are several distinct characteristics giving rise to a pattern over years.

SHIFTING OF FOCUS

a) Focus on Activities and Program

Much resources are put in activities and program. For example QCC (Quality Control Circles) on the shopfloor, selected places for house keeping inspection under the "5S" program, Process mapping in the case of ReEngineering, performance indicators comparison in the case of Benchmarking, documentation and procedures for ISO 9000 / 14000, person-to-person relationship in 7-Habit, dialogue session and system archetypes drawings in Learning Organisation, and etc.

In most cases there are sincere intention that focus should not be on activities and program, but should be on holistic approach, principle or philosophy, but the overwhelming evidence of activities and program abound. In most cases, there is no significant impact to the core business, demonstrated or realised. This leads to another focus area.

b) Focus on Integration and Alignment

Some organisations realise the dis-connects of above mentioned activities and program from the core-business. A new focus and emphasis is now shifted to Integration and Alignment towards the business mission. Very often consultants are again engaged to draw up blueprint, model to link various aspects of the business, with appropriate tools, methodology, procedures etc. etc.

After a few years of implementation, something seems to be missing again. The real impact to the core business is again not felt and demonstrated. It is found that many employees are simply exercising shadow play with mere compliance behaviour. The genuine participation, and commitment from all parties concerned are not experienced. Tracing back to the initial proposal from the consultant, on paper and on theories, the integration and alignment model clearly indicated resultant outcome in correct behaviour and attitudes that can give rise to an appropriate organisation culture to improve the core business. But theory and model on paper is totally different from reality and day to day business practices.

c) Focus on Attitudes, Behaviour and Culture

Like any attractive business opportunity, some consultants are quick to see the above pattern and offer a re-packaged program (derived from TQM, ReEngineering, ISO 9000 etc.) focusing on attitudes, behaviour and culture. Many organisations accept the offer as it is also the realisation of the felt needs. The failures of other management practices focusing on activities, program, integration, alignment prove that this new focus area on attitudes, behaviour, culture is the correct answer. The whole motion started again to the entire organisation : training, awareness, education, implementation, etc. etc. The emphasis is now on philosophy, mindset, principles, counselling, motivation, incentives, organisation climate common language etc.

The consultants are qualified behavioural scientists, highly acclaimed Quality guru or associates or practitioner with extra qualification in psychology. They teach theories, concept and philosophy and expect organisation to relate to their own reality and core- business. Within the organisation, there are in-house trained behavioural scientists / facilitators with new titled positions in the organisations. In spite of all these effort, there is very little strong correlation between the success or failures of organisations with respect to variety of management new practices. It is just like overly focused investment in medical facilities and doctors that does not significantly improve the health of a society.

Lack of demonstrated effectiveness will quickly lead organisation to move on to another management fads with focus on, say d) Focus on Leadership, Collective Leadership and Competency, e) Focus on Knowledge Management etc.

A PATTERN OF MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

A pattern has clearly surfaced. Each focus area of management practice always comes with its own compelling reasons, rationale and reference to other success stories or failures as justification to invest in the newly considered management practice. The pattern of the preceding failures becomes a momentum and force that engulfs any new management initiative / program. It becomes a great puzzle to organisation as why things still do not work. Re-examination of the latest organisation design show incorporation of earlier learning like ReEngineering, QCC, ISO 9000, Integration model, Culture, Mindset etc. But the expected outcome is still far from theories and model. As compared with design / blueprint of a new car with thousands of components to be built and assembled, organisation design is certainly much more complicated and un- comprehensible!

SOME OBSERVATIONS

There is a heavy dependency on external consultants. External consultants are from different fragmented specialisation. On theories, most consultants advocate holistic approach, however due to limitation of the individual consultant specialisation, emphasis is only on one aspect of total business components.

Heavy reliance on external consultants over many years indicates a serious lack of learning capacity of an organisation.

In spite of many different attempts and experimentation, there is always a very distinct dis-connects between concept, theories and actual day to day activity of the core- business, irrespective of whether the original design and intention showing no such dis- connect. The fusion of the theories, concept, principles and philosophy into the day to day business dealing : boardroom, executive suite, shopfloor can hardly be demonstrated.

WHAT IS HAPPENING?

The main propelling force behind the above described pattern is the fragmented and linear thinking process on the part of the organisation designers or policies makers. This is a natural tendency, especially dealing with an organisation that has hundreds to thousands of employee. With all sincere intention and energy, guided by conceptual designed framework to "manage by parts" (e.g. Program, Integration model, Culture, Leadership, Knowledge etc.) the cause and effect relationship of the Parts Management over time for a large organisation is not easy to comprehend and understand and hence little learning effort is made in this direction. Over time there is always changing management committee who starts the learning curve from zero base, continuing the above vicious circle of training and implementation from one focus / fad to another. The theoretical intention "to manage in ONE, not PART" is not matched with appropriate DISCIPLINES and practices.

ORGANIC ORGANISATION

However, in spite of many trail and error attempts by many organisations, there is learning and benefit to the Business community as a whole. The collective trial and error part management approach give rises to a pattern for a realisation. Organisation with greater insight will learn from the above unfolding pattern and will realise that it is a struggling process of transformation from mechanical organisation (dealing with parts) to organic organisation (dealing with whole, treating organisation as a living thing like organism, not machine). Successful organisation will focus and intervene at a leverage point to bring about a change that has organic learning capability, moving away from "parts management".

But the application of Principle of Leverage can come about when the organisation designers and policies makers have deep understanding of the systemic forces operating inside and outside the business entity, interacting and shaping the business performance and direction. For such understanding to take place, a very disciplined system thinking is required. The system, comprising of human systems and technology dynamic interaction, is highly and infinitely complex and "un-figure-out-able". It is really an impossible task for any individual or group of people, be it management committee or consultants to deal with such detail complexity. Hence people easily fall back to "part management".

As a conclusion to this paper, I wish to refer to Dr. Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline" Chapter 20 "Rewriting the code" with quote : "..there is an aspect of our minds that deals well with detail complexity - in fact, which is designed for the task. In the chapter on personal mastery, we called this "the subconscious" to suggest an aspect of mind that lies "below" or "behind" our normal conscious mental processes." It was explained that we have been using the subconscious to help us in managing our personal life like driving a car, speeding on a highway, that is "enormously complex, involving hundreds of variables and rapid changes that must be recognised and responded to immediately." How could organisation explore this level of subconscious (on the part of the organisation designers / policies makers) to help to deal with complexity in an operating system, instead of treating the system as a mechanical entity, shifting the focus from one part to another?

The last paragraph of the above mentioned chapter is an encouraging note to organisation designers and policies makers, quote: "Learning Organisation themselves may be a form of leverage on the complex system of human endeavours. Building learning organisation involves developing people who learn to see as systems thinkers see, who develop their own personal mastery, and who learn how to surface and restructure mental models, collaboratively. Given the influence of organisations in today's world, this may be one of the most powerful steps towards helping us "rewrite the code", altering not just what we think but our predominant ways of thinking. In this sense, learning organisation may be a tool not just for the evolution of organisations, but for the evolution of INTELLIGENCE."

End.

There are a few interesting responses to the above article.

In summary the responses are: "How to?" "What is the solution" "What is your action plan?" "What is to be done for gunuine LEARNING to take place in an organisation so that everyone benefits?"

The above are sharp and legitimate questions.

I must admit that I have no "solution", and I believe that no one has a "solution". As this line of thinking will again lead us into "another management theory, or consultancy".

Instead of "solution" there are "GUIDING PRINCIPLES" for me or those with great sincerity / commitment to make contribution, to follow with discipline:

The GUIDING PRINCIPLES are summarized in the last paragraph of the article as per Dr. Peter Senge's

"learn to see as systems thinkers see, who (I or we) develop their (my or our) own personal mastery, and who learn how to surface and restructure mental models, collaboratively."

The GUIDING PRINCIPLES are simple, but tremendously difficult to follow (from my own experience), as we have our own weakness, bias, prejudice, preference etc. for example:

"learn to see as systems thinkers see, etc." meaning to be very humble learner even to those with opposing views e.g. as manager to understand (not react) to opposing views from own staff or colleague. As a discipline I use PMI or SWOT thinking tools, encouraging -ve views, so called destructive ideas or negative views on my ideas / proposal, (if the sentiment is such) so as to understand and maybe influence my own mental model or assumptions for new synergised worldview, after exchanging and collaborating with others.

In another word, I (we) have to admit that we are all "three blind men", who really need each other to figure out what is the "elephant". There is no such thing as "who is right, or who is wrong". But there is only one central focus of colloboratingly trying to understand the Operating System better for effective intervention to get result, using all the learning we have e.g. tools, methodologies and techniques (ISO 9000, Reengineering, PDCA, 7 QC tools, Benchmarking etc. etc.).