The Power Of Language In Creating Organisations
Download as PPT, PDF2 likes332 views
This document discusses the power of language and conversation in shaping organizations. It notes that our conversational skills have declined and are now limited to command-and-control styles, siloed technical vocabularies, and concepts coded into disciplinary specialisms. Professionals also tend to prioritize written text and place concepts into laws rather than have dialog. This has limited our abilities in areas like cross-functionality, complexity, collaboration and creativity. The document calls for developing new maps and systems to better design collaborative conversations.
The Power Of Language In Creating Organisations
- 1. “ the power of language in creating or re-shaping organisations” As with “design”, we find ourselves talking about age–old topics as though they are new. In this case, the power to…
- 3. this much love this much power ? ! to create hover use
- 4. this much love this much power ? ! hover use SPEAK The way humans create is in the act of speaking….
- 5. ? ! generate use scope build What will meet our want? How do we make it? Usually our large speech acts have distinguishable phases over time
- 6. ? ! generate use scope build These are not straight line processes, but “conversation spaces” – or even conversation systems
- 7. ! use build generate scope When these conversations are sustained in a viable system, there are feedarounds
- 8. So WHAT? Acknowledge there is a difference in these conversation terrains Acknowledge we have few skills outside the Build/Use habitats
- 9. B-24 Liberator mass production in 1944 through Henry Ford’s 1.6km long Willow Run facility - peak production at one B-24 per hour
- 10. “ An age…in which our ways of interpreting and appraising experience tend to be influenced more and more by the streamlined methods and glittering results of technology – encourages us to think in certain ways and inhibits or dissuades us from thinking in other ways.” Phillip Wheelwright The Burning Fountain 1982 p.4 Massively successful … at a price…
- 11. “ The critical movement, which seems to be nearing the end of its course today, was perhaps the most fruitful effort ever sustained by the human mind. The past four or five centuries, which have gradually destroyed or overshadowed the whole mediaeval cosmos, have enriched us mentally and morally to an extent unrivalled by any period of similar duration. But its incandescence had fed on the combustion of the Christian heritage in the oxygen of Greek rationalism, and when this fuel was exhausted the critical framework itself burnt away.” Michael Polanyi Personal Knowledge p 265
- 12. ! use build So the old success has burnt away, and we are left with some rebuilding to do. Our skill in conversation has shrunk
- 13. Conversation has shrunk to: Command and control genres Siloed technical vocabularies Concepts coded into disciplinary specialisms
- 14. And we place undue weight on text Put things into law On a Sear's hairdryer: "Do not use while sleeping.” On packaging for a Rowenta iron: "Do not iron clothes on body.“ On Boot's Children Cough Medicine: "Do not drive a car or operate machinery after taking this medication.“ On Nytol Sleep Aid: "Warning: May cause drowsiness."
- 15. And we place undue weight on text Professionals write for status, not praxis (Wheelwright – steno-language) Methodology substitutes for knowing (the rise of disciplines) Writing substitutes for dialog (Hoskin et al – grammatocentrism in strategy) Put things into law Try to exhaustively specify work
- 16. So we’ve sealed ourselves in a box…
- 17. Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age. Albert Einstein
- 18. Our conversation competencies are low in: Cross-functionality Complexity Concept sharing Co-creation Collaboration Creativity itself – the felt experiences of provisionality, emergence, uncertainty Language itself – the “coordination of coordination's” (Maturana)
- 19. Managers in this situation tend to blame forces beyond their control: “How could we have ever predicted such a change?” In some sense they are absolutely right. They had no way at all of predicting change. Their core conception – “If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t count” – precludes them from demonstrating to themselves that the future will be anything but an extrapolation of the past. Note however, that it is a prison they have built for themselves. They build it, lock themselves in a cell, throw away the key; and then complain about being unfairly locked in a prison cell. Roger Martin, “Management by Innovation”
- 22. “ You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must un-humanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last—a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in the world is concerned.… John Ruskin The Stones of Venice (1853).
- 23. Ruskin continues: “ Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also…” John Ruskin The Stones of Venice (1853).
- 24. ! use build generate scope The problem we have when our preferred mode fails us is not only that we are out of our comfort zone, but we are now drawing upon a skill set that we rarely exercise – that we are not fluent or practiced with – so we increase our error rate.
- 25. ” Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more…..”
- 26. “ We need a new map of the territory, and a heuristic system that is strong enough to allow the diagnosis, distinctions, and design of conversations for collaborative human enterprise” David Jones
Editor's Notes
- #3: Creation is, or values, the situtaed resolution of power and love
- #4: Listening to Kirsten Dunlop. Who from 2004 to 2008 introduced Generali to Innovation and Learning across ts 5026 independently run businesses, saying that the one think that mattered was to become a student of how power worked in the organisation Adam Kahane recently published a book called Power and Love. This is a foundational bracketing of our life. 250811 doing research for this presentation I find an on-line excerpt form his book http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/69/excerpt-power-and-love/all and this line: Power and love stand at right angles and delineate the space of social change. In the 2000 year old writings by Timothy, he says “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. “ Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice. One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” - Martin Luther King Jr
- #8: It is not surprising that this heuristic turns out to be a complex system map, with all the performance attributes of Beers Systems model
- #10: The Consolidated B-24 Liberator was an American heavy bomber , designed by Consolidated Aircraft Company of San Diego, California . Its mass production was brought into full force by 1943 with the aid of the Ford Motor Company through its newly-constructed Willow Run facility, where peak production had reached one B-24 per hour and 650 per month in 1944. [3] Other factories soon followed. The B-24 ended World War II as the most produced Allied heavy bomber in history, and the most produced American military aircraft at over 18,400 units, due largely to Henry Ford and the harnessing of American industry
- #15: Grammatocentrism Wise or not – BHPs Office Environment Standards caused a storm when they became public in August - Post-it notes are to be removed from your monitors and keyboards at the end of the day; - Other than workstation identification and first aid or fire warden signage, nothing is to be placed on workstation dividers, walls or doors at any time; - Additional clothing must be stored in designated storage areas during the workday and not on chairs or at workstations; - Food must not be eaten at your work station; - Food that emits strong odours is not allowed at all; - Mobile phone ring tones kept at low volume and forwarded to voice mail when out of office; and - No iPod or MP3 players to be used in the office. Of course what the papers forgot to mention is that this is for a hot desking environment. So you can’t claim a space, nor can you foul it for the next person. Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/executive-style/management/no-smelly-lunches-bhps-strict-staff-rules-20110823-1j7dg.html#ixzz1VsniKV2u
- #16: Grammatocentrism These shift were deliberate and desired Persuasion and beliefe were seen as the opposite to knowledge Brittleness For the purposes of Just Knowledge, Grammatocentrism is well named. Grammar is the specification of a language. As with all the miscarriages of modernity, we arrive at a world that is lived downstream of, in the shadow of, specifications. It is the fact that we are in this realm that explains the brittleness of documentation. The early voluminous ISO9000 documents were destined to become shelfware because they substituted specifications for requirements, process detail for outcome clarity. Management thinking is classically oral – works with people – bottom up progression of those most skilled on the shop floor. Knows it is working with miry situations without ever having to name it as such Finance and IT have driven to literacy (grammatocentricism) Wise or not – BHPs Office Environment Standards caused a storm when they became public in August - Post-it notes are to be removed from your monitors and keyboards at the end of the day; - Other than workstation identification and first aid or fire warden signage, nothing is to be placed on workstation dividers, walls or doors at any time; - Additional clothing must be stored in designated storage areas during the workday and not on chairs or at workstations; - Food must not be eaten at your work station; - Food that emits strong odours is not allowed at all; - Mobile phone ring tones kept at low volume and forwarded to voice mail when out of office; and - No iPod or MP3 players to be used in the office. Of course what the papers forgot to mention is that this is for a hot desking environment. So you can’t claim a space, nor can you foul it for the next person. Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/executive-style/management/no-smelly-lunches-bhps-strict-staff-rules-20110823-1j7dg.html#ixzz1VsniKV2u
- #19: Watch new design thinkers develop – one of the things they become is “savourers of words” – they roll them around on their mental apllete, sniff the delicate nuances,
- #23: “ You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must un-humanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul’s force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last—a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in the world is concerned. … John Ruskin The Stones of Venice (1853).
- #24: On the other hand, if you will make a man of the living creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. And whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be transfiguration behind and within them. …” John Ruskin The Stones of Venice (1853). “ For when we sink back into the complacency of the Nothing Else But, and ignore the radically threshold situation that is our birthright – at once the glory and the tragic finitude of being human – we throw away the one chance, however small and precarious of, of fulfilling our destiny as rational and … spiritual creatures.” Wheelwright (1982, 19)
- #25: Going upstream in our thinking means unaccustomed skills are called upon In Jungian theory, he talks about superior (accustomed) and inferior (un=preferred) functions. Conversation Visualisation heuristics