Holding up a mirror to organisations

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

LINE Communications consultant Irene Murphy reflects on how the company likes to challenge its clients to look in the mirror and inquire more deeply. The results are sometimes uncomfortable but always ultimately beneficial…

The brief for an e-learning or communications programme will often talk about the need to roll out changes, to embed a whole new way of thinking, or trigger behavioural change. Phrases like these raise questions.

We often find ourselves designing a programme based on a ‘presented’ need – one that has been diagnosed by a management consultancy, some other outside agency or the client themselves. This may be a problem the client believes exists or has been told exists, rather than the real problem. It is this repeated experience of a gap between inherited wisdom and reality that has led us to recommend building in an inquiry phase at the beginning of many of our projects, particularly those involving behavioural change.

By inquiring into the ‘presented’ need, we hope to make sure that whatever solution we design in terms of content and functionality will actually address the real issues and not just provide a short term fix. Sometimes a presented issue is covering up a myriad of others that ought to be addressed first or in a different way.

Anxious organisations

Behavioural change programmes involve the learning consultant working in a variety of organisational contexts. Sometimes the client organisation is very clear about the changes they want to implement and how they are likely to be received. In my experience, this is comparatively rare. Far more often, the client needs assistance in inquiring into their situation, the possibilities and the obstacles that exist, discovering options for the best way forward and then making informed choices about these options. Perhaps there is work to be done on engaging senior management to ensure success of participation across the organisation; or there is cynicism to be overcome due to a failed initiative in the past; or maybe the organisation is not ready for a radical change but would profit from a series of incremental change programmes.

Organisations differ hugely. What might be seen as a friendly and inviting intervention in one could be seen as challenging and uncomfortable in another. Much depends on the culture, the leadership, and people’s experience of past initiatives. Organisations are simply groups of people interacting, and like people – change can make them anxious.

In America and Europe there has long been a tendency to talk about organisations as if they were machines, and as a consequence we tend to expect them to operate as machines: in a routine, efficient, reliable, and predictable way. We diagnose a problem and we apply a solution to fix it. In such a mechanistic way of thinking people are reduced to robots. The cause / effect model is too simplistic and too restrictive to apply to human behaviour.

At LINE we try to take a genuinely holistic view. We don’t ascribe to any one particular model of learning, nor do we stick rigidly to any single change model. Rather, we like to use different models and methodologies to shed light on the client’s issue and work collaborative with them to deepen the inquiry, and then to co-create the most appropriate strategy. We put the people in organisations at the centre of our thinking.

Expanding consciousness

One model that has often proven effective is the Gestalt informed approach, raising awareness of what is going on between us and the client, or between clients in a meeting, or amongst clients and other stakeholders such as agencies. By drawing attention to current behaviours and examining interpersonal and group dynamics we help the client surface and talk about issues that are important to the change process and thus move them closer to formulating a strategy for the e-learning and communications programme. This approach is based on the belief that effective change takes place at the ‘contact boundary’ or ‘learning edge,’ when clients are at the edge of their habitual comfort zone. Change is the option of the clients and the approach suggests that our job as facilitators or ‘interveners’ is to help the organisation see that it has more choices than previously thought.

A very different approach we employ is informed by a social constructionist perspective. That’s academic speak for helping clients see that they, usually subconsciously, choose how they see the world (i.e. their organisation) and that this in turn influences how they speak and behave, and the possibilities they can see for change. We help them see that this ‘framing’ is a choice. In other words people generally ‘see what they believe’ as much as ‘believing what they see’. In business it’s common to have to make sense of our world quickly so we can get on with our life and most of the time these ‘framings’ go unchallenged.

In practice, it may mean encouraging the client to tell us the story they tell themselves about the culture and personality of their organisation. We listen carefully drawing attention to the language and metaphors of the client organisation and, together with the client, explore the meanings suggested, the potential for change as well as the obstacles to change. We then experiment with different framings using different language and metaphors to paint a picture of the future, the ‘change destination’, and we help them formulate a learning and communications strategy to move the organisation in that direction.

We find, for example, that the client may talk about ‘warring factions,’ ‘hitting the ground running,’ ‘battening down the hatches,’ or ‘raising their head above the parapet’ to suggest an organisation that sees itself under attack, under siege or caught in a storm. All metaphors, military or otherwise, suggest particular world views which in turn influence the options an organisation may consider. Working with storytelling we help our clients see their story more clearly, then act on it, or change it if they wish.

These are just two of the ways we hold up a mirror to an organisation to help them see the options for change that are available to them. We can all then see if the ‘presented’ problem is the most important one to inquire into or not.

e-Learning and communications programmes cost real money. They can deliver real value for money and ROI if they are the right type of programmes, addressing real issues. If we can help an organisation inquire into the true nature or character of their workplace environment, the start of any behavioural change programme (be it e-learning, workshops, or other) is already underway. Now that is value for money.

Irene Murphy is an organisational development and communications consultant with LINE Communications.