Radical Management : Power-Politics & the Pursuit of Trust

Chapter 1

The Subjective Element

Something is radically wrong with the mind-set that is being used at work. People are using an overly rational approach that implies more logic and objectivity than what actually exists. What is taking place is far more personal, far more subjective, and far more power-oriented and political than most popular theories lead one to expect. Managers control others far less than their words, plans, and actions imply. Systems and procedures are determined far more by personality and hard-fought compromise than the logical explanations used to describe and justify them would ever lead one to believe.

This book is aimed at updating contemporary management beliefs and practices. Its goal is to provide the insights and perspectives that allow managers to recast organizational events in ways that account for the subjective element -- that which actually determines how people see events, do their jobs, and transact with others. Everyone knows about the presence of subjective forces, but we find that what most people know doesn't make much of a difference. We have a perspective that will make it much easier for today's management to comprehend what is subjective and political in the workplace -- and to deal with it above-board and directly.

We decided to name this book Radical Management to underscore the extent of the change that is needed. And we use the term "radical" not as a dismissal of the past or to connote far-out modes of operating, but as a signal that now is the time to reassess the roles people and their subjective involvements play in creating organizational systems, and to encourage managers to seek alternatives to current self-limiting practices. Radical Management is our term for urging people to think more basically, to depart from present practices, and to consider alternative frameworks that take more account of the subjective forces that are part and parcel of each work event. People need to develop their capacities for reasoning from needs they see the system experiencing and from needs they see individuals experiencing to come up with new and more complete statements of problems. They also need to develop their capacities to reason from agreed-upon statements of problems to come up with new approaches and solutions that take more account of what is subjective.

Basic to this book's perspective are ideas for coping with organizational politics, which we think is a given in any organization and which people must learn how to deal with positively; ideas for promoting trusting relationships, which we claim is the most efficient management tool ever invented; and ideas for pursuing the contextsy which make one's actions understandable, useful, and organizationally valued. All of these ideas depend on understanding and inclusion of the subjective element.

But including the subjective element presents problems for a lot of people. It involves a way of reasoning that many find inefficient; it involves issues that many feel incompetent to handle; and, it involves a mode of thinking that runs counter to the overly objective conceptualizations that most people are accustomed to using. In fact we have discovered that the majority of people who downplay the importance of subjective considerations privately agree with statements of its importance but continue in the conventional mode for fear of assuming an orientation that will make them appear ineffective. Many would rather continue with misconceived orientations that allow them to appear competent than pursue a more valid course and risk not having the skills required to ensure its success.

The way we see it, the next wave of management thinking must include a perspective that will make it possible for managers to penetrate existing modes of reasoning to accomplish some things that current rationalistic approaches do not permit. It will have to be different because there is a class of high priority issues that resist solution even though they are the subject of constant managerial concern. Managers don't know how to switch tracks in dealing with them and we suspect that the conventional way of approaching these issues is a large part of why they resist solution. Major discrepancies are being raised but they are just not getting resolved. For instance:

* Despite all the rhetoric about human relations and the importance of communications, people experience power and hierarchy as far and away the most dominant forces in management today.

* Despite all efforts to pay people fairly and reward them for accomplishment and technical know-how, people increasingly believe that their rewards are dependent on organization politics where who you know and what they think of you are more important than actual contribution.

* Despite the fact that people want to belong to an organization in which they can believe and to which they can be loyal and sacrifice, on a daffy basis they believe it is loyalty to the boss and not loyalty to the company that gets rewarded.

* Despite open-door policies and statements by higher-ups that they want candid reports of what people actually think, few people believe they can tell it straight with confidence that their organization will tolerate their criticisms without costs to them.

* Despite the fact that managers are encouraged to compete and fight hard for what they believe, too often those who compete wind up in disrespectful and destructive relationships and, worst of all, they don't seem to learn from considering the substance of what their adversaries put forth.

* Despite the efforts of many companies to stream-line their management structure and to promote a spirit of entrepreneurship within the ranks, there are too many instances of overly cautious behavior that managers justify on the basis of the shabby treatment unsuccessful risk-takers receive.

* Despite pleas to middle and lower level management to think strategically and to build a long-term perspective into their unit's operations, these same people claim they are prevented from doing so by upper level executives whose year-end bonuses depend on short-term results and whose peace of mind depends on producing the quarterly increases in profit that keep speculation-oriented stockholders off their backs.

We wouldn't worry about discrepancies like these if we thought people were making progress. And their inability to solve them is not for lack of resources expended. In fact the back-up strategy for dealing with each of these discrepancies unfortunately appears to be longer and stronger with the same inadequate approach. No, more energy and more of the same type of resources are not going to fix discrepancies like these. But, we believe, different managerial reasoning will.

Our own view of management, and of the central role subjectivity plays in determining the course of organization events, has evolved over many years of consulting and being called upon to help managers deal with controversy and conflict in their efforts to develop more effective teamwork. Of course, such situations provide natural opportunities for us, as university professors and researchers, to analyze the structures that produce the problems we are hired to fix. They also provide opportunities to put theories we espouse in the classroom to their practical test. Thus our efforts to build teamwork and our theorizing about what managers need to learn to create more teamwork on their own have gone through a process of evolution until we arrived at where we are today.

Initially we took a human relations approach. Communications was the key. We thought improved teamwork and organization effectiveness would follow directly from people communicating openly with one another on matters of personal and work importance. Thus our role was clear. We identified the important issues and brought people together to work out their differences. And the modes we used for reconciling them ranged from sitting in as two people discussed and argued their differing points of view, to convening team-effectiveness meetings in which department or division managers would get together with their boss to talk about work unit problems and opportunities, to meeting with members of interdepartmental task forces to help them resolve differences and plan collaborative formats for their work together.

Our means of facilitating such events usually began with individual interviews. The purpose was to learn in advance how each participant viewed the situation in order to familiarize ourselves with the issues and personalities involved. Initially we were surprised at how much managers looked forward to these individual sessions. Later on, we discovered managers considered them more than just a chance to clarify their thinking; they saw these sessions as an insurance policy -- now there was at least one other person who understood their thinking and who could help them state their views when the dialogue heated up. Thus, a major part of our early efforts entailed learning about each person's orientation and personal reasons for holding it -- that is, the subjective needs that lay behind the solutions and structures they proposed. We were neutrals relating to the personal needs of each individual, promoting openness, acting as traffic cops, orchestrating problem solving, and ensuring that people would hear out and deal with someone else's divergent point of view.

Our role promoted trust. Most people, when involved in conflicts that involve different needs for structure, wind up focusing on the other person's outward behavior -- the specific acts they see blocking them -- and fail to recognize their compatibility with what the other person is attempting to accomplish. We can't list the number of power struggles and political moments we witnessed in which, from our vantage point, people with compatible interests were fighting without recognizing that their interests were compatible. And we can't count the number of fights we nipped in the bud simply by pointing out compatible i...