Emergent Strategy, Systems Thinking

In my previous entry I noted how an appreciative inquiry approach allowed one to benefit from complex systems without necessarily understanding how they worked. Emergent strategy is similar. (If you are interested in strategy in all its forms see Strategy Safari by Henry Mintzberg.)

Most approaches to strategy presume one can figure out what is going on in the complex system of your organization and the marketplace and then plan accordingly. Emergent strategy is more a matter of learning by doing and seeing what works. You may not understand the complex system enough to know why an emergent strategy is working, but that may not matter so much since you do know that it is working.


David
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Problems, Systems Thinking, Appreciative Inquiry

We should be suspect whenever someone points out a problem with some organizational system. For example, someone noting that the centralized recruiting team is not in close touch with the business units--with the implication that we should decentralize.

The "problem-centric" approach generally pays too little attention that any organizational system (program/policy/process/design) has many pros and cons. If you change the system to fix the problem you are just migrating to a different system with its own pros and cons.

Senge of course is famous for encouraging systems thinking but it can be hard in daily mgmt life to use his ideas. A simplified approach is found in Barry Johnson's "Managing Polarities". The basic idea is that if we simply recognize that what we are dealing with in organizational systems are polarities to be managed, not problems to be solved then we are less likely to get into passionate but pointless arguments or worse, swing wildly between different systems forever focusing on the problems each one produces.

(I remember Farouk in Hay Malaysia telling me "In HR you can't solve problems, you can only move them around.")

However, my thought of the day is just to note how Appreciate Inquiry (AI) is inherently more systems friendly. You might think it just inverses the narrow "look for problem" view with an equally narrow "look for success" view. However, what's different is that the problem-centric view encourages often uninformed tampering with a system, whereas AI seeks to extend existing systems.

AI may not consciously understand systems any better than those who are problem-centric but they don't have to, they just try to nurture the thing that works even if they may not understand why it works.

Part timer employees

I was struck by a line in a paper by James E. Martin and Robert R. Sinclair

"These findings fit the proposition that [part time] workers have better attitudes than do [full time] workers because of their limited exposure to the organization."

It rings true, but feels rather sad. Does it imply we should limit the exposure of full timers to the organization?


REF: A typology of the part-time workforce: Differences on job attitudes and turnover James E. Martin and Robert R. Sinclair Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (2007), 80, 301–319

(my) Nissan Diversity Project Wins Award

While my role was small, I'm very proud to see Nissan winning the 2008 Catalyst award for their work on gender diversity. They are the first Japanese company to win this award and the advancement of women into managerial roles is a national issue in Japan, not just a company specific one.

I'm impressed that Nissan is making a significant effort on this despite the pressing short-term concerns of the the punishingly competitive auto industry. The full payoff--a lot of new female talent in the company--won't be realized for years; so this is an inspiring example of managing for the long run.

It's quite odd that I should be involved in selling a diversity project in Japan. Diversity is not my primary expertise, I don't have an office in Japan, and I don't speak the language. However, it was a matter of being friends with great Japanese consultants (Minori), a leading expert on diversity (Barbara Annis) and being in Tokyo due to my work with Recruit's Works Institute think tank. I just happened to be in the place to put the pieces together. It's non-linear, but it's a demonstration of the power of a business model that is based on nurturing resources.

The core aspect of the program was changing the mindset of traditional male Japanese managers so that they could understand the upside of diversity and how to make it work in practice.

(P.S. The photo is of Nissan's Pivot concept car, and no sadly I didn't design the car, I just helped get the diversity project off the ground. Perhaps one day a woman engineer at Nissan will design a great car and I will think, 'Gee I had a tiny but recognizable role in the causal web that led to that.')