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Nowadays discussions about hierarchy abound, especially in organisations, some arguing you need hierarchy to run an organisation, otherwise you have chaos, while others deploring the negative effects of hierarchy, such as stifling innovation, or treating humans as mechanical cogs. These debates have come to the fore with the advent of self-organising structures, self-managing organisations and more recently the hubbub around companies without bosses, networks without hierarchies, and so on.
There is no doubt that militaristic hierarchy can be toxic, especially when fostering independent creativity, innovation and autonomous problem-solving, (and I’m fully aligned with those who have a natural aversion to hierarchy as it is often applied.) Yet it seems to me just abolishing hierarchy, as many movements are trying to do, is somewhat misguided, missing the point, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Hierarchy can fundamentally be viewed as a thought tool or a cognitive skill, which enables humans to group things, ideas and concepts into categories. This ability to categorise allows us to build new constructs and prioritise things. Anyone who has ever tried to have a discussion with someone who sees the world as if it were flat, unable to distinguish between different levels of thinking, comparing dogs with animals, knows what I mean.
In fact our ability to categorise into meta-levels and create higher and lower orders of categories is a fundamental feature of our human ability to think, it is what has enabled science and technology to progress, it is what has enabled humans to evolve, for better or worse. Hierarchies represent different levels of abstraction. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with hierarchy per se.
Where things have gone pear-shaped, however, is where hierarchy has been hijacked by bullies seeking power. Associating power with hierarchy is probably related to Christian body-mind split, and the view that the mind is of a ‘higher order’ needing to control the body, treating the body as if it were some mindless loose morass which would run amok if not controlled.
Views have changed, and there is a societal awareness of the toxicity and counter-productivity of this hierarchical power paradigm. It is hence not surprising that so many people are skeptical of anything that smacks of hierarchy. And when associated with power, justifiably so. However, when blindly rejecting hierarchy indiscriminately on that basis, there is a danger that we do throw the human baby and our core ability to think & prioritise out with the water at the same time.
My view is that hierarchy should be allowed to live, even in human structures, as long it is used as a tool, and not as a rule (or as a way to rule). As I said, it is not hierarchy itself which intrinsically bad, but the misuse of it to serve the personal purposes of some domineering people.
Unfortunately organisational hierarchy is normally illustrated with the boss at the top reigning over the various branches, the ‘subordinates’, who replicate the same structure further below. I prefer to draw organisational diagrams, if at all, the other way round, with the ‘highest’ level at the bottom, branching upwards, holding space and nurturing the ‘lower’ levels at the top, where the main value creating activities of the organisation are performed. This way customers, shop-floor staff and suppliers are no longer governed by corporate bosses and shareholders ruling at the top, but are themselves the main players, supported by co-ordinating stewards now at the bottom.
The purpose of hierarchy in human organising became very clear to me from the work of Edwin John in India with his Children’s and Neighbourhood parliaments. Edwin John has spent a lifetime empowering both children and local communities through local ‘parliaments’. These neighbourhood parliaments get together regular to make their own decisions about things affecting their communities.
Imagine a village, a street, and a neighbourhood say of 20 houses, whose residents meet regularly to determine key aspects in the community (street cleaning, education, sewage etc). With 200 houses in the street there may thus be around 20 such community parliaments. Let’s say now there is a matter concerning the whole street, this affects the other 20 neighbourhood parliaments, and all communities in the street have to be involved in the decision-making. It is difficult to have meetings of 200 households — the more people involved, the more cumbersome meetings become.
So what Edwin John has done is to have each community elect a representative of each circle, of each neighbourhood parliament. The representatives of each community then meet to decide at a street level, each representative representing their community who elected them, thus creating a meta-circle. By nature this is now a new ‘higher’ level of hierarchy.
This does not automatically mean, however, that the meta-level has power over the community they represent. Indeed to ensure this does not happen Edwin John has given each community the right to recall their representative and elect someone else, if they feel he or she is no longer representing the community. Not in 4 year’s time, but immediately! This is very different from the kind of representation UK parliamentary representatives see themselves taking on, who once elected seem to take things into own hands. In Edwin John’s neighbourhood hierarchy the essence of governance is still very much at the local level, and hierarchy is used as a bridging tool between communities.
So we have here an example where hierarchy is being used benevolently, with huge positive effect. So when thinking of hierarchy, rather than throwing the baby out with bathwater, I invite you to use this example to reframe the way we use hierarchy in human organisations. This is in my view closer to the kind of cognitive hierarchy I mentioned at the beginning.
This is not always easy, but whenever we get stuck, or start falling into the trap of treating hierarchy as power-over rather than power-with or different levels of abstraction, we should remind ourselves of the purpose of the hierarchy, starting from the local. Turn the hierarchy upside down, so that the visionaries “at the top” are now stewards at the bottom serving the community, the shop-floor and the ‘locals’ adding value.
The recall button is key to keeping hierarchy away from the hungry wolves. Rather than just throwing hierarchy out completely and losing our baby, let’s ask ourselves who is serving whose needs. And if it is not the community’s needs, just recall the elected representative, immediately!
As a coach I have always steered away from ‘change management’, even though it is a huge industry and I would probably have done quite well in it. Intuitively change management has always struck me as unfair or oppressive, even when it was well-intentioned and perfectly rational. It has appeared to me one-sided, often with senior management wanting to enforce a new system or a new way of working, yet were themselves unwilling to change their own habits or behaviours. I even felt this sense of unease when I was a ‘senior manager’ myself! ‘Change management’ renders an air of blame, injecting fear, and when things are not working it’s ‘because the staff are incompetent, or lazy, or otherwise doing things wrong – they need to change’. It is not a genuinely collaborative effort.
Change has often seemed to me to be imposed. Moreover it is rarely ever on a level playing field, and seldom a two-way process. I have observed so many situations in companies, for instance, where improvements have been suggested by more junior staff which have then simply been brushed off as ‘get on with your work’, ‘that’s not your job’ or ‘we know what we are doing’. The voices of staff are often ignored, even though they are the ones actually doing the work and would be in a better position to know. The Stafford hospital scandal is a typical case where staff were not listened to – after all “what do nurses know about management?” I personally experienced the inner sarcasm felt by the Heathrow T5 staff before the new terminal opened, who knew exactly where all the problems were long before the opening, but were simply ignored – the ensuing fiasco could well have been avoided, if they had been listened to.
Even where there is a recognition that some form of consultation needs to take place, more often than not this is done only after the major decisions have already been taken, and there is little influence staff can have. Instead senior executives are advised by consultants that they need to brush up their communication skills, the reason change is not working is because staff have not been informed well enough about the purpose of the change, what it will look like and who is responsible for what. Malfunctioning change programs are often blamed on poor communication, as if better persuasive skills would make the change work.
“People don’t resist change, they resist being changed.” Peter Senge
Overall I agree with Ron Ashkenas in his Harvard Business Review blog Change Management Needs to Change that the poor success rate of change management initiatives lies less in the content or strategy of change, but in the poor preparation and skills of the senior executives in implementing the change. Implementation is often delegated down to an army of ‘consultants’ and ‘champions’. For every 100 business books on strategy, 98 are on strategy development and only 2 on implementation. We are sorely lacking in implementation skills and the way implementation itself will and should inform strategy. Not surprisingly this gives rise to the deep disconnect between managers and the managed, between politicians and the electorate, between “the system” and its participants.
The same fundamental problem exists in day to day operations, never mind change management, in ordinary decisions. Decisions are taken without consulting the affected staff; these are then poorly executed or sometimes even simply sabotaged by the staff – fundamentally because they were never asked. It never ceases to amaze me how corporate decisions are made without even asking, never mind eliciting suggestions from, the staff affected, those who actually do the work. Executives expect the decisions to somehow be carried out, as if mechanically, and are then surprised when things do not get done, blaming the reticence of staff. Executives spurt out strategies and wonderful soundbites left right galore, but when it comes to implementation they are rather thin on the ground.
“Separating knowledge and decision making authority leads to bad decisions.” Mark Seuffert
The basic problem is simple: people are not asked. Strategies and change programs are developed by executives behind closed doors, and then mandated. What should be happening is that those affected need to be invited into the process, invited to co-author the new story. This is often viewed as time-consuming and unnecessary, despite statistical evidence to the contrary, even though there exist good processes or practices (like Open Space Technology) which can make this very effective. Adoptions need to involve the whole workforce, and not a few elite making the decisions and ‘rolling’ them out. All staff need to be invited, to explore what, how and why change or improvement could be executed, how we can all work on it together, and most importantly to truly listen to all the suggestions, ideas and different perspectives from the workforce.
You cannot impose (command) participation or engagement, it’s a contradiction of terms – yet this is precisely what many change management programs still try to do. Words like ‘buy-in’ send a cringe down my spine – it implies being sold to, being had or manipulated, without a real equivalent discussion. ‘Empowerment’ implies that someone has power and passes some of it on – what an insult! Even change programs which are supposed to distribute decision-making among the work force, like agile or holacracy, have been mandated, often with resulting unexpected high staff turnover. As a lean-kaizen and sociocratic coach I also need to be very careful not to impose these brilliant systems on others, but rather to invite all into the process. It is not the quality of the new system which is in question, but the quality of the collaboration, implementation and initial consent. Invitation is the key – inviting all affected to co-create the change. The simplest, yet most difficult, thing to do is simply to ask.
Wouldn’t you like to be invited and consulted every time those around you change something?
Find out more about how we use the power of invitation and collaborative transformation at Caterfly.
Further reading:
More on the Stafford hospital crisis and simple shifts for more effective working and inclusion – click
Why telling people what to do doesn’t work – click
What is Open Space? – click
Copyright (C) Martin Grimshaw, Francois Knuchel & Daniel Mezick (author of Prime/OS™) 2014-15
Shared under a ‘Free Culture’ ‘Attribution-Share Alike’ Creative Commons Licence CC BY-SA 4.0 :
You may use this work as you like, including creating derivatives and commercial use, but you MUST provide proper attribution and share your work on the same basis, using the same licensing. This is our gift to the ‘intellectual commons’, and this license ensures that it remains open for all to benefit from, always. Full details at http://caterfly.co.uk/what-we-do/intellectual-commons/
This work is based on Prime/OS™, published as an Open Source, Free Cultural Work via the CC-BY-SA license from Creative Commons. Prime/OS is also referred to as OSA when used in Agile Adoptions. Download the Prime/OS™ Definition Here: http://www.prime-os.com/download-prime/
OST is a process implementation methodology that introduces transformation gently into a client organisation. OST implements a ‘passage‐rite’ structure that is framed by two organisation‐wide Open Space events. OST comprises and leverages the following core elements:
Game Mechanics (goals, rules, progress mapping, opt-in presence)
Invitation (including framing right questions)
Leadership Storytelling (and behaviour)
Principles of engagement, participative facilitation and respect
Cultural Anthropology (Passage Rites, “Master of Ceremonies”)
OST applies these various elements across a timeline spanning several months. OST implements a passage-rite-like transformation, which has a clear beginning, middle and end. It is important to note and understand that OST is an organisation‐level transformation process rather than an individual-level one. The organisation is best viewed as a single entity (a single social system, rather than a collection of individuals) when implementing OST.
By ‘SMART’ we mean Smarter ways of working. These can be state-of-the-art systems, methods or organisational mind-sets which aim to enable a business or organisation to be more efficient, more responsive, leaner, more agile, more conscientious or more sustainable. We use the term Smarter Working as shorthand for a variety of more human, healthier, more responsible, whole system, self-organisation or self-management approaches to working together, including but not limited to: Agile, Lean, Responsive, Conscious Business, Sociocracy, Kaizen, Environmental or Sustainability Management Systems (EMS or SMS), Holacracy, Management 3.0 and more.
The big picture of OST consists of 3 distinct “Phases”:
Phase 1:Introduction and Implementation. The start and successful completion of the (first chapter of the) adoption process bound by time and two distinct beginning/ending Open Space iterations
Phase 2:Development and Consolidation. Consolidating adoption through follow-up Open Space iterations, and/or Chapters 2, 3 … of adoption process following same Open Space events as in Phase 1 (where implementation is staged into more than one chapter)
Phase 3:Competence and Continuous Learning. Successful completion of Phase 2, as evidenced by several “Chapters” spanning at least two chapters. Shift to learning organisation mode
OST in more DETAIL: Core Elements
1. OST Phase 1: Introduction and Implementation. Experiencing engagement via opt‐in participation and Open Space. This is the first level, the level of “introduction” to the basic SMART concepts being implemented, and facilities of the OSTmethod: openness, invitation and opt‐in participation.
Opening Consulting with Leadership by Coach/Consultant, including planning for Open Space iterations
Invitation as the primary opt‐in mechanism
Open Space 1 (initial Open Space iteration, which marks the start of the transformation process, incorporating game mechanics: goals, rules, progress scoring and opt-in)
2-3-day Open Space (minimum 1 day) – opening Open Space iteration
Minimum of 90 days of experiments and playing with practices (Beta-Lab cocoon mode), between the scheduled Open Space iterations
Output is learning and some deliveries
Leadership Signalling with Storytelling (and other highly symbolic behaviours, respect)
Open Space 2 (second Open Space meeting, which terminates “Chapter 1” of the process adoption and opens “Chapter 2” of the organisational “story” of adoption) – closing Open Space iteration
FOLLOW UP. Closing consulting with leadership
Processing of Proceedings
Respectful Leadership Signalling with Storytelling (and other highly symbolic behaviours)
Coaching consultant delivers specific coaching on what to (possibly) consider next
Depending on circumstances, coaching consultant vacates the organisation and does not communicate with it for at least 1 month, to trigger self‐sustaining independence self-organising behaviours on the part of the organisation
Open Space 3 if needed (all the steps above repeated)
2. OST Phase 2: Development and Consolidation. Minimum 1 year: recurring Open Space iterations about 6 months apart. This is the stage of “consolidation towards competence”.
Evidence must be present first that the organisation has processed and completed Phase 1.
Several “Chapters” of learning, bound by two Open Space iterationss, may be needed for some organizations to reach this stage. Where the adoption program has been staged into more than one chapter, the subsequent chapter(s) would be introduced and implemented in the same manner as Phase 1, with two beginning/ending Open Space events
Repeat OST’s Open Space iterationss approximately every six months until a true learning organisation culture has been reached, with “all openness, all the time.”
Gradual introduction of Kaizen practices
3. OST Phase 3: Competence and Continuous Improvement – Kaizen & Innovation. No more scheduled Open Space iterations, due to a maturing of the organisation’s ability to sense, learn and respond, so Open Space on an as needed basis. Integration of Kaizen and Innovation practices for ongoing self-organised learning
Evidence must be present first, that the organisation has reached Phase 2, such as:
The scheduled Open Space iterations become less interesting, because the organisation now has an open culture that “is” open space in spirit and content
The organisation can consistently demonstrate a “safe-space” open culture.
Substantial changes to HR policies with intent to support an OST Phase 3 culture of responsiveness and participatory improvements
Establishment of norms for dealing with the ongoing conflict that is a natural consequence of independent thinkers working together in a volatile, high-change business environment
Pan-organisational program of Kaizen (continuous improvement) and Innovation practices to ensure the organisation is performing at peak, without stagnating, will full participation of all its people
Further follow-up Open Space and other events in the following years as required to guarantee continued self-organised learning. Major issues arising from new working practices, including the Kaizen and Innovation programs, can then be reviewed
“The three-out-of-seven success rate is an average view from many different research findings. Some studies reported success as low as 10%, others as high as 50%. The research span across many industries and countries and the nature of the change initiative studied varied widely—customer relationship ,management , enterprise resource planning , shared services endeavors, supply chain projects, mergers and acquisitions, cost reduction initiatives, restructuring/reorganization efforts, customer experience initiatives, etc. Any way you examine the findings, there is ample evidence that the change initiatives are far more likely to fall short of their stated objectives than to reach their promised outcomes.”
“Too many change efforts start with all the managers getting together behind closed doors and deciding what should be done. They never think of telling their people what is going to happen and why, let alone canvassing their opinions, ideas or suggestions because they are the people closest to the front line and who just might be able to see what ultimate impact the change could have on the customer.”
Ken Blanchard, ‘Mastering the art of change’ [Training Journal, January 2010]
Blanchard lists 6 stages of concern which are often not met:
* Need for information, not a slick sales talk (trying to get ‘buy in’)
* Need for personal relevance (what will this mean for me?)
* Implementation: what do I need to do and when?
* Impact: Is this making a difference, Is it worth it?
* Collaboration: how can I share learning and wins
* Refinement: How can we continually improve the change?
Caterfly has been strongly influenced by a call to arms by Daniel Mezick, who developed the Open Agile Adoption system for implementing Agile working in organisations. Caterfly’s Open Smart Transformation model is a derivative of Prime/OS™ developed by Daniel Mezick.
Open Agile Adoption – implementing Agile working patterns in organisations using Open Space
