Why you should face up to reality: the insight buried in disparate management practices — by Tom Rippin
In my recent letter I wrote: Now is the time to face up to reality because for too many people, reality is tough right now. As the hospitals flood, the dole queues will swell, and the foodbanks, counselling services, and women’s shelters will be overwhelmed also. For many, reality has been tough for a long time. This is not a new reality; it is just becoming the reality for many more people.
Take time to understand the realities of others. Break your bubble, put down your assumptions. Everyone’s situation matters because all our realities are interconnected. We are being taught a lesson in understanding the realities of others.
If we try to understand the reality of others, we can write a future that works for all.
The narrative of “them” and “us” has strengthened in the past decades. The solidarity of the post-war that swept in the welfare state and created the “Glorious Thirty” years has been replaced by a desire to insulate our wellbeing from that of others (see the previous blog in this series). Inequality has both caused and amplified these divisions and now many of us spend our lives in sealed social and professional circles that are marked by steep power-differentials.
Facing up to the reality of others is about breaking these seals and the associated power dynamics. In systemic language it is about the wellbeing of anyone being connected to the wellbeing of everyone and that organisational, economic, and societal structures need to recognise this.
I see three types of initiative that are often used to bridge societal divides: “we” (usually “the advantaged”) can go to “them” (the “disadvantaged”), “they” can join “us” or everyone can meet on neutral ground galvanised by a common endeavour.
An endeavour, such as the Green New Deal could create the kind of shifts last seen after World War II. Many hope the current pandemic could accelerate this. But whilst the social mixing of World War II encouraged solidarity, the isolation prescribed to fight the virus is hardening rather than softening social circles.
“Going to them” and “them joining us” are often well-intentioned but not enough. Both are ingrained in our collective psyche: Kings and princes who escape their palaces, the lives of Buddha and Jesus, and dozens of TV shows (cf. Towerblock of Commons, Undercover Boss) conform to the “going to them” narrative. The reverse journey is exemplified by the centuries-old practice of scholarships and more recently the (critical) drive for diversity in business and public life.
All of this is important. Systems thinking teaches us, after all, that diversity is crucial to learning, resilience and innovation (before we get to any moral arguments). But it is not enough. We must move beyond the sticking-plaster and aim for a cure, which requires circulating power across divides and growing economic and organisational structures and processes that make this happen. Happily, much management thinking already embraces this:
In lean manufacturing, as developed at Toyota, shop-floor colleagues have the authority to stop the entire car assembly line if they spot a quality defect (a principle called Andon). At a cost of tens of thousands per minute, this constitutes serious power.
Teal management (cf. Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organisations), delegates decision-making to frontline staff because they are best placed to make them and most affected by the consequences. Laloux cites Buurtzorg, a Dutch community nursing company: Rather than enforcing standardised processes and timings for patient care, geographic teams of 10–12 nurses decide how best to serve their patients. Buurtzorg reports not only better patient outcomes, but, unsurprisingly, also much higher staff satisfaction.
Distributing power does not, however, imply no hierarchy. Empowerment of the front line is intertwined with active communication, joint learning, coaching practices, conflict resolution and more, often facilitated with the help of “senior” or cross-organisational colleagues.
Hierarchy is necessary, but it must serve the front line and circulate rather than concentrate power. The UK shoe repair company Timpson’s “upside down management” is a great example. Timpson’s realised that the best customer service would emerge if they trusted their customer-facing colleagues to do what they think is best and support this with some simple and clear processes that everyone conforms to. Two principles from their handbook illustrate this beautifully:
- No orders: Great leaders don’t issue orders they manage by helping team members do a great job
- Interview Technique Let the person who is best at picking people do the interviews and make sure they use our Mr Men Form
You needn’t stop at delegating power to your frontline colleagues. The logical extension is to empower customers too. User- or human-centred design and co-production do just that. The first designs products and services with input from future users. The second goes a step further and actively involves users and customers in the delivery of services: Libraries that are run for, but also with the help of, the community; or patient groups that support each other rather than relying exclusively on professional help (including the global anonymous movements such as Alcoholics Anonymous). Seen through a systems lens, both approaches extend the sphere through which power is being circulated.
Understanding the realities of others — and that many of these realities are tough — is important. To improve them, we must address the divisions, inequality and, ultimately, power imbalances that create them. Many management approaches contain within them dynamics that distribute power — consciously or not — with a variety of motivations: Toyota’s Andon improves quality and immediate learning; teal thinking champions self-management that aligns with its vision of a higher level of human consciousness; user-centred design seeks to improve user adoption; and co-production enlists the capacities of users to raise quality and lower costs.
A systems lens makes visible the common thread in these apparently disparate management practices: they are circulating power in every greater circles. We must more consciously embrace this insight if we are to bring about an economy that works for all.
We want to hear your thoughts. Join our discussion on Linkedin.
This is the second of four follow up blogs to my letter: A Moment of Purpose. The first follow up blog was: Why you should care: Hard-nosed business teaches us that we can insulate ourselves from others. Hard-nosed science disagrees.
Stay tuned for the next article in the series!
