Understand Structural History
Recently, I have been reflecting on something written by John Paul Lederach in his book, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005). As he notes: “Structural history and personal biography are connected.” It is a brilliant and helpful insight given the current turbulence in the market place.
Here is one thing very few people realize about my work. I collect org charts. I have some that are over ten years old, and I use them when I sit down with a client for a visit. The reason why I do this is because these charts tell a story of past strategic choices and operational decisions.
On a parallel track, let us all remember two things. First, people bond with people before they bond with the plan. Second, the history of who has reported to whom over time impacts their level of trust in the planning and execution of change. Combing these two insights with Lederach’s insight, we must understand that structural history, i.e. the changes in the org chart over time, are impacting people’s perspective about change, and is generating the stories people are telling themselves and others about change.
The Fallacy of Centrality
Next, I have been reflecting on something Robert Sutton wrote in his article called “How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy” in the June 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review. As he explains, when it comes to planning in wildly unpredictable times, we, as leaders suffer from “the fallacy of centrality,” namely the assumption that because one holds a central position, one automatically knows everything necessary to exercise effective leadership.
The outcome of this perspective creates the “Toxic Tandem.” First, “People who gain authority over others tend to become more self-centered and less mindful of what others need, do, and say.” Second, “… the problem is compounded because a boss’s self-absorbed words and deeds are scrutinized so closely by his or her followers.”
There is another problem that comes with “the fallacy of centrality,” namely a lack of contextual intelligence. Tarun Khanna in his article, “Contextual Intelligence” in the September 2014 issue of the Harvard Business Review, writes that not many leaders grasp the importance of contextual intelligence which is “the ability to understand the limits of our knowledge and to adapt that knowledge to a context different from the one in which it was acquired.”
Right now, so many leaders and companies are making the best of some very complex situations. These same people need to address issues in four specific areas, according to Robert Sutton in in the aforementioned article. The first area is predictability. Leaders need to give people as much information as they can about what will happen and when. If shocks are preceded by fair warnings, people not only have time to brace themselves, but also get chances to breathe easy. The second area is understanding. Leaders need to explain why the changes they are implementing are necessary and not to assume that they only need to do this once. The third area is control. Leaders need to take a “bewildering challenge” and break it down into “small win” opportunities. In situations where they can not give people much influence over what happens, they can at least give them a say in how it happens. Remember: “People don’t embark on careers to feel powerlessness. The whole point of work is to achieve outcomes and have impact.” The fourth area is compassion. Leaders need to put themselves in another person’s shoes. They need to express empathy, and, when appropriate, sorrow for any painful actions that have to be taken.
Retired Marine Corps, four star general and former secretary of defense, Jim Mattis and Bing West in their book, Call Sign Chaos: Learning To Lead (Random House, 2019), write: “When you are engaged at the tactical level, you grasp your own reality so clearly it’s tempting to assume that everyone above you sees it in the same light.” They continue, “If you as the commander define the mission as your responsibility, you have already failed. It was our mission, never my mission.” They also note, “I was taught to use the concept of ‘command and feedback.’ You don’t control your subordinate commanders’ every move; you clearly state your intent and unleash their initiative.” The fallacy of centrality and the Toxic Tandem are real and dangerous. Reflecting on the advice of experienced leaders like Mattis can always be helpful in gaining perspective on how to move forward through challenging times.
The Past Lies Before Us
Returning to the work of Lederach in the aforementioned book, I am very intrigued by his comment that “the past lies before us.” As he explains, “… I understand that what we know, what we have seen, is the past. So it lies before us. What we cannot see, what we cannot know is the future.” He continues, “So the past we see before us. But we walk backwards into the future, “this is in part because all we can see and truly know is the past.”
This is an important insight because of remembered history, i.e. the stories we learned from others and the selective way we remember history, is passed down from one group to another group, one person to another person. Along this same line of thought, we must recognize the power of lived history, i.e. the experiences we lived through on a personal level, and the power of shared history, i.e. the experiences we personally lived through with others. All of this history is and will continue to impact current events and the experiences that are happening right now. In short, our history significantly impacts our perception and understanding on so many levels, and creates the narrative we tell ourselves about what is happening right now, and and why is it happening right now.
I think the challenge is that we want to answer the why questions that are being asked of us on a routine basis, and we want to talk about mission and purpose. However, many leaders are not very good at this, and their answers are simplistic at best. This is happening because they do not understand the history of the organization and they have not created the space to share about the history. Without this level of shared clarity and understanding, the answer to the why question is incomplete, or not helpful to those who are trying to make change happen.
Recognizing this challenge, we need to return to the work of Lederach. As he notes, “We have the capacity to remember the past, but we have no capacity to fully predict much less control it. Not even God can change the past…. We have the capacity to imagine a different future, but we have no capacity to fully predict much less control it. Try as we might nobody controls the future…. The web of life is juxtaposed between these realities of time, between memory and potentially. This is the place of narrative, the art of re-storying.”
In these six sentences, there is a lot to unpack and explore. For me here today, the key is to focus on the role and importance of narrative and story telling. With this in mind, I turn back to an insight from Jim Mattis and Bing West. As they write, “I was out to win their coequal ‘ownership’ of the mission.” The depth of this comment in combination with the above insight by Lederach makes me realize that we need to know our history and understand our history so we can create the balance of memory and potentiality. The outcome of this union will be the coequal ownership of the path forward and the creation of perspective and resilience when movement forward becomes complex and complicated.
To be continued on Tuesday.
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