[Warning: May contain traces of humour and sarcasm]
It’s been a week since the end of PMI Sweden’s annual Passion For Projects that took place in the glorious setting of the new Clarion Live conference centre in Malmö. After being part of the Program & Speakers planning team for the Corporate Outreach initiative, a fantastic journey that actually started more than a year ago, I’ve spent the past week reflecting on both the conference as a project and also the conference content. I know that many of the conference delegates went home with information-packed cerebral cortexes close to short-circuiting on more than one occasion due to inspiration overload. I myself have had to mentally sort out all of the ideas, research and problems that were presented by the speakers I listened to. In fact I’d like to call it a fairly good attempt at creating a nicely prioritised intellectual portfolio of information, ready to be called upon in a lightening flash when required. Categorise the information, weigh up the value of keeping it, prioritise it and place it firmly in the near-term memory. The most effective of processes.
Or is it, especially when brains run our organisations?
If we were to compare an organisation to how our bodies work, what changes would the brain (senior management) and body (organisation) need to make to gain access to and disseminate other information and maybe let other areas of the body take over? And how important are various bodily functions? What happens when they malfunction? Let’s see.
Portfolio irregularities in the brain
The brain, like most organisations still using 20th century leadership modus operandi, is there to primarily control and organise. It’s there to control systems and make sure that behaviour and function is regulated so as not to cause damage to the systems, and is ultimately motivated by the will to survive. But if that system wants to develop, and actually needs to develop in order to survive, then the brain needs to start collaborating with other areas of its “organisation” directly and quickly. It needs to start looking at its information portfolio and do a full reprioritisation, communicate it and ensure that the organisation is flexible and strong enough to quickly address the changes. But it’s not used to thinking that way. It likes structure and thus instead builds structures and even more hierarchies to deal with and control that information.
How can management let go of control and embrace innovation when they’ve built organisational systems that aren’t conducive to a sudden change in direction or change of speed? And how much control does the brain actually think it has in the grand scheme of things? Organisations have become so large and complex that one could be forgiven for thinking that it’s become more important to implement hierarchies, systems and tools as a way of increasing the perception of control and order, instead of increasing competence, collaboration and capability.
Organisational arthritis
It’s frustrating isn’t it. Arthritis. That pain and stiffness in the right knee or lower back. You want to do so much, run that marathon, hit 230m drives down the fairway, but the system just won’t budge. Many of us work in arthritic organisations. Every now and again we’re given the reorganisational equivalent of a cortisone shot to the knee in the hope that we’ll go faster, harder, beat the competition. Reorganisational cortisone is a great stimulant. We get a new department or program (normally within some kind of new hierarchy or matrix system – gotta keep that control!), new energy, a new goal and start various projects and initiatives that get off the ground and then fade into oblivion as the brain inevitably starts to focus on new information being fed into it from the outside world ie customers and markets. I was interested by Andrew Kallman’s thoughts on strategy divergence and how in the beginning of new strategic initiatives senior management is good at setting strategy and direction but by the time projects have started up, management focus shifts to new strategies and the organisation can’t keep up and realign quick enough. So out with the needle and another cortisone shot. Maybe this time a promotion for a superstar hero to middle-management to sort it all out, a bonus, or new responsibilities in another area such as project management…..now that’s interesting. But where’s that anatomically positioned in the organisation….?
Irritable bowel syndrome in the lower departments
IBS is a debilitating disease Any inflammation within the system is a sign that something isn’t right. Chronic pain within projects and bloated middle-management layers eventually cause the system to well, how should I put it, “leak” or in the worst case, get bunged up. You can hear it, you can sense that it’s there but no one can quite put their finger on where it actually came from. Irritation levels rise, trust in management lessens and there’s a pungent whiff of the worst kind for any organisation to deal with: Indifference, lack of moral and ineffectivity. Project management suddenly becomes a vulgar, dirty word. It usually takes place within the bowels of the system, far away from the brain, but plays an extremely important part of the overall functioning of the organisation and its ability to execute strategy and produce, well, high quality and valuable goods and services. However, for some organisations it’s just seen as a necessary pain in the butt and not much attention is paid to it. The brain controlling the system just keeps telling the arthritic knees to move forward, sometimes in a completely new direction but what the knees actually think is best to do is to find a better way of distributing, or even better still, shedding weight. It sends signals to the heart to pump faster too but the heart gets stressed (we’ll come to that in a minute). The need for control, status and size has contributed to bloated organisational hierarchies that aren’t able to handle innovation or quickly change direction but are, for instance, very good at managing politics, prestige and/or managing how money is passed between different cost centres. So the knees, focused on delivery, not strategy, start to wobble and shake as project execution starts to cramp up, unable to deliver on the brain’s now old and out of date strategy. However, project management can trace every pound and penny and report back to the brain. An endorphin kick to the brain’s perception of control. The brain is happy.
Heart attack central
Now the heart’s position between the execution-focused project management area, the delivery and speed-focused knees and strategic brain is perfectly placed to keep the system going at the right tempo. It has a huge capacity and can work at varying speeds and pressure. It can also give good feedback to the brain on the status of the system. So when the brain doesn’t listen to the heart then problems can occur from minor irregularities to a full-blown myocardial infarction. By now I presume that you realise that the heart is the employees. Listen to your heart and treat it with respect. It will react to changes in strategy both positively and negatively but it is also strongly connected to and affected by the lower systems in the organisation as mentioned above. The brain is prone to ignoring this fact at its peril.
Organisational mindfulness – A new kind of medicine
Now some of you may be laughing, crying or just wondering what I’ve been drinking but my light-hearted approach to this organisational dystopia stems from the fact that on talking to conference delegates and our expert speakers many of you unfortunately can all too often relate to my analogy. Too many organisations are wheezing, cramping and crawling on their arthritic knees dues to senior management not going into the bowels of their organisations and taking a good look at the status and condition of what their information portfolio and strategies mean for their project organisations. We dream of an organisational agility whereby competence, collaboration and capability doesn’t mean tying yourself in knots and coming down with fever but this is what unwittingly happens to many organisations.
Imagine if we could remove the term “organisation” from our vocabulary and replace it with “innovation” instead. Look at the new “toddlers and teenagers” on the market. Their brains don’t function the same way. To hell with control (within reason), their brains are focused on creation. Let’s innovate! No fear, no middle-management belly flab or arthritic knees. But all is not lost. Ok, brain transplants are probably never going to happen but you can retrain your brain. With mindful focus by senior management on increased collaboration with the different system areas the gap between strategy and execution will reduce. Retrain and rebuild your organisations into “innovations”. Collaborative communities with a training regime that turns that flab into competent muscle and strengthens the knees capability to change direction. The heart will pump more efficiently and the bowels, often unfortunately viewed with embarrassment and vulgar, will rumble with such vigor and vitality that they will no doubt produce the best results ever!
