Today, most organizations are based on a “command and control� management philosophy assuming that people need to be individually stimulated and directed in order to cooperate. That management philosophy tends to fragmentize our organizations and reduce people at work to human resources. But as human beings, cooperation is in our very nature and doing what we experience as meaningful energizes us. If we build on those facts, organizations can be both effective and human. This way of working can be achieved if we get better at creating collective gestalts, at accepting our mutual interdependencies and at handling the dilemmas of work and life together. Gestalt Methodology and Gestalt Management support that way of regarding people at work.
Lars Marmgren
People at work - Gestalt methodology and management
This is a book about cooperation, about people at work.
Gestalt methodology and management Lars Marmgren
People at work ISBN: 978-91-7569-874-8 © Lars Marmgren 2014 Författare: Lars Marmgren Översättning: Barry Solly Illustrationer: Karin Grönberg Grafisk formgivning: Marie Göransson Foto: Monica Hagbok Förlag och tryck: BoD Upplaga 1.0 KOPIERINGSFÖRBUD Detta verk är skyddat av upphovsrättslagen.
To Ivan, Idun and Maj
Gestalt methodology and management
Lars Marmgren - People at work
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Lars Marmgren - People at work
Foreword
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…it is about providing a presence that is otherwise lacking Ed Nevis
This is a book about cooperation, about people at work. It is also a book about what I call Gestalt Methodology and Gestalt Management. A lot of people spend a lot of their time at work. That makes it very important how that time is spent. How we organize and manage our workplaces has a huge influence on the societies we live in. It is important when it comes to the products and services those workplaces produce but also how we live our lives as individuals. Almost wherever we are or what ever we do during the day, at the office, at the groceries, at school, at the restaurant or at the hospital, we are ourselves or we meet people at work. When we are at work we need to do a good job, use our resources well, human as well as material and financial, but we also need to make our work places “human”. We need to make them human in the sense that they allow us to use our willingness to take responsibility and honour our need to be respected. They should be built on the fact that the ability to cooperate is in our genes and that most of us have a need to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Organizations need to be both effective and human. Today there is, I think, too much focus on efficiency and to little on the human aspect. I think this is due to a belief that these two are in conflict and if they are, efficiency rules because that becomes equal to profitability. This is sometimes a true dilemma when focus on shareholder value is weighted against the well being of the staff. However when it comes to how we chose to manage our organizations and organize our work it is not a dilemma. It is more question of our worldview, a question of what we believe human beings are like and a question of what we believe creates order and a well functioning organization. Gestalt management is built on the belief that organizations that are “human” in the sense described
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above also are effective. In fact my belief is that they are more effective than many of the companies today that are governed by a command and control philosophy and where people are seen as human resources rather than human beings. In fact, I believe that much of the problems we have in organizations today that make us inefficient is because of ineffective cooperation and bad conversational cultures that have their roots in lack of trust. This book is an attempt to try and describe some underlying beliefs, ideas and methods that is my view on gestalt methodology and when applied by managers I call gestalt management. For me, the word gestalt in this context is very relevant because one of the basic principles of this way of working is built on the ability for groups and organizations to create common gestalts. Those who use, them weather they are consultants or managers, can, I think, provide a presence in organizations that in many places is otherwise lacking.
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Lars Marmgren - People at work
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Industry does not exist in order to provide company owners with profits. It exists in order to satisfy the needs of people and society for goods and services. However, any company not earning money can no longer fulfil its basic mission in society. Curt Nicolin. From Leadership and Ethics. (1989, in Swedish)
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Chapter 1. People at work What are people like? How do you organize? Management by command and control Gestalt methodology and Gestalt management
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Lars Marmgren - People at work
Chapter 1. People at work After working for more than 40 years, and more than 20 of those as an organizational consultant in many different types of organizations, I have felt a growing frustration that some things are getting worse rather than better. Fewer people working harder and longer hours leading to increasing stress levels. Overcomplicated organizational structures confuse people in their roles while sophisticated systems are implemented to exercise command and control. At the same time, elaborate incentive schemes that reduce the willingness to cooperate are put in place to motivate individuals to do their job. In many places I feel that organizations are becoming both less efficient and a worse place for people to work. The reason for this, I think, is that we have become trapped in a destructive mindset about what people are like, what organizations are for and how they become effective. There seem to be two central areas where the worldview of presen conventional management principles differs from the worldview that gestalt methodology and gestalt management are based upon: • the view of what we human beings are like • the view of how to organize people’s work together The two areas are, of course, connected. The view on how to organize based on gestalt management would not be possible to implement if based on the assumptions about human behaviour that underpin much of today’s conventional management ideas. So what types of assumptions are they?
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What are people like? Some of today’s conventional management theories seem to be based on a rather pessimistic view of us human beings. Sumatra Ghoshal described it well in his article from 2005 in Academy of Management Learning&Education. “Bad management theories are destroying good management practices” In this article… I wish to show that “Business Schools”, by spreading amoral and ideologically inspired theories, have affected their students so that it has liberated them from the feeling that they (when practising their professions) have any form of moral responsibility. This ideology, which Milton Friedman (2002) called ”liberalism” is founded on a number of pessimistic assumptions concerning both individuals and institutions – “a gloomy vision” (Hirschman 1970). With this starting-point, the purpose of social science and economics becomes the solution of a “negative problem”, namely minimizing the cost of human shortcomings. Ghoshal We will return to this and Ghoshal in the chapter on Systems Theory. In other words, what Ghoshal says about “bad management theories” means that the underlying assumptions about people, whether they are managers or just ordinary employees, are: • People are primarily driven by egoistic needs and motivated by individual financial gain • People cannot be trusted, so therefore they have to be controlled This, of course, affects how you think about how to organize and manage. On the other hand, this is not the only view you could have of what people are like. What if you were convinced that: • People are motivated as much by collective success as by individual reward. Most people are inherently capable of being both altruistic and egoistic. • People can be trusted. Trust is a collective asset that can be built. If you show trust and are trustworthy it produces trust by others and makes them more trustworthy.
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• People are willing to take responsibility and to be held accountable as long as they understand the rules of the game. My view of my personnel and what drives them matters. Whether I regard them primarily as resources at my disposal or whether I see them as a community of people with a common goal makes a difference. If I see us as a community of which I am also a member, this will affect how I look upon my task of managing. These two ways of looking at people and at your employees affects how you will address the issue of organizing.
How do you organize? The other important area where my worldview affects how I think about how to manage and lead is how to create a way for people to work together in an effective and efficient way. This concerns things like who need to know what?, how do we decide what to do and how to do it? and how do we accomplish a way of working together towards a common goal? It is about how to organize and who is in control of the work that is being carried out. In a somewhat simplistic manner you might say that there are two fundamentally different ways in which a group of people can get organized to achieve a common goal. We can call those two different ways ”A” and ”B”. ”A” is based on the assumption that one individual needs to be in control, take the decisions, plan the action, divide the task, delegate the activities and control the execution. ”B” does not require anybody to be in control. Decisions are arrived at through interactions and discussions. The plan also emerges out of discussions and interactions as does the division of the task. The control of the execution is everybody’s responsibility. In most organizations it is neither completely “A” nor completely “B”. However, your view of people and the intensity of your need for control will push you towards “A” or “B”. Obviously, “B” cannot 14
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be used if you don’t trust your employees. If you believe that people only do what is good for them and not for the company, “B” is not a viable way of working. Furthermore, many managers that would like to use more of “B” don’t know how to. There is little in management literature or in management training courses that helps them know how to support self-organization. Therefore, contemporary conventional management tends to drift further and
further towards “A”. I call the way of organizing and leading according to “A”, “management by command and control”. The way of regarding people and how to organize expressed by “B” forms the basis for gestalt methodology and gestalt management.
Management by command and control The command and control mindset that is behind how many big organizations are managed today emerges from a few basic assumptions. Those assumptions also reinforce each other to create a coherent worldview leading to beliefs about what works and what doesn’t work for a manager. Those basic assumptions appear to be: • Order and efficiency in organizations is achieved through well designed structures that allow management to be in control. • People are primarily driven by egoistic needs and motivated by financial gain. • The purpose of a company is to maximize shareholder interest.
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Exercise control
The consequence of these assumptions is a management philosophy that tries to exercise control in all dimensions. Most large companies now have complex multidimensional matrix organizational structures. For the employee, this means that he/she receives command signals from many different parts of a governance structure; line managers, project leaders, process leaders, quality control departments, HR officers etc. Rules and regulations that are all intended to improve and support the work become boundary conditions that shrink the freedom of action for those who do the job. The possibility to use your own experience and knowledge to solve the problem based on the situation at hand diminishes.
Measure and focus on the parts
If this urge to be in control is also flavoured by mistrust towards the ability of the employees to see the big picture and act for the good of the company, it also drives the need to measure everything. In many companies there are complex scorecards that should help management guide people in the organization to do the right things. Much time is spent on producing and following up scorecards because what gets measured gets done. It is often based on the assumption that what you think is most important in January is also most important in November. Goals and measurements are almost always defined for the parts - divisions, departments, groups and individuals. Detailed areas of responsibility are defined, detailed roles are described and goals are defined for all those parts. Remuneration is also usually defined as connected to the goals that are defined for the parts, all the way down to the level of the employee. The underlying assumption is that if the parts perform the whole will succeed. There is, however, a big risk that this also creates fragmentation, disconnection and stress in the organization.
Focus on shareholder value
Over the last 3-4 decades there has been a shift from looking at the company as a part of society to an entity whose sole purpose is to generate profit for the shareholders. This rather simplified view of corporations is now, hopefully, slowly fading away, but it still
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Today, most organizations are based on a “command and control� management philosophy assuming that people need to be individually stimulated and directed in order to cooperate. That management philosophy tends to fragmentize our organizations and reduce people at work to human resources. But as human beings, cooperation is in our very nature and doing what we experience as meaningful energizes us. If we build on those facts, organizations can be both effective and human. This way of working can be achieved if we get better at creating collective gestalts, at accepting our mutual interdependencies and at handling the dilemmas of work and life together. Gestalt Methodology and Gestalt Management support that way of regarding people at work.
Lars Marmgren
People at work - Gestalt methodology and management
This is a book about cooperation, about people at work.
Gestalt methodology and management Lars Marmgren