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The Top 10 Reasons Why a Manager Would Want to Learn Emotional Intelligence
1. Managers are called upon to make decisions. Primitive emotions, unmonitored, automatic, powerful and not always conscious can “hijack” us making us react thoughtlessly to people and situations instead of thinking through a situation and...
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Going Underground
Going Underground: The role of underground movements in
modern organisations
Forget about empowerment. Forget leadership training. Forget
coaching skills. The way to make a difference to your company is
through rebellious underground movements.
But underground movements are a Bad Thing. They work against the
hierarchy and against the good of the organisation that they
inhabit. Rebellion undermines the leadership and weakens the
shared direction of an organisation.
Then again, underground movements are a Good Thing. Radical
change is rarely in the immediate interest of those at the top
of the hierarchy. Even when they realise its necessity they are
often powerless to make it happen because of the low level
involvement needed by every individual. The significant shifts
in political and business development that have occurred through
history have often happened because of underground movements and
rebellion.
But underground movements are a Dangerous Thing. They
destabilise existing structures and foment dissent. They are
rarely controllable and often result in unexpected and
unpredictable developments.
Yes, underground movements are a mess of risk and opportunity.
They offer huge potential for change linked to an enormous risk
of instability. Given all of this, why suggest that you should
start creating them in your organisation?
First, some principles. In political struggle there may be a
case for violent opposition, it depends on whether it is "we"
who are the freedom fighters or "they" who are the terrorists.
In business there is never a case for violence. So, my first
principle is that underground movements in business are, and
must be, non-violent. And this non-violence extends to all acts
of aggression.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness." Recognise this? Well it generates
three more principles for me. The first is equality, the second
is freedom and the third is fun.
Equality in a business context does not mean that everyone has a
hand in all of the decisions or in the running of the business.
It means that everyone has a hand in the decisions and the
running of their part of the business, however large or small
that may be.
Freedom means that the direction given to an individual concerns
outputs and not inputs. That, as long as they achieve or exceed
a required set of results, their method of production is their
business. Now obviously in many businesses the inputs are so
closely linked to the outputs that elements of this freedom are
non-existent. For instance, a shift worker required to staff a
time sensitive process cannot arbitrarily decide their own
working hours.
Fun, or "the pursuit of happiness" is a less obvious principle.
I strongly believe that everyone can and should have the
opportunity to enjoy the work that they do. The more that the
principles of equality and freedom are respected, the more
likely this is.
The final principle that I think needs stating is that
underground movements will act for the greater good of the
organisation. This is a tough one to recognise in practise
because those at the top of an organisation usually believe that
their instructions are aimed at the greater good of the
organisation and so anything that works against them is
necessarily bad. Those at the top of an organisation are often
wrong.
There must have been underground movements for as long as there
has been control. As soon as someone sets themselves on a
pedestal you can bet that there is someone else chipping away at
the base of it to destabilise it. Certainly, the earliest
recorded histories all have examples of opposition and
rebellion. Passive resistance is rarely recorded. Whilst there
are exceptions, such as, "We hanged our harps upon the willows
in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away
captive required of us a song", it is more often violence that
makes the headlines. You can bet, though, that for every
violent
rebellion there were thousands of minor acts of passive
resistance.
"Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
There is a corollary to this. Power tends to be opposed.
Absolute power tends to be opposed absolutely. The source of all
rebellion is the concentration of power. Those rebelling have a
person, a group of people or a symbol of power that they are
opposing. In modern organisations that power is identified as
being with the executives running the place. The more powerful a
management team becomes the greater is the need for opposition.
This is where the positive side of rebellion comes to the fore.
If executives have no form of opposition then there is no check
or balance. They can and will make silly mistakes that will
damage the company. There has to be a questioning force. If it
doesn't exist in an organisation then it should be created.
An underground movement needs to be rebelling against something.
If it is working on behalf of the organisation and the bosses
are working on behalf of the organisation, where is the need for
rebellion? The answer to this question lies in the history and
development of the organisation. The very things that have made
it successful in the past will be the millstones that will drag
it down in the future if they do not change. Those with most
invested in the successes of the past and therefore least likely
to change are those at the top of the hierarchy. What they
believe is best for the organisation is often a repeat of past
successes with maybe a few minor changes at the margins. What is
needed for future success is radical and never ending change
right into the heart of the company.
Ongoing radical change cannot be managed no matter how effective
a bureaucracy you have. This sort of change is characterised by
a lack of organisation. Everyone does what they believe is best
for the organisation on a day to day, even minute to minute
basis. The centre of the organisation is about pulling together
the results and learning from successes and failures. Even here
the learning is only partly useful because what applied
yesterday may not apply tomorrow.
The Trade union movement has traditionally put the needs of
their members above the needs of the company. In an adversarial,
us and them, boss versus worker environment this is right and
proper. The sort of organisation that I am describing is one
that does not have this adversarial approach. Without this a
trade union has less of a role. The notion that people need a
shop steward to represent them is as difficult to accept as the
notion that they should leave their thinking to management. Yet
for some reason, all too often we check our brains in at the
door when we come to work and allow others to tell us what to
think. This isn't possible in an environment with a strong
underground movement because everyone is required to weigh up
every decision to see whether it makes sense to them or not.
The area engulfed by a forest fire is less to do with where it
is started than which way the wind is blowing. Starting an
underground movement is like starting a forest fire and carries
the same dangers. Which way is the wind blowing in your
organisation? Where will the fire be carried?
So, if you were to start an underground movement, what would it
be like? What form would it take? It might be an underground
newspaper. It might be a discussion group. You might put your
head above the parapet and opt for open critiquing of company
direction. Whatever you choose you must accept that you are
starting, not directing this. If you breathe life into it you
must accept that it will get up and walk on its own.
And a final thought. If you are successful in creating a source
of questioning and critiquing of the established power in your
business and if this grows into a power source of its own, at
what point do you allow it to be questioned by another
underground movement?
© Paul Birch, December 2005
About the author:
Paul is a writer, speaker, consultant and facilitator who
specialises in change and creativity.
Find out more at Visionjuice
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