Changing Conversation in Organisations

This blog describes the second step in the NOBO Virtuous Circle and begins with an extract from Arthur Battrams's "Navigating Complexity" to set the scene for NOBO...

“Because complex systems have built-in unpredictability, the certainties of the ‘command-and-control’ approach to management no longer hold true. The implications of complexity theory for organisations are massive.... Dialogue is the tool which we can explore the complexity space. It is a special kind of conversation and requires people to listen at the same time, which isn’t easy. As a result dialogue requires the application of simple rules which allows one person to speak unchallenged while others listen and seek clarification of their understanding." Dialogue is a valuable tool for leaders to bring forth new and previously hidden meanings and understandings.

Along with dialogue, NOBO leaders need certain capabilities to effectively change conversation in organisations. These capabilities are described in this MIT Leadership Centre paper “Leadership in the Age of Uncertainty”.

Briefly the capabilities are:

Sense-making: making sense of the world around us. The act of sense-making is discovering the new terrain as you are inventing it. In the very process of mapping the new terrain, you are creating it.

Relating: developing key relationships within and across organizations. Leadership is not an individual sport, and in out networked age the ability to connect and build trusting relationships is a key competency. The core capability of relating centres on the leader’s ability to engage in inquiry, advocacy, and connecting.

Visioning: creating a compelling vision of the future. While sense-making creates a map of what is, visioning is a map of what could be. Visions are important because they provide the motivation for people to give up their current views and ways of working in order to change.

Inventing: creating new ways of working together. Inventing entails creating the processes and structures needed to make the vision a reality. It involves implementing the steps needed to achieve the NOBO vision of the future.

These four capabilities, along with dialogue, are complementary but they can also create tensions that need to be managed. It is difficult to hold an image of the future and the present simultaneously. Balancing people and processes, action and understanding, individual and collective aspirations, can be challenging. Yet it is inherent in the framework that managing these very tensions is the essence of leadership and changing conversation in organisations.

The next blog describes step three of the NOBO Virtuous Circle. It explores how a shared vision can support the art and practice of the learning organisation.