13 Aug Food or poison?

First recorded in 1576, “one man’s meat is another man’s poison” reminds us that what works in one context may not work in another. Henry Mintzberg slightly apologetically says there are four kinds of organisation. The slight apology comes from the obvious – its not entirely true, but it’s generally useful. Between these forms of organisation, organisation design differs in important ways. Things like leadership behaviour, the meaning of management, and the significance of strategy (to name a few) are not the same in each of the forms.

Don’t Take the Poison

Before you yawn – consider what happens when you get it wrong. When I made a mistake on a client assignment, it poisoned my relationship with the client. I was working as an independent consultant at the time, without the benefit of internal checks on my logic. While the approach I took might have been meat for the right client, it turned out to be poison in this case because I misread the situation and made incorrect assumptions.

What Went Wrong

Using Mintzberg’s forms of organisation as a reference point, my error was in treating the organisation as a Programmed Machine when, in fact, it was a Personal Enterprise. My reasoning, though well-intentioned, was flawed. As a result, my efforts to strengthen the senior management team were thwarted by the powerful and successful CEO. Fortunately, the only person directly harmed by this error was me – the client organisation and I parted ways quickly, and they continue to thrive.

Some lessons

• It is important to have a clear and shared understanding of the form of organisation we are trying to help. Different forms, although sharing the similar challenges, solve them in different ways.
• It is important to have a variety of solutions, – one solution will not fit all contexts.
• Having colleagues review your logic (internal review) before touching the client (external contact) is useful. This can be achieved with formal or semi-formal internal reviews as well as anonymised public conversations such as our monthly conversation café (register here to join the next one).

Join the conversation

I am blessed to be working with the WorldsView team. This week we have reviewed three new proposals, “next steps” on two live projects, and we continue to collaborate on our next public “conversation café”. Our internal reviews are robust and helpful.

If you would like to join the conversation, we explore this in a free, online, digital community event on 28^th August (Register HERE for the event). I will be joined by clinical psychologist Nevern Subermoney as we explore the challenges of creating and aligning to organisational vision in “where are we going again?”