Business

A Philosopher’s Guide to Messy Transformations

What if the best insight into how to talk about 21st century transitions is not found in a TEDx Talk or an MBA program but in the writings of a born philosopher? almost 2,500 years ago? I have always found classical Greek writings indispensable for understanding today’s world, including the business world. Aristotle, for one, had a lot to say about knowledge that is not only relevant but useful for companies undergoing major change.

In my research and consulting work, I stress the importance of listening to the questions people ask to understand not only what motivates them but also what they don’t get. I recently had the great opportunity to do this when I hosted a workshop with 500 attendees discussing the challenges of digital transformation. These are people tasked with implementing change in large companies, but it is clear from their questions that they have very different understandings of what needs to be done. It occurred to me that Aristotle’s ideas about knowledge domains would help leaders translate these ways of thinking and talk about the transition into a shared language that would make the transition more successful.

In Metaphysics (Book 1) and Nicomachean Ethics (Book 6), Aristotle distinguished between specialize, science, wiseand discretion. That distinction can provide a simple framework for understanding what I call the middle of the messy transformation. The cluttered middle is the uncertain, uncertain space between past and future, between theory and practice, that characterizes organizations in the process of becoming something new. To navigate through the chaos of transition, leaders must understand how different areas of knowledge contribute to the transition — and help their employees find ways to be part of it. same conversation.

Normally, when rendered with four quadrants, the angle you want to be in or to will be in the upper right (so you’re actively indexing on both properties). In this Aristotelian approach, however, you must resist the temptation to favor one quadrant over the others. Instead, you must engage and drive the people who will make the conversion by starting in the bottom left corner — the area of ​​expertise — and using this as a starting point to draw knowledge from other quadrants to drive forward conversion.

Specialize

In the area of ​​expertise, people base their understanding of the transformation on practical insight into the company’s history and culture. A question from a panelist I worked on illustrated this nicely: “How do you get an organization that is inherently extremely risk-averse to embrace agility? , can be considered a riskier, trial-and-error approach?”

The question acknowledges and accepts that the company needs to embrace agility but does not show a deep understanding of nor care about why the company needs to do so. Whether the questioner trusts top management’s decision to embrace agility or she has other reasons to ignore the “why”, she clearly wants to know about the “how-to” “. Leaders often forget what work is like. And that can be an expensive mistake. If leaders assume they know what questions their employees need to be answered to drive the transition forward, instead of listening to what they’re really asking, their initiatives will have little or no impact.

According to Eik Thyrsted Brandsgård, who was on the council that day, culture was the emerging platform, and it almost took on a life of its own. Brandsgård leads the Agile Business Team at LEGO Group, a bread maker founded in Billund, Denmark, in 1932 and now employs 17,000 people. “When you have an organization that has grown organically for more than 90 years, the culture is embedded in the language and behavior of the people who work in the organization,” he said. The power of legacy companies is that their culture is defined by conversations and behaviors that have evolved over the decades. “But the flip side is that the culture doesn’t always go your way. It can be against an idea or just rejecting it,” he said.

It goes back to the why and how. If people don’t care why and lack information on how to do it, they will protest. Unless the message matches the way employees have thought and talked about the transformation, they will ignore it or even try to sabotage it.

Science

The important thing is that everyone agrees on what problems to solve, not on how to talk about them. This is a reminder not to get too caught up in the theoretical frameworks that leadership consultants and mentors use when they teach how to drive rapid transformation.

In the field of science, people ask questions that spark an understanding of why companies approach transformation the way they do. An example of such a question from the panel discussion was: “Agile methods took shape in the world of software development and eventually became a standard by which companies and teams in most every industry is moving towards. Why do you think it has been so prolific, and do you think it makes sense? ”

The person answering the question began by saying, “I understand quick as a looser policy, while scrum and other specific approaches may be more industry-specific.” There is an assumption here that the questioner has a theory knowledge of universal frameworks and methods as well as know the terms like joke, Safeand ART mean. However, the responses did not give any insight into the actual circumstances under which the transformation occurred. Leaders who use consulting jargon when answering employee questions risk signaling that they are more interested in discussing theoretical problems than in finding practical solutions.

To help everyone create a shared language, leaders must bridge the gap between employees who know the theoretical frameworks and those who don’t. One way leaders do that is to tailor their communication with the people they’re talking to. Another way is to use words that everyone understands. For example, instead of talking about concepts like agility, leaders can talk about the importance of understanding and adjusting to changing customer needs.

Wise

The intellectual domain differs from other fields of knowledge in that it is based on a completely different vocabulary. To find wisdom in something new to everyone, like digital transformation, leaders sometimes look to thought leaders who are discovering new ways of thinking. Think new and talk about transformation rather than teaching existing theories. Often, knowledgeable field representatives use and associate terms from areas of expertise unfamiliar to the organization. Consider, for example, regenerative leadership, an expression developed by sustainability expert Laura Storm. In her 2019 TEDx talk, she described it this way: “I see the dawn of a new leadership logic, a new paradigm, a new generation of leaders. And their secret is that they apply the very logic of life to the way they run organizations.” The term was born in the world of environmentalism but has since become the currency far beyond it.

Leaders who use consulting jargon when answering employee questions risk sending the signal that they are more interested in theoretical problems than in practical solutions.

As I share other examples of thought leaders using esoteric terms — like cynefin, teal organizationand holacracy—In the early draft of this article, the editor considered the words too abstract. And that is exactly the problem. The intellectual field representatives shed light on the fundamentals of leadership and transformation, but the terms they use to describe them can be unfamiliar to employees and therefore difficult to translate into action. daily.

This is not to say that leaders shouldn’t be inspired by abstract thinkers — if I believed that, I wouldn’t recommend Aristotle. It just means they should be careful not to assume it’s as inspiring for their employees as it is for them.

Careful

In the realm of prudence (good judgment), people depend neither on theoretical frameworks nor translations of fundamentals to understand complexity. Instead, they use the inspiration they get from daily practice, consultants, and thought leaders to talk about transformation in a language everyone understands.

One example of this from the panel was one attendee who commented, “In my experience, the biggest threat against change is being busy. There is such a resistance against stagnation in our schedules and plans. Downtime is still considered ineffective. We invest heavily in change, but we don’t allow time to learn. What do you think about this?” The question presents insight into the fundamentals of effective transformation without mentioning theoretical concepts like agile and scrum or foreign concepts. like cynefin and teal.

The question shows how insights from the field of science and wisdom can shed light on a problem in the real world. This questioner is, in essence, a catalyst for change. The question itself provides a solution. And leaders who are listening carefully respond by giving people time to learn and adjust. While internal and external catalysts play an important role in shifting between different sectors, leaders are responsible for driving the transition forward by providing people with what they need. they need change.

Transformation often fails because leaders fail to acknowledge the importance of inviting people who think differently and talk about transformation into a shared conversation. None of the four domains of knowledge can exist without the others, and leaders depend on all of them to navigate amid the tumultuous transformation. As Aristotle would say, “All learning is rooted in pre-existing knowledge.” That is why leaders should not introduce and promote new frameworks when driving transformation. Instead, they must help employees share their existing knowledge and collaborate to transform it into new ways of doing things.

Author profile:

  • Pia Lauritzen is an advisor to the executives and co-founders of Qvest, a technology company has developed a platform to ensure strategic alignment. A native of Denmark, Lauritzen holds a Ph. in philosophy, has authored several books on leadership and questions, and is a frequent columnist for Finance, Denmark’s largest business newspaper. Her 2019 TEDx talk is titled “What you don’t know about the question. ”

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