Astute readers know they’re in for it when both a title AND subtitle include a colon! That’s academic writing 101. And we are in for it today, my friends!
If you have a long weekend ahead of you or if you’re on any kind of break in your schedule, fantastic! I hope you enjoy it. And if you’re in need of some reading around some seriously nerdy stuff, here’s a nice long analysis for those whose brains like that sort of thing.
I thought I would share a case example to illustrate the effects of power in everyday organizational functioning.
I love witnessing how power works, and one of my goals is to help others build vocabulary around how individuals are constrained and enabled in any organizations (classrooms count!). I think a deep understanding of power is part of the difference between good leadership and…the rest.
In my view, good leadership means good change leadership, and we already know that change efforts don’t often meet their intended outcomes.
My own hypothesis is that change failure can be linked, in part, to invisible power dynamics that prevent people from engaging in the kind of work we need to do to make good change, one reason I work to interrogate those dynamics and render them visible in my own scope of practice in any place of organization.
Previously in this space we talked about Flyvjberg’s work (link below) and the finding that the more power involved in a conversation (for example, people with positional power), the less rationality drives decision-making, so let’s keep him in mind as we are thinking about this case.
I like Karl Weick’s (1995) ideas about organizations. He says that “the work of organizations is increasingly done in small temporary outfits in which the stakes are high and where foul-ups can have serious consequences” (p. 632).
We run in small orgs all the time in higher education (departments, classrooms, committees, etc.), and for those of us also doing volunteer or consulting work with non-profits, we see lots of different types of human-focused organizational activities.
And I am absolutely obsessed with those meetings. My notes are ridiculous, and they’re rarely about content, just almost exclusively about dynamics.
One of my favorite experiences is witnessing a situation that creates a perfect case example for how power informs people’s sensemaking and the enactment of their next steps, especially when I take on an inside-outsider (or outside-insider, depending on the context) role or perspective.
Thus, I’m going to share an example and my analysis to help illuminate how power dynamics can impede the necessary conditions for effective change. I don’t have all of the answers about why these events unfolded the way they did, but I do have some observations. The case involved here doesn’t involve substantive change; it’s just the planning of an event, but these dynamics can be applied to major change, too.
Once you see them, you can never unsee them.
In this example1, I want to talk about the power of discourse, a feature of Helms Mills et al.’s (2010) critical sensemaking framework. CSM implicates formative contexts, organizational rules, and discourse in sensemaking. I find case examples especially helpful in illuminating slippery dynamics like power because those forces are often rendered invisible until we attach some specific examples to them.
Discourse2 is one point of invisibility, but once we see its influence, we can’t ever un-see it. Here’s the case, which involves two large (500+ employees) human-focused organizations working on (somewhat, sort of) related outcomes in the same general community.
Context: Org A and Org B want to create a shared event where clients from Org A can engage with the services of Org B. Great!
Participants: The group includes participants from both orgs but has no formal leader. No one person is in charge of the overall project, but the project features several complicated moving parts3.
Participants have responsibility for their own parts within their respective orgs, but the parts are dependent on the decisions of the whole and each part is subject to constraining factors and dynamics outside of this group. Thus, the whole of it is complex and each individual part is complex in unique ways.
The idea for the collaboration originated with these org members:
Participant A (C-suite) in Organization A
Participant A (not C-suite) in Organization B; viewed by others as an unofficial leader in the conversation
Participant B (C-suite) in Organization B
Other participants from each organization were invited to join the planning meetings.
The Story
The first several meetings of the group included significant time devoted to sharing the “why” of the project. The three participants above (plus one other from Organization A) discussed their individual commitments to their respective organizations and to the work of the other organization while the other participants just listened without participating.
They discussed their personal investments in the initiative: “I care about this because…” They invoked the name of the formal leader of Organization B (CEO-B), a fairly well-known political figure in the community the orgs serve, in every meeting, noting that the initiative “has CEO-B’s complete support . . . CEO-B is committed” to Organization A’s clients and to “reducing barriers.”
The majority of meetings 1-3 (60 minutes each) was taken up by this type of conversation, along with a focus on the idea that a primary goal of the partnership was to “remove and reduce barriers” for Organization A’s clients.
After three meetings over about six weeks, the group finally settled in to work through the details of the event. Several big picture items remained in flux, such as the time, date, and location, details that created the foundation for the work of the other participants.
A new participant from Org B joined the group for meeting four, and after the first 30 minutes were spent rehashing commitments to the organizations’ clients and programs, the new participant asked some questions about details of time, place, space, and logistics.
Key Moment: The unofficial leader of the group, Participant A from Org B, answered that question in terms of the commitment to Org A’s clients and reinforced the goal to reduce barriers without ever actually addressing the logistical questions.
Oh, I thought. I wonder how that answer will shape the rest of this discussion, and made a note in my research journal.
(I’m not formally studying these organizations, but I can’t turn off the habit when I see interesting things unfolding!)
I should also note that neither Participant A or B from Org B will be conducting any of the actual work of the project; all of the tasks and the execution of the event will fall to the other participants in the group and the teams they lead.
Subsequent Events and Analysis
In my view as a participant/observer devoting my time to a very small piece of this project, I hypothesized that Participant A from Organization B set the rules for the conversation in that key moment: Questions about legitimate logistical matters were met with an answer suggesting that these matters were “barriers.”
My impression is that group members were then left with the idea that mentioning the very real, very practical logistical matters would indicate that the speaker was not committed to the idea of “removing barriers.” But my impression was also that the org participants saw these matters as mere practicalities that required planning and negotiation; they seemed to have had experience with similar events.
In other words, their questions did not convey resistance, just a desire to gather the information they needed to fulfill their part of the project.
Further, what I have witnessed about Org B is that the last thing any org member wants is to be characterized as a barrier themselves. This label creates immediate out-group status, another power dynamic I’ve observed in prior interactions with members of Org B.
I also couldn’t help but notice how many times CEO-B was mentioned. The shadow of positional power hung over the proceedings for Org B members.
(I gotta admit: It was weird.)
I listened for what happened next, and my suspicion was confirmed: No one from Org B mentioned logistics from that point forward.
The three participants who originally formulated the idea for the collaboration then agreed that the event would roll out within weeks.
No one from Org B mentioned logistics despite the fact that the event required the transportation and supervision of kids during a school day, a complex and risky endeavor in even the best of circumstances (i.e. non-pandemic).
Org A members then left the meeting and because I was helping Org B, I remained. Org B participants erupted with a list of all of the details that would need to be addressed if they were to host kids during a school day in two weeks, the newly-established date of the event.
Participant A from Org B asked, “Why didn’t anyone mention these things earlier?”
There it is, I thought, making a note of the moment. Moments like this make me nervous because they easily turn into a manager/leader narrative that line employees didn’t do their jobs. The change literature is populated with stories from leaders about why initiatives or change processes fail, usually narratives about org member resistance or some other dynamic faulting org members.
That ain’t it, hoss.
Participant A didn’t realize that their own communication had set the rules of engagement. Participants heard that the answer to a question about logistics was framed as “creating barriers,” which chilled the entire conversation about logistics for Org B members.
Further, participants had sat through three prior meetings where the discussion was largely focused on the philosophy of the event and the goal of reducing barriers, delivered through impassioned speeches by people with both positional and informal power that invoked the name of the CEO-B and that never moved the group into the practicalities or details of the event.
In a well-functioning organization, participants from Org B would have said that the date was not feasible in light of the logistical details4. They would have felt empowered to speak on behalf of what they know to be true: The event cannot be pulled off effectively (or safely!) in the established time frame.
I don’t know the minds of the individuals in the meeting, but I did witness their behavior: In the larger meeting, they said nothing more about logistics after the initial question. In the smaller meeting, however, they launched immediate and active discussion about everything that would need to be done, creating a task list and making decisions about some fundamental details.
The answer to Participant A’s question asking why no one spoke up can be found in the answer to another question: “What are the conditions that enabled and constrained participants in the discussion?”
As the unofficial leader, Participant A created the impression that addressing logistical matters created barriers and that barriers could not be tolerated, reinforced by C-suite Participant B, who also jumped in to express commitment (again). The discourse surrounding the entire conversation — from Meeting One to Meeting Four — framed participants’ sensemaking in that moment. They couldn’t safely raise the logistical matters.
Further, dynamics outside the meeting influenced Org B members, in my mind: They are constrained by invisible forces of org power, forces that are rendered visible to them in the moment by the invocation of CEO-B.
I don’t think Participants A or B from Org B created these conditions knowingly. I think they probably replicated the larger dynamics of their whole org within the space of this smaller org. I have no way of knowing that for sure, but evidence suggests.
The Application.
If we subscribe to the idea that “the work of organizations is increasingly done in small temporary outfits in which the stakes are high and where foul-ups can have serious consequences” (Weick, 1993, p. 632), we’ll also want to pay careful attention to the water temperature our interactions create so that we can promote success in those small temporary outfits.
The water was way too chilly in this example, and participants could feel it. Thus, it was safer for them to stay quiet and cool their own participation than to raise issues that could be interpreted as impeding progress.
But the stakes here are quite high: In light of the client population (minors) and pandemic conditions at the time, foul-ups would have serious consequences.
Next, Organizations A and B will need to come together again to negotiate these details instead of getting down to the business of executing their event. How do we avoid the problem in the future?
We want to be mindful of how power shows up, which requires expanding our vocabulary and conceptual understanding. If I were teaching leadership to org members in any setting, power would be the focus because I see it as the most influential unmarked variable in the social world, especially in orgs.
Therefore, expanding our understanding of power is step one. Roscigno (2011) is a great academic read, as is Schildt et al. (2020). I previously mentioned Defacing Power and Leadership for the Disillusioned, that latter of which includes an excellent and succinct chapter on power. If I had to recommend one accessible chapter for people wanting a better understanding of power, it would be that one.
Once we establish the power vocabulary, I think we need more pre- and post-mortems. I would love to run a post-mortem with the group I described above because I know there must be many more power strands at play than I’m unaware of. Understanding how those dynamics interact in an org setting can help us avoid problems like this one. (A pre-mortem identifies what could go wrong and creates plans for avoiding those scenarios. A post-mortem identifies what actually went wrong.)
Every org should investigate its power dynamics because they’re all unique. If we haven’t done so already, we should vacate the idea that people with positional power (especially in the C-suite) are the most powerful influences in the org (they factor heavily in this story, but overall, mid-level leaders are far more influential. In this case, it was an unofficial/informal leader who exerted the most influence).
If I were starting in a new environment — especially as a leader responsible for change processes in any capacity— I would ask people to give me the names of the three people who influence them in the organization and the three people they think influence the org the most, for better or for worse, in terms of culture and climate (and I’d probe on that a bit more for details).
I want to know how people enact their next steps: What are you thinking about when you’re participating in a meeting at moments when you do or do not speak up? That information gives me a sense of the locations of power: What is influencing people’s sensemaking and enactment the most? This information is central to organizational change because once we understand those levers of power, we can better sensegive in the organization. Sensegiving is fundamental to effective change.
Those are weighty endeavors, though, so the simplest answer, really, is to build healthy, productive cultures where people can say what they need to say without fear. Easier said than done, but the first step, regardless, is in developing good power vocabularies. Only with clarity around power can we render visible the invisible forces that compromise org work and establish the trust necessary for effective change5.
Epilogue.
Org B members met again to discuss the details of the event (meeting 5), and I was happy to be included because my research mind was ticking on this situation, and I was afraid that my tiny little volunteer piece of the puzzle wouldn’t fit into the next meeting.
In the meeting, both Participant A and C-suite Participant B again linked the group’s discussion about logistics to “barriers” and, remarkably, to the group’s inability to handle ambiguity (my soul left my body at that moment. It is floating in outer space as I type this, along with a chunk of the goodwill of the people who were subjected to that message by their colleague, undoubtedly. I wish we had been F2F so that I could have witnessed the non-verbals).
I can sense that Org B employees know that the event isn’t going to go as envisioned and that they have serious concerns about it; they have equally serious hesitations about voicing those concerns. But then at the end of it, I heard Participants A and B express perspectives that boiled down to “we don’t care how it goes; we just need to do something,” which offered me another insight into the circumstances:
The event wasn’t meant to be good, necessarily; it was meant to look good and to serve larger political purposes (relationship-building, public narrative building, political capital-building for Participants A and B with their CEO, etc.). I should have picked up on it when Org A Participant A mentioned “media involvement” in a joint meeting. The line folks were operating in a completely different framework: They aren’t accustomed to doing that kind of work. Now it makes more sense, and if that goal had been made explicit from the beginning (even just internally at both orgs), the situation would have unfolded very differently.
But honestly, I don’t even know if Participants A and B realize what they said: They didn’t come out and say that the event was meant to be about optics, but that’s what they ultimately conveyed. I don’t know how things shook out in the end because I volunteered for my tiny part and finished, but I’m certainly curious about it.
I originally summarized my notes after each meeting, reflected on them, and then created this entry after several months had passed.
Discourse is “shorthand for a whole set of power/knowledge relations which are written, spoken, communicated and embedded in social practices” (Knights and Morgan, 1991, p. 254).
Project Management 101: Assign a project leader.
Honestly, in a functioning unit, they would have gotten down to business much sooner and avoided all of the overwrought conversation about philosophical commitments, but maybe that’s my own frustration talking having sat through it as the clock ticked down the seconds of my life.
Originally, I wondered what made participants in each organization feel the need to engage in impassioned displays, thinking, “Who is the audience for this? Line employees are all sitting there ready to do the work; they don’t need to be convinced.” By the end of it, I was thinking that for Org B, it might be the specter of CEO-B. Maybe some serious Goffman stuff going on there, as I found the situation to be shockingly performative (and so costly. In addition to time, the amount of salary devoted. . . I can’t even imagine). But then I think I figured out a plausible explanation, as noted in the epilogue.
A Case Example: The Power of Discourse