The great management thinker Mary Parker Follett had much to say about the questions of decision making and the flow of power in organizations. Together, her ideas point to insights about organizational design that are without peer. Central to them is her concept of the “law of the situation.”
Much of the difficulty and dissension encountered in organizations results from our efforts to order our actions according to systems for the distribution of power that, inevitably, become entangled in issues of personal and positional authority which themselves often come to bear only a faint and strained relation to the issue at hand. If, instead, we order our actions according to the issue – the situation – the peculiarly arbitrary and obfuscating factors tend to lift, and the nature of the problem becomes more easily discerned, as do our individual roles in addressing it.
If we organize our group to operate according to the law of the situation, then it is easier to view power as capacity to understand and properly address that situation. We can see why power is not something limited in quantity to be preserved, guarded, and carefully parcelled out, but something fluid and variable to be distributed to where it can best be deployed, developed, and grown.
That is, power is not authority – the ability to coerce others. It is capacity, the organizational ability to understand and address situations. We can properly view authority as a distinct phenomenon in the organization, a part of the structural framework upon which the organization is built, and which provides some of the traction enabling the group to act.
Power, on the other hand, is an organizational asset, to be developed, strengthened, and deployed throughout the organization as much as possible, ready to provide focussed and appropriate expression to that action. Accordingly, if power is widely distributed capacity, and if the organization operates by the law of the situation, then we can also see why power would be used by all those individuals in the organization who possess it in ways that are meaningfully and necessarily related to the situation.
Power in this sense is not confused with authority, and used by management over junior managers or employees to direct their actions. It is capacity, developed in everyone and used with one another as called for by each situation.
This is necessarily a limited discussion of Follett’s “law of the situation,” incorporating some of her other fundamental ideas about the various ways power, and even conflict, are used in organizations. But it is enough to enable you to ask yourself this:
Is your organization designed, and your training programs developed, to take advantage of insights like this? In any event, I highly recommended a reading of her thinking as edited by Pauline Graham in Mary Parker Follett – Prophet of Management (please first see the review here).
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Today’s tip: Speaking of frank and effective decision-making, please see this excellent piece from The Economist about how and when firms can benefit by selling off some of their businesses.
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Technorati Tags: decision making, power, organization, law of the situation, authority, management, employee, capacity, training, Pauline Graham, Economist, Mary Parker Follett
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6 Comments
Jim, Power as an orgainzational tool is a great concept. Unfortunately it fails to take into consideration the human animal that populates the organizations.
Concepts like this can’t work if applied like paint to the surface of the organization. But until they address the thorny question of how to successfully make widespread changes to people’s MAP(mindset, attitude, philosophy™) they’re destined to remain on the surface, instead of being absorbed like stain into the company’s culture.
Hi Miki,
It’s true that any abstract concept about the forces acting in an organization must be grounded in the dynamics arising from the interactions of the people in the organization with those forces and with each other. I have personally seen many elegant and carefully crafted plans founder on this carelessly uncharted shoal.
Thanks for your visit and your observation - I encourage visitors to click through to your site to learn more about what you mean by your approach to the subject.
Jim - Always a provocative voice of value! What astounds me in my work is that CEOs (and other executives) prefer to treat the symptom and not the disease. A symptom is not “the problem.” For example, if you hire marginally-competent people, you will have the problems created by their shortfalls of competence. You can’t arrive at a long-term solution to that by merely compensating in some [usually] technological way for their lack of relevant competence. Can you? The “imbecilization” of our society lurches on, in part by creating ever-more solutions for the symptoms of our real problems!
Jim, Thanks for the recommendation:) I’m not so sure that the shoal is uncharted so much as people think they can ignore it. They seem to believe that if they say the words and go through the motions that’s enough, but people AREN’T stupid and the inauthenic does shine through.
Lee, the CEOs you describe would seem to posess the MAP that says, “hire dumber than you are to protect yourself,” which, of course, it doesn’t. Also, ’symptoms’ are often external, while ‘disease’ is internal and requires changing oneslef to eradicate it.
BTW, I wanted to visit your site, but the link in your sig didn’t work, nor did the URL when I entered it manually.
Hello Lee,
This post was the capstone of a short series inspired by one of your previous comments on precisely this topic - the failure of organizations to be structured such that problems can be solved where they exist.
And here you’ve added yet another aspect of fundamental importance to the issue - gathering, cultivating, and disseminating people of capactiy in an organization.
I like the reference to the “imbecility” of solving symptoms instead of the underlying root problems. I agree completely that there is a frenzy by both the demand and supply side of this market to kid ourselves about quick fixes to problems we have not taken the trouble to understand - or, as you note, to even properly identify.
This is great stuff, Lee - right through all the flack to the target - thanks (and thanks also for your visit, and of course for all your thoughtful and thought-provoking comments as well!)!
Hello again Miki,
Your observation that people think they can ignore the people issue is very true, of course. And I certainly agree completely with you about the inauthenticity of the effort to do so, as well the inevitability of its being exposed for what it is - whether ignorance or arrogance.
As for Lee’s link - I’ve noticed that also - please try this address (the one from my blogroll): http://leethayer.typepad.com/
Thanks as always, Miki, for your visit and your trenchant comments!
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