Developing organisational wisdom – how do developers

respond?

SDF Spring Conference 18 April 2013

Jane Gaukroger

2

Organisational wisdom – focus of this session• How do we define it?• Why is it important to us?• What might if mean for our development practice?• What does it mean for me as an individual

developer?

… the contribution of the OD practitioner toorganisational wisdom

Context for this research• A personal search after a career spent in people

management and development• A concern about some of what is happening in our

organisations – questions of ethics, integrity and behaviour

• Howard Gardner (2011) and The Good Work Project‘Good work is good in the excellent, technical sense; the worker knows his stuff, is

highly skilled, and keeps up with the latest knowledge and techniques. Good work is good in the phenomenal sense; it feels good, feels right, is personally engaging, yields experience of flow. Finally, good work is good in a moral sense; it is carried out ethically, in a way that is responsible, and in a way that serves the wider good, even (indeed perhaps especially) when it goes against the immediate interests of the worker’.

3

4

Banks role in financial crisis

Top pay

MPs expenses

Media/phone hacking

NHS care

What are all of these issues saying …

• Are we missing something in our organisations?

• Is it a quality which cannot be achieved simply

through rules, regulations, legislation?

• Is it wisdom?

5

What responsibility have we had as developers?

• Have we played a role in setting these cultures?

• Have we been paying enough attention to what really matters (what do we think really matters?)

• Or have we been trying our hardest – but lacking influence?

• We can do better than this!

6

HEIs – positive association with wisdom

7

Wisdom challenges in HE?• Commercialisation• Shifting academic role • Maintaining quality in new markets• Continuing investment in non-vocational, applied,

scientific disciplines• Academic freedom…

‘The more managerial neo-liberal institutional cultures of the last decade require a corporate perspective, with less scope for individual (or institutional autonomy)’ Linda Holbeche 2012 Changing times in UK universites – what difference can HR make?

8

DEFINING WISDOM

9

What words do you associate with wisdom?

10

In general?

Definitions of wisdom – dictionary

Capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to life and conduct; soundness of judgement in the choice of means and ends; sometimes, less strictly, sound sense, especially in practical affairs: opposed to folly

(OED, Second Edition Volume XX, 1989, pp.421)

11

Classical philosophers on wisdom

Philosophy – From Greek meaning love of (philos) and wisdom (sophia)

•Socrates: The reflective life

‘The unexamined life is not worth living’•Plato: Ideas/Truth

Exploration of the true causes of all things•Aristotle: Phronesis

Capacity to act with regard to human good

12

Psychologists on wisdomCsikszentmihalyi and Rathunde (1990)•Wisdom as a cognitive process – understanding the workings of the world

•Wisdom as a virtue – understanding how to order our actions to achieve harmony with the world

•Wisdom as a personal good – an intrinsically rewarding experience that makes us feel happy

13

Psychologists on wisdomBaltes and Smith (1990) ‘Berlin Paradigm’

‘Good judgement and advice about important but uncertain matters of life’

5 crtieria:•Rich factual knowledge about matters of life•Rich procedural knowledge – strategies for judgement and advice •Life span contextualisation •Relativism•Uncertainty

14

DEFINING ORGANISATIONAL WISDOM AND HOW WE MIGHT APPLY THIS

15

Definitions of organisational wisdom

Surprisingly few!

16

Business thinkers on wisdom – learning perspective

17

Zeleny 1987, Ackoff 1987

Not much attention the

wisdom level –just too difficult?

Business thinkers on wisdom – leadership perspective

18

Courtney 2001

Sees managerial wisdom as integrating knowledge with moral concerns

• ‘Knowledge involves the ability to act intelligently and to learn. Wisdom guides knowledgeable actions on the basis of moral and ethical values’

Business thinkers on wisdom – action perspective

19

Jennifer Rowley (2006)

‘The capacity to put into action the most appropriate behaviour for an organisation, taking into account what is known and the legitimate concerns of its various stakeholders’

Activity 2

•Would it be useful to have a clearer focus on organisational wisdom?•What might this mean for what we pay attention to in our development work?

20

WHAT MIGHT THIS MEAN FOR MY DEVELOPMENT AS A DEVELOPER?

21

Wisdom development

Bigelow (1992)

Proposes a model to include development of:• Practical knowledge• The metacognitive (knowing about knowing)

process associated with management of knowledge and its limitations, uncertainties and contradictions

• Metacognitive processes associated with seeing and learning from experience

• Image of self as part of a larger system22

Meacham (1983)

‘The more one knows the more one knows one doesn’t know’

23

Reflections on business education after the financial crisis

Currie, Knights and Starkey (2008)

‘ Every cloud has a silver lining. There could be no more opportune time to reflect critically on business schools and the education they (we) profess to provide…it is beholden on us to reflect more deeply and critically on the purpose of business school education’.

24

Activity 3

•What would more attention to organisation wisdom mean for our own professional development – depth of our learning on ethics? philosophy? psychology?

•And what about our own reflective practice?

25

If you are interested in being part of a research study with OD practitioners next

year please get in touch!

26