"The ability to get along with others is always an asset right? Wrong. By adeptly avoiding conflict with coworkers, some executives eventually wreak organisational havoc. And it's their very adaptness that's the problem. The explanation for this lies in what I call skilled incompetence, whereby managers use practised routine behaviour (skill) to produce what they do not intend (incompetence)............"
Thus starts Chris Argyris in one of his seminal articles 'Skilled Incompetence" published (way back now) in 1986 in the Harvard Business Review. The article is a classic along with several others (such as "Good communication that blocks learning", "Teaching smart people how to learn", "The executive mind and double-loop learning" see bibliography) and provides great insight into 'organisation defence routines' and such like to unpick and explain organisational issues that manifest at individual level. It's nothing short of brilliant.
I find it hard to accept any OD/change practitioner as a professional who has not at least read Argyris' main concepts and understood the implications. I remember once a big consultancy that I joined which had a change practice and was invited onto an OD course only to find that there was no mention of Argyris work. Needless to say that my estimation of the consultancy practice credibility at this point zeroed.
In the article, Argyris mentions four easy steps to chaos:
1. Designing a clearly ambiguous message
2. Ignoring any inconsistencies in the message
3. Making the ambiguity and inconsistency in the message undiscussable
4. Making this undiscussability also undisscussable.
(Of course you will have to read the original to fully understand these). This has resonated so much in the change scenarios I have experienced and comes up quite frequently in various guises in client projects. I find it particularly prevalent in HR functions which is interesting.
One of my learnings long ago from Argyris work was the connection between the organisaton context and indivdual behaviour and much team dysfunction is more explained in this way rather than going on some artificial teamwork course to solve.
So why am I talking about this today?
Well, I keep reading an awful lot on new ways for teamworking and communication the latest being communicating with horses and a new variant on the 'cooking' craze that has sprung up to improve 'teamwork'.
You can't fault the ingenuity, but I'm afraid its just that - artificial. I would like to think that HR functions (and/or their T&D functions) look at simpler more effective solutions rather than constantly migrating to different ways in which not to solve the problem that needs solving. The rubbish on offer at the CIPD's HRD show in 2006 still rankles.
Argyris work always includes asking (sometimes difficult) questions to solve the problem or issue(s). It's probably why I have such an affinity for his insight. Maybe it is that Argyris work inspired me to ask questions to solve problems in a structured way and it is a fault of my memory that I do not register that?
