Бесплатный фрагмент - 7000 Words on Dialogue in Organizations

Abstract

An essayistic exploration that blends management science with art. This is not a manual, but a new kind of philosophical prose for thoughtful leaders — a concentrated essence of ideas on communication and enhancing organizational effectiveness through dialogue and agency. The author reflects on managerial experience, connecting it with profound theoretical foundations, and describes cases and phenomena observed in management consulting. The text invites readers to contemplate and experiment with dialogue as a form of organizational communication.

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My thanks to those who made this book possible.

Pier and the Ocean

“Pier and the Ocean” is the title of an abstract work by Piet Mondrian, painted in 1915 —a year after the end of an era of peace. It consists of verticals and horizontals, through whose relationships Mondrian sought to order and balance the world, expressing the idea of the coexistence of multiple perspectives and the harmony of opposites. Mondrian began it en plein air by the North Sea but later, in his studio, erased “all that was superfluous.” Unlike figurative art, abstraction can reveal what lies beyond form. If we view a business organization from this angle, it appears as a system encompassing both the technical and the human, the objective — numbers, processes, laws, hierarchy, roles —and the subjective, as the means to give it all meaning: to name, interpret, relate to, and organize within a specific task.

Vasily Kandinsky has a work titled “Unstable Equilibrium,” depicting a huge sphere on a long, thin leg. Traditionally, our organizations have an excess of verticals, and it seems they need stronger horizontal mechanisms to adapt to external changes, reassemble quickly under pressure, and find new balance and support. It is like in tall architecture, where the vertical column of a cathedral is balanced by a horizontal base: belts, fascias, and cornices. This is what gives cathedrals their majesty. In organizations, the balancing belts become collaboration and dialogue, and the foundation — the subject. The word “subject” translates precisely as “that which lies at the base.” In the following sketch, I will reveal the crucial business idea hidden within this academic concept.

The Subject

The subject is born in dialogue — or, more precisely, only a subject is capable of dialogue. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan believed that without a subject, not even a happy love affair is possible, nor any relationship at all.

Who, then, is this “subject”? Synonyms for the complex philosophical term “subject” include: a speaking person, an individual, a distinctive personality, an actor. “A unified being in both goal-setting and goal-achievement,” says Arkady Prigozhin, the senior-most management consultant in the post-Soviet space. It is one who is endowed with consciousness, uniqueness, possesses their own motives, values, and desires, and is capable of discerning, knowing, reflecting, choosing, taking a position, and acting. This stands in contrast to an object. An object is not a “who” but a “what.” It is that upon which influence is exerted, that towards which managerial activity is directed: a unit or domain — personnel, finance, production, marketing; or a system, process, task, metric, equipment, department, position.

An object is passive, instrumental, and functional, but I will not demonize it. We act within the boundaries of goals, roles, and the rules of the organizational game. These boundaries protect us — from burnout, for example. Therefore, if an organization faces a problem like burnout, it is necessary to look for a systemic cause.

However, people are always more than the roles they play within systems. An individual can exhibit subjecthood even within a rigid organizational role. A subject in an organization is a person who holds a position, has boundaries in the form of authority, responsibility, tasks, and timeframes for their execution, who expresses a professional opinion and is capable of making decisions. A subject can also be a positional group — that is, a group united by a common stance and interests.

And yet, in our organizations, there are far more objects of management than subjects. There are more depersonalized functions that do not make decisions, do not propose alternatives, do not choose, but only somehow react (or fail to react) to the influence.

There is even a specific problem — subjectlessness. What does it mean? The absence of an owner for a process, someone who is responsible and implements. This is precisely why the rate of non-implementation in organizations is 50–70 percent; meaning only 30 percent of planned changes and projects have a chance of being realized.

Why is this the case? Before answering this question, we need to examine another topic.

Perspective
and the Horizontal