In my last Masters project I explored this theme further and argued that each of us, in different ways are living out of metaphors, and these metaphors have an exceptionally powerful effect on the ways we percieve our roles. In a conversation with Simon Walker the other week we talked about how our emotional memories are so much stronger than our ‘rational’ perceptions. When most of us move into a new role it’s often a metaphor, with an attached emotional memory, that we seek to perform. We discussed how new managers can be tempted to work out of the role of ‘Prefect’ when first given the title of ‘manager’ in an organisation. In essence, what else to they have to go on?

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) would go one step futher than this, suggesting that, when accepted, metaphors have a reinforcing effect on the experienced reality of any individual. With this in mind let’s explore another popular metaphor for organisational leaders that of ‘Commander’ or ‘Captain of the Ship’. In these diffcult times these reinforced metaphors could have catastrophic impact if the nuance of the metaphor is not explored. History has a habit of telling the story of the victor, so our ‘Captain’ and ‘Commander’ metaphors are always victorious in the end, but not all of our ‘onward and upward’ and ‘carry on regardless’ Commanders were victorious.

Perhaps in these challenging times, we need different metaphors?

References:

Alvesson, M. and Spicer, A. (2011). Metaphors We Lead By – Understanding Leadership in the real world, London, Routledge.

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. in O’brien, J. (ed.) The Production of Reality: Essays and Readings on Social Interaction. 4 ed. Newbury Park, California: Pine Forge Press.

Although there is nothing groundbreaking in their work (does their have to be?), it does collate current thinking and innovative approaches across different players in the system.

The full report can be found here - http://blogs.bis.gov.uk/publicsectorinnovation/files/2011/07/Scaling-Up-Innovation-in-the-Public-Sector-Full-Report.pdf , and the exec summary here – http://blogs.bis.gov.uk/publicsectorinnovation/files/2011/07/Scaling-Up-Innovation-in-the-Public-Sector-Executive-Summary.pdf

I should, at this point, add a thanks to Dave Briggs, from Kind of Digital for his initial blog post which put me onto this.

I hope this work continues into further research, evaluation and planning. However, at the moment, for me there are a few deeper issues which also need to be addressed, which the report misses, ‘simplistic dualisms’ and ‘safety culture’.

Dualisms -There remains in my experience an unpleasant and misinformed discourse around the arenas of the public and private sectors. These go along the lines of ‘Public Service = Good – Private Investment = Bad’ and conversely ‘Private Sector = Lean and Efficient – Public Sector = Fat and Lazy’. Admittedly this is a popular dualism among tabloid journals and sensationalist writers, but it’s an untrue dualism which needs to be challenged if all stakeholders across all sectors are to embrace a more creative and nuanced approach to their work.

Safety Culture -In addition to changing the external discourse, there is a need to work with the internal, and personal, discourse of those in leadership positions. Clearly this report has been written to address a perceived or real problem within the public sector. An initial reading would say the ‘problem’ is that innovation is happening but it’s not being scaled-up or given the chance to thrive. From my reading the report seems to tip-toe around one of the problems that sits below this, cultures of fear.

There is, I believe, a fear within many Public Sector leaders that if they take a risk and fail, their current projects, department, team and/or career will be jeopardised in some way. One senior Civil Servant put it this way to me once “Fundamentally we are being trained not to take risk, we are primarily rewarded for keeping our heads down and doing the task that has always been done.” In turn this has many anti-innovation effects, among them has been the promotion of non-risk takers (and I acknowledge that all organisations need people who are wary of risk). The public sector needs to find mechanisms to embed the acceptance of BIG risk, the mechanisms for the communication and management of risk are well embedded. These mechanisms are as much psychodynamic as they are systemic.

It has to be said that for all I know the authors may have explored these and decided, among all data they had, to exclude them. Either way, I for one will wait to see how this stream of inquiry develops and moves forward.

The paper is titled “What’s your story?” A life-stories approach to authentic leadership development, written by Boas Shamir and Galit Eilam, two Israeli academics. In the paper the authors argue, very persuasively,  the root to authentic leadership is found through developing authentic narratives of what bought us into ‘leadership’ in the first place. The story a leader develops is intrinsically linked to their life experiences and the meanings which are captured within these experiences.

Shamir and Eilam pull from real life developmental situations to show the learning which leaders undertake, like working through struggle, finding a cause and learning from experience. They go on to argue that this narrative, or story, then provides followers with a primary source of information on which to base their judgement on a leaders authenticity, and the extent to which they will ‘follow’.

If you have access to an academic library, real or on-line, I’d strongly recommend getting hold of this paper…

(Shamir, B. and Eilam, G. (2005). “What’s your story?” A life-stories approach to authentic leadership development, The Leadership Quarterly, 16 395-471.)

The title of her piece is ‘Work, love, pray’ in a nod the Julia Roberts film and book by Elizabeth Gilbert ‘Eat, love, pray’ (I wouldn’t want to make comment on either the book or the film, neither of which have I seen or read – however I am aware the many film critics have been somewhat scathing of the film.) which I feel could sentimentalise the issue somewhat, given the gravitas of the issues she raises.

For me Kanter raises the most interesting question at the end, when she says “Clearly, the connections among working, praying, and loving are ripe for reinvention.” Indeed they are, and these are brave topics for a Harvard Business Professor, when the world of work likes to think of itself as situated in the ‘hard facts of reality’. But for the vast majority of people the connections between work, prayer and love are critically important, regardless of how they interpret those words.

Each of us come from different ‘traditions’ which inform how we interpret these words in different actions in our day-to-day lives, but for me it’s my colleague Simon Walker who has developed the most interesting approaches and language. Simon, unashamedly, comes from the Christian tradition and his book ‘The Undefended Life’ is a fantastic effort at making the connections which Kanter offers up for reinvention.

If anyone knows of other work from different positions or traditions, I’d love to know about them.

1 Motivation follows action

Books on “getting motivated ” – and hyperenergetic “motivational speakers” – ironically compound the problem by reinforcing the idea that you need to feel positive about doing something before you begin it. But that’s a subtle form of pressure. What if you dropped the requirement of feeling good, accepted that you felt bad and just started anyway? Motivation usually shows up quickly thereafter. (See the work of psychologist Shoma Morita at todoinstitute.org.)

2 Resistance is a signpost

Resisting a task is usually a sign that it’s meaningful – which is why it’s awakening your fears and stimulating procrastination. You could adopt “Do whatever you’re resisting the most” as a philosophy of life. As Steven Pressfield says in his pompous but interesting book The War Of Art , “The more important [something] is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

3 Schedule leisure, not work

Procrastination is an act of rebellion against what you believe you “should” be doing, and mentally shouting at yourself to do it will only make you rebel more stubbornly. In his just-reissued book The Now Habit, Neil Fiore suggests keeping an “Unschedule ” – a time log on which you make plans for leisure activities but on which you record hours of work only after you’ve finished them. If you plan in advance to do x hours of work in a day, anything less becomes a failure; if you make no such plans, every minute worked counts as a success.

This also reminded me of a story I was told earlier this month by one of my tutors at Lancaster, David Collinson. Earlier in his career David was asked to review the safety record of an off-shore oil rig, whose safety record was rapidly going downhill. It turned out the company actually gave financial reward for those who kept the best safety record. However, all this did was increase accidents, as it created an incentive to ‘cover-up’ any accidents. While this is a warning against blunt reward mechanisms, it also speaks to our haste to measure too quickly.

Simplistic metrics in complex times will, in my view, only make matters worse despite how attractive they may seem at first.