Transrationales Arbeiten - Die Kunst der Veränderung

Ästhetik und Kunst als Stütze unternehmerischer Veränderungsprozesse

Transrationale Grenzgänge

Die  komplexen Spannungsfelder, denen Unternehmen und die Menschen in ihnen ausgesetzt sind, verweigern sich einem linearen Wahrnehmungsverhalten. In ihnen lagern Unbestimmtheitszonen oder Möglichkeitsräume, wo Menschen immer wieder neu urteilen und entscheiden können/ müssen. Sie erfordern eine besondere Qualität an Handlungsfähigkeit, die möglich wird durch eine erweiterte Erkenntnisform mit Hilfe von Intuition, Sinnlichkeit und Emotion. Diesen Zuwachs umschreiben wir mit transrational. Die transrationale Arbeitsweise wendet sich den schöpferischen Seiten des Menschen zu. Sie realisiert sich nicht mit Strichlisten und Formblättern, sie erfordert auch kein teures Design oder extremes Outdoortraining. Was sie allerdings braucht: Menschen, die sich ganzheitlich einbringen können und wollen.

Besonders an der transrationalen Arbeitsweise ist, wie sie das Ästhetische, das Analytische und das Performative miteinander verknüpft. Wenn wir hier von Ästhetik sprechen, orientieren wir uns weniger an der Theorie der Schönheit, Ganzheit und Harmonie, vielmehr an der Ästhetik als Theorie sinnlicher Wahrnehmung: Ästhetisieren heißt wahrnehmbar und fühlbar machen.

DAS ÄSTHETISCHE lässt ein fortwährendes Wechselspiel unserer Wahrnehmung auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen zu. Wir folgen der Idee, dass Ästhetik suchendes Verhalten stützt und uns für die Erkundung von Unschärfe und Unbestimmtheit Mittel in die Hand gibt, dem eigenen Verhaltens auf die Spur zu kommen. Auf diese Weise hilft Ästhetik, die hinter Erlebnissen und Tatsachen liegenden Zusammenhänge, Glaubenssätze und sich selbst als Teil des Geschehens zu erfahren. 

DAS ANALYTISCHE verschafft uns Menschen Zugang zu den Fakten, den empirischen Daten. Jedoch stehen sie für sich genommen erst einmal allein, lassen die Welt in einzelne Details zerfallen. Sie zeigen etwas auf, sie erklären nicht.

IM PERFORMATIVEN, als schöpferisches Tun infolge von ästhetischen Impulsen und analytischen Erkenntnissen, äußert sich die transformative Kraft der Beteiligten. Kreativität entfaltet sich nicht im Sprechen über das Kreativsein, sondern im Kreativsein. Veränderung müssen wir erspüren und erleben, um sie zu verankern.

Künstlerische und ästhetische Arbeitsweisen lassen sinnliche Erfahrungen zu und sprechen die Beteiligten in ihrem ganzleiblichen Zusammenspiel, d.h. in ihrer Emotionalität, ihrem Körper und ihrem Verstand an. Sie sind frei von einengenden Richtig-falsch-Beurteilungsschemata. Praktiken aus Theater, Musik, Bildende Kunst ect. sind Mittel, um verborgenen Chancen aus den kulturellen Zwischenräumen der Organisation und den ungenutzten Quellen der Individuen mit Leben zu füllen. Sie basieren auf den Sinnen, verbinden intuitives mit reflektorischem Denken und agieren in der Offenheit des schöpferischen Prozesses. Sie machen das Transrationale sichtbar, hörbar, spürbar. Dabei kann je nach Bedarf auf den Reichtum künstlerisch-ästhetischer Methoden wie Darstellende Kommunikation, Storytelling, Creative-Writing, Improvisation, musikalische Arbeiten, Arbeit mit Alltagsmaterialien, formgebende und bildkünstlerische Elemente etc. auf. Der gestaltende Modus entspricht dem Bedürfnis von Menschen, enge Bezüge zwischen der (Veränderungs-) Arbeit und dem eigenen Denken, Fühlen, Erleben herzustellen.

Der Mensch, das Team, das Unternehmen werden so nicht nur funktional wahrgenommen, sondern als kulturelle Wesen voll Vitalität und Inspiration abgeholt. Neben ungewohnten Perspektiven auf einen Gegenstand äußert sich ein Vorteil der künstlerischen Praxis darin, für eigene Wahrnehmungen einen Ausdruck zu finden, dessen Kraft zu spüren und von den Anderen zu erfahren, welchen Eindruck er macht. Oder im Flow der Ko-Kreation gemeinsam Neues entstehen zu lassen. Der Mensch erlebt sich ganzheitlich.

Transrationale Arbeitsweisen vollziehen wir prototypisch in folgender Schrittfolge:

• Künstlerischer Impuls als Inspiration für die Auseinandersetzung
• Exemplarisches Agieren im offenen Prozess des Erkundens und Erprobens
• Ganzheitliche Reflexion der Erfahrung im Denken, Spüren und Begreifen von Werk und Prozess
• Implementierung in den praktischen Kontext des Arbeitszusammenhangs

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Nina Trobisch wird transrationale Arbeitsweisen in einem Workshop bei BEYOND STORYTELLING vorstellen.

The role of narratives in leadership development

Leadership development is individual development is organizational development.
Angelica Marte & Michael J. Müller

Leadership is produced collectively in the community, not the individual.
Nora Bateson

Leadership as a function of context, not individuals

It seems commonplace to say today that we live in a time in which we are more connected to each other and more interdependent than ever before. Our actions create reactions and we are embedded in a network of interdependencies. These interdependencies create also the soil or "terroir" from which specific notions of leadership emerge.

This becomes evident if you follow up on the different discourses that formed around leadership: transactional, charismatic, transformative, situational, agile... leadership. All these notions have and had their merits, in the sense that they have been a response towards the specific developments at a specific place at a specific time.

What unites many of these different viewpoints is that they see leadership as a property of individuals - based on their inherited (19th century anyone?) or learned capacities. What is often out of focus is the context in which these notions about "good leadership" emerge and the specific properties of this context that calls for certain leadership styles.

Or as Nora Bateson puts it:

Leadership is an evolving process and, as such, our understanding of what leadership is must evolve in accordance. In the past the world understood leadership as the great deeds of heroes; now we are in another phase of global transition that requires an understanding of leadership based on our understanding of interdependency.

She understands "leadership" as specific function that emerges out of a specific context. As discussed in recent literature, formal aspects of leadership positions need to be separated from leading or influencing "informally" in the day-to-day work in organizations. Without going into to much depth here, this contextual understanding of leadership sees leadership and our understanding of "good" and "bad" leadership as an expression the specific cultural environment in which this leadership occurs.

Implications for Leadership Development

It is all the more surprising then, that leadership programs are still seen – more often than not – within the framework of programs that support the capacity development of individuals.

But leadership development programs are events that are embedded in the every day flow and the cultural "terroir" of the organization.

Before people enter leadership programs they talk about it. When they leave these programs - they talk about it. They will condense their experience in a story that will account for what happened to them and what they experienced while being part of the program.

Furthermore, these programs are embedded in a specific „terroir“ – cultural assumptions, taken-for-granted ideas and beliefs carried by language and embodied in all of us. Many organizations strive to develop a leadership culture that embraces the diversity, dynamic and connectedness of today´s workplaces and market.

That also means that these programs are fertile soil to re-author these organizational narratives about leadership – to invent, create and maintain new and other narratives about leadership. So the dimension of how the leadership development programs are embedded in the key organizational narratives is an important part to consider in developing leadership programs.

Of course, there is also an individual element to leadership development programs. The organizational role of the manager, his or her formal position, connects the individual self-narrative to the organizational narrative. The key question here is: what does the position I hold mean for myself in my personal life course? How does this position and the way I want to fill it out relate to who I am and who I want to be?

These different narratives are connected and intertwined. The shared understanding of what leadership means in a specific organization or community is shaped by these programs and events. In this sense, "Leadership is an evolving process [and] leadership is produced collectively in the community, not the individual. (Nora Bateson)". Focusing on individuals outside their context will not do the job.

So in designing leadership programs the consideration of the role of narrative structures should be extended from shaping the "Rhythm and Structure" of these programs to see narratives – individual and organizational – as integral part in connecting the individual self-narratives and the ongoing organizational discourse of what kind of leadership is needed in the specific context of the organization.

We will address the implications of this stance in a set of workshops during BEYOND STORYTELLING:

• Ute Clement will present on the different individual journeys of women and men in her workshop
• Angelica Marte and Michael J. Müller will talk about the role of leadership narratives in the context of increasing gender diversity in our organizations
• Nina Trobisch will present the "Heldenprinzip", a model for developing dramaturgies for change on individual, team and organizational level
• Chené Swart will host a session of "Re-authoring Leadership

Curious? Get inspired! And don´t miss our post-conference masterclass. Tickets are limited!

Leadership in the Storytelling Organization

The storytelling organization is a tapestry of multiple interacting, interpenetrating collective memories of various groups.

David Boje

In Management 2.0, leaders will no longer be seen as grand visionaries, all-wise decision makers, and ironfisted disciplinarians. Instead, they will need to become social architects, constitution writers, and entrepreneurs of meaning.

Gary Hamel

Our organizations are in constant flux while they navigate the tension between the affordances of an ever shifting environment and internal integrity. One of the central processes through which this is achieved is the process of organizing – famously described by Karl Weick.

Developed years later, his notion of sensemaking has come to prominence as the process through which organizations and its members… errr… make sense of what is going on.

Going beyond this somewhat handy but shallow definition, sensemaking refers to the creation of a shared frame of reference for understanding and interpreting the various types of information and data that an organization is exposed to every day. It refers to the constant and ongoing process of ascribing meaning to experience to orient and direct action.

What do you see? – This depends on your frame of reference! (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit%E2%80%93duck_illusion)

With the introduction of the narrative paradigm in psychology and organizational studies, the importance of storytelling and narratives for this process of meaning making – at the famous water cooler and in board rooms – was emphasized.

Building on the thinking of post-modern philosophy and constructivism, David Boje described organizations as story-telling systems.

If we apply this concept as our lens through which we look at organizations – what do we see?

• An ongoing process of meaning making in which members of the organizations try to make sense of what is going on through the telling of stories
• That an organization is by no means a coherent system with a unified interpretation of events, but a multitude of voices with different accounts of reality
• A constant dynamic between the creation of stories and counter-stories in which meaning is negotiated
• A hierarchy of narratives that serve as “stone piles” for the navigation of an often misty environment and as reference points for decision making

That view is a big leap from the organization-as-machine metaphor. It makes a difference which conception of organization we have – for leading, managing, consulting them. It is a new metaphor for understanding organizations.

(c) Delta7. Source: http://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/10/running-a-bi-shop-part-two-building-the-organization

Since Gareth Morgan´s images of organizations, we know that the way we see organizations impacts the way we navigate within them. The same holds true for how we think organizations can be lead, managed and changed.

As Hans Rudi Fischer has shown, the manager in the organization-as-machine is seen as a somewhat panoptical figure: with access to all relevant data, HE makes the calculus and calls the right shots. As the prime mover he holds all strings in his hand.

So what about leadership in the messy storytelling organization? To put it into the works of our dear collaborator Chené Swart:

The leaders’ role in the [… storytelling organization…] is to understand their own narratives and how they influence their practices, to convene conversations where meaning could be collectively named, to challenge and unpack the taken-for-granted beliefs and ideas, and to invite the co-authoring of the emergence of the alternative preferred narrative. (Chené Swart, in press*)

This is by no means a rant to discard all benefits of using the metaphor of organizations as machines (it is helpful in developing efficient routines), but a call to also look at the way through which leaders can support their organizations to effectively understand what is going on:

In a healthy storytelling organisation, the story lines told in the halls, board rooms and restaurants, accurately map the environment and direct stakeholders to change in anticipatory and responsive ways. In an unhealthy storytelling organisation, the processing of data into story and the recall of relevant precedent stories is not working to give accurate readings of the environment.

David Boje (1991).

Read on…

Boje, D. M. (1991). Organizations as Storytelling Networks: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm. Administrative Science Quarterly 36, 106-126.

Boje, D. M. (2008). Storytelling Organizations. London: Sage.

Fischer, Hans Rudi (1992): Management by bye? Philosophische Nachschläge zum Abschied vom Prinzipiellen. In: J. Schmitz, P., Gester u. B. Heitger (Hg), Managerie, 1. Jahrbuch für systemisches Denken und Handeln im Management., Heidelberg, S. 15-40

Swart, C. (2017). RE-AUTHORING LEADERSHIP NARRATIVES WITH AND WITHIN ORGANISATIONS. In Chlopczyk, J. (2017). Beyond Storytelling – Narrative Ansätze und Arbeit mit Geschichten in Organisationen. Springer-Gabler. In Druck.

Change-Prozesse und das „Unternehmen im Kopf“ / Exploring the “company in the mind”

Die Kultur und die Identität eines Unternehmens lässt sich nicht aus CI-Manualen, Mission Statements oder den Hochglanz-Präsentationen im Meeting-Raum erkennen. Die gelebte Kultur ist in den Köpfen der Mitarbeiter, sie lässt sich nur aus ihrem Handeln, ihrer Kommunikation erkennen, aus dem, was sie für möglich und unmöglich, für wünschens- oder ablehnenswert halten. Dies ist das „Unternehmen im Kopf“: das tatsächliche soziale System, in dem die Mitarbeiter leben und arbeiten, und in dem verborgene Regeln gelten, die niemandem bewusst sind, nach denen aber alle handeln. Man kann sich leicht vorstellen, dass es für den Erfolg jedes Change-Projekts entscheidend ist, diese verborgenen Regeln, die Glaubenssätze der Mitarbeiter, das „Unternehmen im Kopf“, zu kennen.

Da weder Führungskräften noch Mitarbeitern die verborgenen Regularitäten ihres Systems bewusst sind, kann man sie als Change-Berater nicht einfach danach fragen. Aber: Man kann sie erzählen lassen, von ihren alltäglichen Erfahrungen, von ihren Erlebnissen im Unternehmen. Denn im Erzählen werden die tatsächlichen Motive, Hintergründe, Regeln, denen Handeln und Kommunikation folgen, deutlich. Es entsteht eine „narrative Systemlandkarte“, die das „Unternehmen im Kopf“ abbildet und eine verlässliche Grundlage für Change-Prozesse bildet.

Im Workshop werden die narrativen Grundlagen des „Unternehmens im Kopf“ und der Methode der „narrativen Systemlandkarte“ vermittelt. Gemeinsam werden wir dann anhand von Praxisbeispielen Elemente eines „Unternehmens im Kopf“ rekonstruieren und Folgerungen für das Design möglicher Changeprozesse ziehen.

The true identity of an organization, of a company is not written on paper as CI descriptions or mission statements. The true identity is hidden in the minds of the employees, in the communication between them. This is the “company in the mind” – the hidden rules of the system. For every change project it is crucial to know these rules, otherwise there is great probability to fail.

But to make these hidden rules visible you can’t simply ask the employees – for they aren’t aware of them. But you can ask them for their stories, their everyday experiences while working for the company. From the patterns of these stories the system rules become obvious, a narrative system map is evolving in which the obstacles and the chances the change process has to deal with are visible.

In the workshop we will talk about the narrative basics of the “company in the mind” and try out some ways to reconstruct it from stories told by the employees.

Facilitator:

CLIMBING MOUNTAINS. MOVING MOUNTAINS – Culture Change from a narrative perspective

Culture is continuously co-created. In society and organizations every conversation reflects culture and shapes identities. The way we relate to each other and to our organizations. The endless process of meaning making is not happening in a vacuum but culturally embedded. The construction of identity is always challenging existing codes and cultural patterns.

The fact that our self is a construction nurtured by social contexts is from a narrative view not disappointing but a massive opportunity; because every construction is principally de- and re-constructable, and therefore shapeable by us.

A workshop for StoryWorkers-to-be – people who want to challenge cultural fixations and belief systems, and try to open windows into the possibility land.