Masters of the Breakthrough Moment
Group work in the business world wouldn't have been if it wasn't for Edith and Charlie Seashore. Since the 1950s, the Seashores have been espousing the value of the group in solving problems and bringing change to organizations. Chances are, you've practiced some of the techniques they pioneered with like-minded fellows of the National Training Laboratories:
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... giving feedback, conducting "check-ins" to begin meetings, sitting in circles, using flip charts, scribbling on big pieces of paper taped around the room, collaborating on visions for the future, and forming "fishbowls," or groups set up in the center of a larger circle to interact while those around them observed what they were doing.If you throw a group of people together, conflict is inevitable. Hiding from conflicts however, doesn't make them go away. Instead, they fester, and eventually infect those around them. The Seashores teach that good leaders don't avoid conflict, but see opportunities in them. They are self-aware, and know how their behaviour affects those around them.
Edie and Charlie Seashore have been developing and honing the subtle art of helping people learn from difficult conversations. [They are] advocates for the art of the breakthrough moment. Productivity and creativity in the workplace in their view, occur when members of a group or team wade together into the muck of confusion and unspoken assumptions in order to surface concerns and conflicts that get glossed over in the rush of daily life.Says Edie Seashore:
"Organizations can't change unless people change, and the most efficient and powerful way to help people change is in small groups. You can affect the whole system if you work with the group."Today's shrinking world, globalization, accelerating changes and advances, has made the business playground precarious. Organizations are being driven to adopt practices of speed, agility, creativity and innovation in response. Hierarchical organization no longer guarantees success. Semi-autonomous, high-performing teams have better chances of hitting success. Effective groups are so because they are open and honest in their communication.
[The Seashores] see this practice as a way to cultivate not just capability in organizations, but democracy -- the spread of skills, power, and decision-making authority throughout an enterprise.
... decentralized authority, although it is messy and difficult to control, continues to thrive because it works. But it is always under pressure from leaders who fall into authoritarian habits, even if they pay lip service to change.Organizations need to change according to Charlie Seashore, and change management isn't the answer. OCM talks about change, but doesn't change anything.
"What is really needed is to create enough managerial agility to enable people throughout the organization to keep learning so they can adaptto an unpredictable environment. And the way you do that is in groups."The Seashores have problems with how some of their pioneering work on groups have been morphed over the years in organizations. Charlie Seashore takes aim on teams:
"Teams are a way of making groups more comfortable for men by adapting the language of sports. Groups were about collaboration and learning, but teams can be focused just on winning. This appeals to organizations focused on the bottom line, but the ability of people to make breakthroughs is compromised."Edith Seashore meanwhile, have issues with personal coaches and diversity:
"Individual coaching is the death of the group. Working with a single person, you can't see how his behavior affects the whole system. And giving people evaluations rather than creating situations where they can learn to evaluate themselves doesn't really raise their awareness. Do you change just because your coach tells you to? Also, the coach is usually the instrument of hierarchy, a way of asserting behavioral control from the top."
"Diversity is a way of not talking about race or gender, by putting unthreatening language around something difficult and painful. Calling it 'diversity' makes it sound manageable and nice, something we can all agree on. You can write an uplifting mission statement about diversity. But really, it's just a way of avoiding hard truths -- the kind of hard truths that always come out in the group."
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