Individuality and Diversity, are design issues.
by Stuart Wigham, ODF & EODF Boardmember
The inspiration for this blog comes from an unlikely place. A friend of mine shared a TedX talk with me. It’s about Lizzie Velasquez who ‘asks the question how do you define yourself? Once labeled, “The Worlds Ugliest Woman,” Lizzie decided to turn things around and create her own definitions of what she defines as beauty and happiness.’ You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c62Aqdlzvqk
Many of you will be familiar with the story of Lizzie Velasquez, to be honest I initially didn’t think much about what she was saying beyond this is a interesting, heartbreaking story. The thing that ‘got’ me was when she said that 4 million people had watched a video that was secretly filmed of her and described her as the ‘ugliest woman in the world’. That stopped me in my tracks, four times as many people who live in my city had seen it. I started to think about the impact that could have on you. Lizzie is an inspiration and I truly admire her willingness to turn a negative experience into a positive one.
So what does this have to do with Organisation Design? Well, my train of thought continued and I started to think about the assumptions we make about individuals and the frame of reference we use to do this. When it comes to resourcing an organisation we often default to our previous experience and utilise whatever organisational norms there are in order to achieve this. In large organisations this is usually outlined by HR policy to ensure consistency, and often to protect from litigation, but also, this is in recognition that it is difficult to have the level of knowledge about the individuals within and connected to the organisation in the same way that a smaller organisation might, i.e. family members, friends and personal recommendation (accepting of course these might also be a legitimate method in larger organisations, however I would argue less common).
Around 18 months ago we increased the size of our OD team in order to manage the growing demand within our organisation which is reorganising itself rapidly in order to stay within a quickly reducing budget. As a management team we opted to shift our HR resources to where the demand was rather than seek to increase our establishment at a time when the organisation was experiencing significant staff reductions. This, therefore, involved an ‘expressions of interest’ process for internal employees to indicate their wish to move into OD from another part of our HR service. The head of OD (Catherine Griffiths) suggested we opt for a strengths-based approach to the interviews based on CAPP. My previous frame of reference for people resourcing has been utilising traditional competency, skills, and knowledge based systems, and I confess I was initially reluctant to move away from this. Catherine pointed out that these are ‘our’ people we should assume they are competent; the question we were seeking to address was, were they interested in what is offered, and if so, what is it that excites them, which projects what they would like to work on and did their strengths align to this. She argued that this was more than enough information we needed help us resource the team.
What followed was one of the most enjoyable recruitment exercises I have had the privilege of being involved with. The reason it was enjoyable was because it allowed people to express themselves about who they are and what they find enjoyable in work. They were able to tell us about qualifications and passed experiences that have helped shape them, which we would have not ordinarily asked about, and allowed us to understand not just what, but the meaning our people attached to those experiences and how they wanted to continue their contribution through the OD team.
It highlighted ‘Character’ for me; something that I feel has been overlooked in organisations particularly where the ‘machine metaphor’ (Morgan, 2006) has been used. I’ve worked in a variety of organisations over a 16 year period, from old people’s homes, mental health, homeless services, and junior and senior HR positions. Without doubt, the most interesting and memorable people I’ve worked with have been the ‘characters’, the ones outside the organisational norms and expectations. What sets them apart has often been not only their differences, but also the consequences of those differences. That is, it’s often been those thinking outside of the norms that have lead to some of the best ideas and innovations leading to service improvements.
So often we unquestionably dull our senses by formulaic approaches to Organisation Design issues in the search for efficiency and to ensure ‘consistency’, the latter often serving a proxy for ‘the same’. As a result we lead ourselves down a path of defining the individual by our own preconceived ideas of the world and the work. Watching Lizzie’s story reminded me that each human being has a contribution to make within organisations. And we should take into account ‘Character’ as an organisation design element to take account of individuality in an effort to get the best out of our people.
For me, I want to see organisations where the Monday morning test is passed every Monday, that employees wake up in the morning and think, great, I am going to work and know that the organisation where I work is a great employer because it treats me as an individual and gives me the scope to make the best possible contribution I can make. Our responsibility within the OD field is to ensure that we help construct organisations that make the best of what they have as well as seeking to improve in new ways. In seeking this we also have to accept that there is no such thing as a perfect human being, it is our differences that make the world interesting and exciting and harnessing these creates the competitive advantage.
In closing I leave you with these questions that I am now pondering and thinking about:
- When have you felt an alien in the group – what could the group do to include you/what did they do that made you feel excluded?
- Beware of machine sifting of CVs – you might be missing the best people – how can you find diversity and use algorithms?
- Who do you consider a maverick or out of your normal person in your organization? What could you do to get to know this person?
Feel free to debate this on our Linkedin group or in person at the annual ODF conference (this year celebrating 25 years of ODF in 2014) April 29th through May 1st. Debate and discussion is the bedrock of an interesting conference, come and make your contribution. If not in the USA, then take a look at the events that EODF has as well, next conference is in the fall in Amsterdam.