Experiencing Spontaneity, Risk & Improvisation in Organizational Life

Working Live

Patricia Shaw, Ralph Stacey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134266241
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The perspective of complex responsive processes draws on analogies from the complexity sciences, bringing in the essential characteristics of human agents, understood to emerge in social processes of communicative interaction and power relating. The result is a way of thinking about life in organizations that focuses attention on how organizational members cope with the unknown as they perpetually create organizational futures together.

This book introduces and explores the possible meanings of the idea of 'working live'. It makes sense of the sense-making experience itself, drawing attention to the way ideas and concepts emerge 'live' in all conversations in organizations. An appreciation of the open-ended, improvisational nature of ongoing human communication becomes key to such an understanding.

This book will be of great value to readers looking for reflective accounts of real life experiences in organizations, rather than further prescriptions of what life in organizations ought to be.

1
Introduction: working live

Patricia Shaw

		Response to a planned intervention
		Predictability and spontaneity
		Commitment
		The experience of spontaneity and ‘working live’
		The emergence of legitimizing explanations

The subtitle of this book is the phrase ‘working live’, a shorthand for pointing to the central ideas explored in this volume, so let us start by teasing out its resonances.

The use of the word ‘live’ can be associated with the development of technology that allowed us to capture and replay social interaction. We could watch and listen to people engaging with each other without being present at the original situation. Cinema meant that ‘live’ was no longer a redundant descriptor in the phrase ‘live theatre’, just as the telephone, and then video links, alerted us to the difference that the absence of first visual and then physical/sensory clues makes to our communication. We had to introduce the term ‘face to face’ to signal what would previously have been taken for granted. So at first the metaphor of ‘live’ emphasizes that people are literally present to one another, whether as ‘actors’ or ‘spectators’.

Moving away from performance in the cinema or theatre, television gave us the idea of the ‘live’ interview as opposed to the transmission of pre-recorded images. This always engendered an extra tingle of excitement because the control of scriptwriters, directors, editors, designers over what might ensue was in abeyance. The unexpected, the unplanned could happen. Compared with a recording honed by rehearsal and subsequent editing in the cutting room, the live broadcast might be more interesting or more boring. So again at first another aspect of the ‘live’ metaphor emphasizes improvisation rather than a predetermined script.

If we probe a little further, though, in our everyday lives we must always be improvising together. What I mean by this is that despite the ubiquity of our intentions, plans, rehearsals and scripts, all the effort we put into anticipating, what happens next is never a done deal, because we can never completely predict or control even our own response to what is happening, let alone the responses of others. Understanding our experience of everyday communication and thus human organizing as a form of ensemble improvisation is an idea that I have introduced in previous writing (Shaw 2002) pointing out how recognizable ‘results’ emerge in the interplay of intentions and sense-making among multiple players all drawing on a history of social resources. However, although we are always, in this sense, improvising together, our experience can be more or less lively. Often we engage in deeply familiar repertoires of responses to one another that recreate recognizable roles and scenarios in which who we are and what we are doing follow well-worn patterns giving us a sense of stability, security and solid identity in a reliable world. This is essential for the complex cooperations of social life that we have developed, and at the same time it can also lead us to speak of ‘deadly routine’. However, our exchanges are never exact repetitions, but rather iterations; there are always tiny differences which may amplify in further iterations, creating significant novelty. As we continuously respond in evolving situations, we may literally ‘find ourselves’ afresh. This happens as the processes of mutual recognition by which we ‘know’ who we are and what we are doing reorganize in improvised joint action. The dull meeting may suddenly ‘come to life’. Alternatively, a lively discussion may suddenly shift in quality and the work ‘goes dead’.

What happens if we take these aspects of our working lives seriously and inquire into what is going on and what the implications may be for appreciating organizational change? In exploring the experience of spontaneity and risk as these fluctuate in our ongoing participation in organizational life, we hope to throw light on issues of politics and ethics as these are shifting and being negotiated ‘live’ in organizational settings. ‘Working live’ will here mean asking about our participation in the everyday improvisation of human organizing, often as we are literally present together, but, as we shall see, also as we are metaphorically ‘present’ to immediate circumstances in which distance, absence, histories and anticipated futures are all in play. Since we are trying to notice what is so ubiquitous as to often go unremarked, this volume turns to a particular change praxis, that of practitioners who draw on disciplines and traditions of thought developed in the world of theatre, to support processes of organizational change. How can such work show us more vividly what we are already engaged in together?

First I will turn to how our sensitivity for the theatrical and what we mean by that can affect our responses to one another. In doing this I also want to offer a first glimpse of the themes this volume will take up. I will describe in some detail an apparently small incident and what followed (actual situation disguised). However, note how such a formulation hides the way circumstances come to be seen as constituting an incident in what follows, as much as what follows being provoked by a particular set of circumstances. There is no simple causality at work here; rather, meaningfulness is being socially constructed among participants and, in the process, the relations between people are organizing themselves.

Response to a planned intervention

I am working with a group of people all of whom are engaged in a number of different but related projects across a department. The group includes team leaders, team members and departmental heads. We are meeting first thing in the morning for what has become a regular event: talking together without any defined agenda about whatever matters to us before continuing with the work of the day. Typically, as people collect coffee or water and gather papers, there is a buzz of conversations before quiet settles among the group, then a pause swells before someone starts to speak. On this occasion the buzz has hardly died down before one member of the gathering launches into a proposal about how some future work may be organized which he and another member of the group have been talking about. He continues, gesturing towards his ally, who soon joins in to elaborate on their proposal. Less than a couple of minutes have transpired before I am aware of sensing something ‘odd’. Almost simultaneously a colleague says: ‘I get the impression you have rehearsed this.’ Exactly! I recognize my strange sensations in his comment. There are various mutters and exclamations of agreement around the room: ‘Your voice was different.’ ‘It felt unreal.’ ‘I didn’t understand what was going on.’ Clearly, many people had experienced something unusual. Yes, Steve, one of the pair, said that he and George had prepared themselves to the point of agreeing that one would begin before the usual chit-chat had quite died down and that the other would come in soon after. They explained, ‘We wanted to see if we could develop discussion on the potential projects here rather than by using the bulletin boards as we had begun to do yesterday.’ Rather than pick up this aspect of what the two are saying, many people seem most interested in the various responses evoked during those early couple of minutes. Time is given to making sense of this together and this entails making sense of the further feelings and thoughts stirred as this process continues. The term ‘incident’ becomes appropriate because of the significance afforded to the early experience of ‘something different’ during the subsequent discussion.

People begin to voice a range of responses to the early moments of the meeting: the person who had first called attention to the ‘rehearsed quality’ of the two early speakers said he felt offended by some kind of ‘misuse’ of the meeting; someone else felt confused, not being able to follow or understand what the two speakers were getting at; someone else felt comforted that two people had prepared a joint approach; someone else was amused that the two were ‘giving us a little play’. Those who spoke had all perceived something unusual and had responded variously. As they articulated those responses, the meaning they and others were making of what was happening continued to evolve. The range of feelings expressed provoked further responses: was this a light or a serious matter? In what way did all this matter? Someone pointed out that there were always conversations going on in which people developed intentions jointly and severally to bring up some subject at the morning meeting. Were we trying to say that there was something wrong with that? Why not plan and prepare? It was, after all, a way of being productive. Yes, but in this particular setting, another responded, we come to find out what is on our own and others’ minds in a spontaneous way and this feels as though it breaches an unspoken trust. Elaborating, another said that usually whoever spoke did not know what response they would receive, whereas this time there was less risk; the speaker knew that there would be a prepared response to his opening gambit. Someone else said that they realized they felt quite angry, tricked or cheated. Someone was reminded of an occasion in which a friend had appeared at his door, been invited in for a cup of coffee and then during the conversation introduced a prepared pitch for a pyramid selling scheme. He had felt that their friendship was being abused in that the meaning of the invitation into his house was suddenly changed without his acquiescence; he had been deceived. Someone else pointed out that whatever they had prepared, the two allies were probably now surprised by the turn of the conversation. Someone wondered what either of the two were making of what had developed, noticing that both had been sitting for a while with smiles on their faces. One announced that he was feeling rather satisfied with what had been provoked by trying something different; the other said that he realized some people were offended and he wanted to acknowledge that, but there had been no malicious intent in their ‘intervention’. Some thought that the two guys were impervious to the significance of what was being raised, others felt that too much was being made of this, and a couple of people said that they were beginning to feel angry that what was allowed or not in the work of the group at this meeting was being ‘policed’. The atmosphere was alive with tension, feeling and interest, and a number of people said that it felt risky to venture further comments, although they did so.

At one point someone said that what was a really unusual feature of this discussion was that the ‘incident’ we were exploring was a commonplace of organizational life – ‘I’m always in situations where I am aware of the difference between more studied and more spontaneous contributions to communication; the difference is that we rarely call attention to the experience.’ After this the conversation took a further reflective turn. What was the difference between a well-intentioned ‘experiment’, a ‘deception’, a ‘manipulation’, a ‘difference’ in the sense of something unfamiliar, an innovation? Someone recognized that we were actually in the process of negotiating our way ‘live’ through these issues and their political and ethical ramifications. It was pointed out that it was one of those with more authority in the group who had first expressed himself as being offended. Someone else said that he was feeling that a ‘rule’ was being created: don’t ever do that (whatever ‘that’ was). Someone noticed that an ideal of the morning gathering as a ‘sacred’ space of trust and authenticity was being offered. Was this an idealization and with what consequences? Another remarked that we were discussing ethics. What is good intention? He was reminded of a distinction he found interesting between meaning well, doing well and achieving well. Another recalled the films of the director David Mamet and his perennial interest in ‘truth’ and ‘fakery’ in human communication. He mentioned a particular film, The Spanish Prisoner, in which Mamet explores the language of business and the work of the con artist. He is asking intriguing questions about how we come to trust one another and ourselves, how we develop mutual confidence and what happens when we lose our bearings in this. We are always acting, but when we literally ‘act’ and lose our spontaneity, we run the risk of losing our potential to recognize ourselves as we engage the recognition of others. An example of the momentary alienation of such experiences was the way several people did not ‘recognize’ Steve’s (the very first speaker’s) voice, and Steve admitted that he was aware of sounding strange to himself. Neither the two protagonists nor their initial ‘audience’ believed in the ‘play’; we were not convinced by the communicative activity we were engaged in together.

Predictability and spontaneity

Why have I given so much space to recounting these exchanges? I am suggesting that such a story potentially offers insights into what is relatively undiscussed in many management books devoted to change. The insights are, first, that change in the organization of personal and social identities emerges spontaneously in processes of communicative action, and second, that our experience of ourselves as spontaneous actors is implicated in these processes. I will look at how circumstances such as I have described might be understood by two influential writers. What aspects might they draw attention to and what might they ignore or discount?

Take first Edgar Schein’s (1985) influential account of how organizational cultures are formed and how leaders should think about managing cultural change in organizations. He points to critical incidents or marker events in the life of organizational groupings. He proposes that a critical incident is an occasion of shared emotional reaction and raised anxiety. He takes care to explain that ‘shared’ here does not mean that people feel the same way, but that all have witnessed the behaviour of some members and the responses of others, and all can refer to this later. Such experiences, he claims, define a group at the emotional level, and culture is created in the articulation of what the experience has actually been and what it means. This articulation, if it ‘solves’ significant issues for the group’s continuation, is what Schein identifies as acts of leadership and culture creation. Those incidents that arouse strong feelings and are then definitively dealt with constitute the stories handed down and offered to newcomers to induct them into the group. These bids to make meaning he understands as individually motivated, intentional acts which produce ‘group products’ of value to the group ‘as a whole’. He is adamant that all change is motivated and that although the actual outcome m...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Contributors
• Series preface
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: working live
• Editors’ introduction to Chapter 2
• 2 Theatre, improvisation and social change
• Editors’ introduction to Chapter 3
• 3 Risk and ‘acting’ into the unknown
• Editors’ introduction to Chapter 4
• 4 Presence and spontaneity in improvisational work
• Editors’ introduction to Chapter 5
• 5 Leading in the moment: taking risks and living with anxiety
• 6 Complex responsive processes as a theory of organizational improvisation
• Index