MANAGEMENT IN ACTION

By: Ron Wiener

Introduction

Action methods are used as a way of overcoming 'Death by PowerPoint' in management training or organisational consultancy. Many of the techniques described below originate from the work of Jacob Moreno, who developed role theory, sociometry (the analysis of connections between people in a group) and psychodrama (a group therapeutic method).

Lao Tzu a 17th century Chinese philosopher said:

"If you tell me I will listen,
If you show me I will see,
If you let me experience I will learn."

Outlined below are some examples of using action methods in different management contexts. For any of them to work successfully the facilitator needs to have spent some time creating a safe working space by the use of appropriate warm-ups.

One's Company as a Film

Imagine an advertisement for your company as an advertisement for a film. What would the title be? Once you have the title what would the strap line be? i.e. the words which tell you what sort of film or company it is. This is a type of mission statement.

A poster for the film, in addition to the title and strap line, will also have a photo showing a key scene from the film. What would be in your photo? Get some small groups to pose the photos.

Finally a film would have a trailer, which shows a seminal moment from the film. If you wanted to show your customers what they could expect from your company what would be the scene they would see as a trailer? Alternatively, what would the trailer be if it showed the internal experience of working for the company, as opposed to selling the company to customers - what are the differences between the image the company is trying to project and the reality? Again get small groups of participants to enact the scenes.

Stakeholder Analysis

Choose somebody or an object to represent your company. Place them in the centre of the room. Then determine who the main stakeholders are. This is also called outlining a company's 'social atom'. Get a person to stand and hold each of these positions. Their importance will be indicated by their closeness to the company. This is called 'sculpting'. Also where they are looking will show their focus. Get people to speak from the positions they hold saying what their experience has been in dealing with the company or what they want from the company. If only 1 or 2 people know what the views of the stakeholders are, get them to speak from the different positions. Allow dialogues to develop between key actors.

It's also possible to 'expand the system' by asking what external factors - government policy, trading conditions etc. - are impinging on the 'social atom'. These positions can also be held by people so that their viewpoint also gets heard.

The same technique can be used to explore the sub-roles which go to make up the role of a 'leader'. A chair can be used to hold the leader role and then participants volunteer the different sub-roles - 'skilled negotiator', charismatic visionary' - and take positions around the chair indicating their importance by their closeness or distance from the chair. This would be called the 'cultural atom' of the 'leader'.

A further use of sculpting would be in undertaking a PESTLE analysis (the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental external factors affecting an organisation's performance). Rather than this being a paper discussion exercise participants would hold these different factors and position themselves around a person or chair holding the role of the firm and dialogue in between themselves as to their relative importance in impacting on the team's performance. Other participants could join in as doubles or by holding each of the roles or factors as a sub group with a useful discussion taking place as they worked out what they had to say from that role.

Change Management

Use a metaphor to help people get a new stance on what needs to happen. One example would be to literally create, for example, a boat using the furniture in the room. If this company is a boat, what kind of boat is it? Then the questions would be related to what crew the boat needs to move to its new destination. Who would be the skipper? navigator? look out? etc. What will get in the way of the boat reaching its new port? Storms, reefs, sirens? What will need to happen on the boat to get past these obstacles?

Given that this is being written at the time of the World Cup an equally effective metaphor would be the football team. To be successful the team would need: a coach, a captain, forwards, defenders and a midfield. In addition there would be support staff such as medics and a physiotherapist, a headquarters with a Board and chairperson and scouts looking for new talent and observing the opposition to ascertain their strengths and weaknesses. To help the team there would be the latest sports technology to review each player's performance and that of the opposition so that tactics could be formulated. The issue of leadership would be paramount in how the coach managed to develop a team ethos from a collection of highly paid individuals. Again, the question would be, who plays these roles in your team or organisation and to what effect?

Teaching coaching or mentoring skills

Here we can use 'doubling'. Imagine there are the coach and the coachee. They are having a dialogue. However there is also an unspoken dialogue happening inside each of their heads. There are unexpressed feelings and thoughts which might well be determining what is happening in the actual spoken interchange. In this case one gets a participant to sit beside the coach and coachee and they give voice to the unspoken thoughts and feelings. This enriches the learning.

Time lines

These can be used for example in change management. One end of the room is six months ago, the centre is now and the far end of the room is six months time. People can be asked to place themselves in the middle and look back and reflect on the changes that have taken place. Sometimes it is useful to get people to mark key moments by finding objects and placing them in an appropriate position on the time line. If groups are stuck as to what do now then it makes sense sometimes to jump people to the future and ask them where they are and how they got there. This is sometimes called using 'surplus reality.'

Again time lines are useful when looking at a company's history. You can ask people in the order they joined the company to describe what the company was like when they came. Who was there? What was the atmosphere like? What were the crucial issues? Often this helps people in the present to make sense of what is going on by putting it into some sort of historical context.

Enacting scenes

Bringing problematic situations to life will enable people to experience arguments and counter arguments and rethink their position. A good example would be confronting resistance to change. All organisations are better equipped to resist change then to embrace it. So how to explore this?

Create a line of chairs down the middle of the room. On one side have 3 or 4 people to be change agents whose job it is to persuade the others as to the merits of whatever change it is they are bringing to the company. Allow the resisters, on the other side of the line of chairs, to voice their concerns - 'we've heard it all before', 'it's all words, and nothing ever changes' -then allow the change agents to try and alter the resisters' perspective. Swap or 'reverse' roles after a bit so people get to see both sides of the argument. Last time I did this exercise the change agents stopped trying to persuade and started removing objects out of a bag which intrigued the resisters who broke ranks to see what was on offer.

Working with issues of recruitment/selling

A room of 50 people interested in the topic. They are sitting in a large circle. Two people volunteer to be the recruiter/salespeople. They sell their company/product to the wider group who are in the role of potential purchasers. If the salespeople can persuade people to show an interest they move their chairs forward and give their reasons. The consultant also hears from the people who don't move. Other people get a go in the middle to try out different methods. Here we are creating an extended role play or 'sociodrama'

Team Building

Again the use of metaphor works well here. Get someone to sculpt the team as a: family, machine, swimming pool etc. Which image is chosen will depend on the type of work that the team does. Get others to readjust the sculpt until there is a majority view that this represents what the team is like. Get someone to double people in the different roles - 'I am the grandfather in this family. It sometimes feels to me that the younger generation have stopped listening to me'. This doubling enables difficult issues or feelings in the team to have a voice. People can then speak to one another in the allotted roles - 'As the swimming pool attendant I want you to stop jumping in.' By working one step removed from reality this will often enable difficult conversations to take place.

Concretising

This simply means turning a general statement into a specific thing that can be worked with. It is the answer to the question - 'Give me an example of what you mean'. Sometimes the consultant will initiate this. She might for example be aware of the 'elephant in the room' - the problem everyone knows about but no one dares talk about - and reflect - 'am I right in thinking there is an unspoken problem somewhere in this room.' If there is some agreement she might get people to show how big it was or what shape it had or simply to name it as an animal. It can therefore be worked with. 'If it is this big then what effect is it having on the team?'

Discrimination

Here the work of Augusto Boal is important. We can create an image of the discrimination and then work with that - 'what would need to happen to the image for the discrimination to disappear?' Or we could move into forum theatre where a scene of discrimination is enacted once. The second time through the audience can intervene to show how the outcome could have been different if an alternative action took place at the moment in the story.

Conclusion

The above are just some of the methods and techniques that can be used to vitalise training and consultancy work. If there is no energy then little happens or is retained.

References

Fox, J.(ed) (1987): The Essential Moreno, Springer Publishing N.Y. Schutzman, M & Cohen-Cruz, J. (eds) (1994): Playing Boal, Routledge, London Wiener, R. (1997): Creative Training, Jessica Kingsley 1997