Speaker A Issue because I wanted to talk that a bit in with encouraging about reflective practitioners and that whole as it reflects a bit more on practitioner side of things. We've had a lot of really good discussion about content theory, we've got the book and so on. I would like to share with you a little bit about why I started in this field and why I continue working in this field. And as a student in the 1950s. Warren talked a little bit the other day on Pinson about the sort of things that the ideals that we had, particularly during social science, and what really drew me to the work that Elliott was doing at the university of all the work of it was quite clearly an essential part of the work, the underlying values. I haven't heard people talk about such things as well, the concept of felt fair, felt fair, just the notion of felt fairness. There was some sort of universal notion amongst people of what was fair. That drew me the way we saw the Look Around page, the discussions that went on around what's social justice and how do you build trust in organizations. And of course people resist, such as they would call them now, strap lines as non paranormal, what is it, paranoidogenic institutions, business attraction. So all of those issues grew me to be interested in what's going on, what's happening. And the fact that this work was cross disciplinary, it didn't fit perfectly into sociology, it didn't fit perfectly into psychology, really about building social institutions, which I was interested in doing. The second thing actually probably even more radical side of it was not so much the content, but the process was the methodology of social analysis and the fact that the institute was founded and known primarily for the social analytics methodology. My background as well is encyclopedia analysis, which is also a methodology. And I was extremely interested in method of social inquiry that had at its heart the notion of invitation. We didn't go out telling people what they ought to do or how they ought to behave, but we actually waited for invitations to explore people what it is their concerns were. And obviously this has parallels with the clinical notion of being invited in to discuss something. And the thing I really also like and like to this day about that methodology is that it is founded on uncertainty. You never know what's going to happen and if you find that fun and if you find that exciting and if you prepare to put aside and your answers and so on and just go and explore that with somebody, it's really a great journey to go on. It could be a bit scary, but I like that and I like the consistency of the methodology, carrying with it some of the uncertainty which was also discussed in the theory. But one of the things about working with Elliot, as many of you know, is his rather robust style in argument and on reflection interesting in working with Elliot was the content of Elliot arguing was always highly rigorous and along the lines of being very clear, precise definition. But your experience of being with him and arguing with him is extremely emotional. So relating to him actually did carry the combination which I think is essential leadership by the way, of the rational and the emotional. You got the passion from him. One of the things that I think would be astounding would be if you ever asked somebody to say did you know Ali? Did you ever work with him or did you meet him somebody to hmm not sure. So Elliot formed a argument very interesting to argue and discuss with him as a colleague as opposed to see him working with social clients. And one of the things that was great was the nature of his argument which was usually to say the most outrageous thing he could think of as assertively as possible and then wait for the argument. Unfortunately that often put people off because all the serious or that was that was it, that was what he thought. Whereas for many of us that was the key to starting the debate, starting the discussion. What we're really talking about here is the conditions under which if we're going to have successful relationships, of course we need the practitioner who understands the theory but we need a practitioner also who understands process and can manage the process and a relationship with a client who's committed to both. Because in my view this is the case, whether that's in BIOS or that you look at production of knowledge that ends up in requisite organization and the various books that people have written, it's a result of a series of conversations, arguments, discussions that trigger in us ideas and challenge us to think further and to write further. And that's why I like social analysis because if you enter into that relationship, into a social process, not quite sure where it's going to go, but the chances are you will discover something and hopefully you're going to discover something pretty interesting and helpful. However, because of the unusualness of that approach and perhaps slightly because of the style that Elliot and maybe some of us adopted, there is a danger, there was a danger that that could be perceived as dogmatic. And what I want just to say not necessarily huge concerns of this tense, but just I'd ask you to reflect on this process and the extent to which we must be careful about ending up in this situation. And this is a situation that is not necessarily I wasn't intending this to look like this is what we're trying to do. But I'm now looking through the lens, through the perceptions of the people in the organizations or institutions where we work. And right now I've come across all of these in organizations. We've probably been celebrating some pretty successful work here. But also from my point of view last night was interesting code ethics. One of the comments that came up was the amount of harm. I don't think anyone intentionally goes into anywhere to do harm. Yes, I'm going to go in there and really damage people. No, but actually if you look around the organization you will find in parts of organizations or ask the question there is complaints and experiences of people but they say the language is used inflexibly this is not just a working definition but is the absolute definition and there shall be no other. As opposed to what I believe in terms of the precision of definition is critical. If I happen to use a slightly different word or phrase in one organization to the other, that doesn't bother me too much. It depends what people hear in that organization and what is helpful in that organization. Language can be used as power. We have services, we have a few little rules as well. One of them is to never use the phrase level ones, level twos and language like that. That's what I mean by language use power. And the paradox is that language concepts which were designed and intended to be liberating for people to use their capabilities end up being experienced as putting people in boxes, as limiting them and demeaning them. So there was a concern from my point of view about where language sits and gets used like that. Where people then experience this is about being right or the majority sense of requisite, not in the sense that we really discussed here of how people experience it, being told this is the right way to do it. People experience they're not involved in the dialogue, they're not involved in the process, social process and where if you're not careful, people experience it. What's the purpose of all this work? To implement the model. Rather look at what is the purpose of implementing the model, what are we getting? So I just invite people to look more and consider the collaborative process. And that was term used as well as social analysis. I think it's a good term, collaborative process between ourselves, between us and the CEO, executive and the executive of the organization to understand the differences. And I think it's very important we've got the modeling between executive authorities and what we mean by support work model is really clear that what I'm doing is support work. So a couple of going back to the symbolism of language, a couple of things that we don't use we never use the phrase working with the executive, if I were you. Never use that. Or what you should do is what we're there to do, I believe, is to work alongside the CEO of the executive team and help them think through work, through issues and problems of their making, of their concern. And it was a lovely little microcosm art. Are you here yesterday when Art was talking about how he's invited out the him to look at the ease of organization. Went through that sort of relationship. The other thing just want to briefly talk about is that we've developed the features that are in the book and explain that have been developed since the sort of late, mid 1980s really worked with some of the models that actually help you or certainly help us understand how the work is perceived and how we are perceived in the organization. We've talked about the values and myths and so we tried to build a little bit on original values work. We use this Values Continue, which was talked about values last night. And I think I'm not terribly bothered at the moment about whether people think they're five or ten or whatever. There was one mentioned last night which is integrity is probably covered by two or three of those. But what we're saying here you can recognize as the ones that I talked about earlier that proven to the work values of the Fair Trust, for example. Very clearly there. One of the things I find interesting about using the values continuum to check perceptions is that it's very often you find the case that when people look at six steps, obviously one is much more important than the other. Obviously trust isn't it much more important than the others? That is less of course you're in the church in which case they're all most valued. Obviously loving is much more important than the other life or working in the army which we were doing and they said oh it's nice and obviously courage is much more important than the others. So we're not trying to say there's any hierarchy in those studies, but what we just use them for is to ask people in the organization or understand how people in the organization see the work and see the work of the organization. So we analyze systems and behaviors against those values and some of them stand out more values than others. So we talk to people about compensation systems, for example, what's the value of the event that comes out there? Obviously we talk about disciplinary procedures. We usually need a conversation about possibly courage or dignity. We talk of safety systems in an organization. We're probably talking about loving or unloving. So these are just partly the emotional content that people bring to bear with how they feel about the organization, how they feel treated by the organization, their views of what we're doing. Last point I'd like to make about my concerns requisite organization or our theories and models in practice we also use another tool to look at the systems of an organization and we divide the systems into two groups. One of the tools which is to look at fairly simple things systems of differentiation and systems of equalization. And some of the presentations and the discussions in the last few days there's been a little bit of a dig and drive with some of the teamwork staff and no hierarchy and so on, it doesn't work. Reminded me, without leadership structures and so on, we can ridicule that, but we can actually say in the social what are people asking for here? What is it that is behind that question and that desire? And so we talk about the systems of equalization and differentiation because the systems of equalization in an organization are the systems that show that we are, that we are community that don't differentiate amongst us and to say essentially we're the same. So when we go out there and have our lunch or dinner or whatever, there isn't a queue over here, little fours above, over here, we all have access, but we all have access in the same way. So therefore, systems of community, the systems of differentiation are the systems that say I am and are equally important. They're the ones that recognize how each of us is different from each other and equally important in the organization. To get right, we have a little simple model again, that says all systems of differentiation should be linked back to the work to be done. And if they're not, they will be perceived negative beyond value. In other words, if you haven't got a work reason for a system of differentiation, you will get negative response from some people in the organization about that. So a lot of our work, the major pieces of work that we've done over the years, have involved quite significant analysis in the organization discussion with people about these two types of systems. And if you change anyone, you put a system from one side to the other, moving across the boundary without realizing you affect the whole of the workforce by definition, because either you're turning two or more groups one, or you're breaking up the community. And if you don't realize that you're doing that for the system superintendent, you can get enormous difficulty and you will get an emotional response completely. So we use these models in order to try and understand the organization. But the point I'm trying to make with this is that we have to be a bit careful because if you look at this organization design, what are the two major concepts here? Levels of work and human capabilities. Both the two fundamental systems of differentiation in an organization, there's not a balancing with the system. Now, I'm not being critical, really important work, very important for all organizations. But again, they have to be a bit careful. Therefore we are not seen to be only concerned with differentiation, only concerned with showing how people are different to each other. Because what that leads to, which is the biggest problem for me, is a confusion between human worth and the worth of my work. And if you get that model, then you won't be building institutions of social justice. We need to be very clear that there's a difference between the value of a person, in a general sense, in an equal sense, in the organization where people are treated equally with dignity and respect, no matter who they are and being realistic about what they can contribute what we can contribute with regard to our capability and where we are in our development and in the organization. And part of that for me is just really being clear about some disciplined thinking in this culture. So just like to end with a colleague, put up this little model of consulting. I don't know if any of you seen this before. You saw consultants tend to fall into three groups. What drives you? Mercenary. Fairly obvious. What drives you? Money, revenue getting work. Mechanic. Mechanic is somebody who just likes to work and delight in the technical content of it. Any of you work in It, you'll recognize that in a lot of the It projects or It people love to tell you what all of this equipment or not. Pleasure is telling you how complex. And so I'm not being curious about this or there's missionary which is go out and save the world. The world must know about this stuff. Now, I think most of us here possibly actually, whether explicitly or implicitly identify with the underlying values, does suggest probably there's not needing distribution in this room. Quite a lot of us are close to that missionary being missionary practitioners. And so that's one of the reasons that I have to concern that in that missionary zeal we don't confuse some of this material, that we don't forget what the core processes are that produce the knowledge, the collaborative processes. We don't necessarily go out in the field and tell people all over the place how they really ought to be using this material and also confuse it with belief systems and confuse it with religious discussions. Do you believe in that? Jack stuff? Very easy to slip into that and make it a matter of belief and to reinforce that by working with inappropriate symbolic language bodies in terms of Apollo disciples and so on. So just to finish just the points, I really think process isn't important as the content or the relationship between the process and content is important. And the social analytic process in particular has been enormously wonderful in creating knowledge that I don't believe would have been created in other ways. But I think we really need to know the difference between being disciplined and rigorous and being dogmatic. I think that difference is something that Elliot times as well.
