Control in Organisations
When in South Africa recently I was talking to a business- owner about his need for greater control of the micro-activity in his medium-sized enterprise, down to the level of wanting to control conversations between employees; as he said; “in the interests of efficiency”. We explored what lay behind this need and came to the conclusion he did not like being unaware of what was going on between his people; he wanted to manage the space in-between individuals who are working in his organisation to maximise his investment in his labour-force.
I have experienced such need before in enterprise-owners in both the UK and the Middle East. Perhaps the most extreme example was a particular business-owner wanting to track and plot where his employees where by tracking the location of their mobile phones at all times. He even recruited more people to conduct the tracking; a case of sacrificing effectiveness in a
vain-search for efficiency and control. In our attempts to exercise control, in the search for optimum- efficiency, we often damage effectiveness. And if we think our employees do not know they are being monitored then we
are only fooling ourselves. They know and they will not trust you if you do not trust them. The qualities of our relating with each other and the interactions between us are a result of complex political, social, chaotic and, more often than not, uncontrollable activities. These dynamics relationships shift every day; often every hour. Human relations are fluid; forming and re-forming, changing over time. Patterns emerge and these
patterns are the actual culture of a group of people; be it overall organisational culture or specific sub-cultures in teams, departments or divisions. The art of leadership can transform and shift cultures, but management dictate or intrusive micro-management practices
will not be successful. Gaining greater control within an organisation explicitly demands exhibiting leadership competencies; acting in an organisational context to change this context and definitely change yourself in the process. Gaining greater control implies surrendering control; a grand paradox for all leaders to get used to and enjoy. No single agent or person can control an enterprise or change an organisation. Greater-control and transformational-change come about when people act differently together; numerous interacting agents producing overall different patterns of talking about things and doing things differently across their teams, divisions and the overall organisation.
These dynamic-processes, forming new-patterns, more often than not create anxiety, not only with employees but also with business-owners and senior management. Gaining greater control means living with this paradox of letting-go and releasing-control. So often people sense meaning in their individual roles but they also sense meaninglessness when they lose focus on their purpose (what needs to be done) and just as importantly, how
these things should be done. In reality, this presence of anxiety is normal, healthy and essential for the emergence of novelty and change, through which greater control is released from different interactions between
people rather than dictat from the owner or senior manager.
How we talk with each other and what is written, how things
said both verbally and in writing are interpreted, affects our
cognitive thinking, our attitudes and our behaviours. How we
think and feel about things within organisations depends not
on instructions from the boss but from our interactions with
the people around us; it is these interactions which develop
personal senses of reality.
Gain control by releasing control, aiding individuals to explore
new senses of reality. From enriching work-lives through
effective job-design, engagement-strategies, enlighten employees
by articulating purpose and vision, empower people
and enable individuals through effective devolution of power