Raising The Undiscussables LO9077

Christian Giroux (lmccgir@LMC.Ericsson.SE)
Tue, 13 Aug 1996 12:08:43 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to LO9054 -- was: Traditional Wisdom...
[Subject line changed by your host...]

Debbie Broome asks:

> There are many
> undiscussables occurring in our organizations and they impede our progress
> as learning organizations. I'm thinking that real change has to start at
> the individual level with a questionning of our assumptions and a
> viligence against our own defensiveness. As a manager, I continually try
> to stay open to critiques concerning how I may be impacting the
> organization and people. To be perfectly honest, it is difficult not to
> get defensive at times, even in subtle ways. How does one begin to
> discuss the undiscussables?

First, I just want to point out (and I'm probably not the only one) that
I'm also struggling with this defensiveness. Very often, at its less
subtle levels, it will translate (and that how I watch myself) into
denial, blame or excuses. We've made an unsuccessful attempt in our
company to start discussing the undiscussables at the middle management
level. Several reasons for the failure, amongst those, a poor explanation
of the subject (what undiscussables might be), and the goals of the
exercise, a lack of follow up by anyone (top and middle managers - the
exercise was really an attempt to open more communication lines between
the two levels), and the same people not taking responsibility for the
process (both at a personal and a company level).

As a middle manager, warned about these dangers, I started an attempt to
do it with the people working with me. I first explained why doing it
might turn out to be a valuable exercise, introduced the whole subject of
undiscussables in different ways and started some discussions with team
leaders (checking at every point if people wished to continue...I believe
this has to be a voluntary process).

When things worked, it was mostly triggered by discussions on the
left-hand column, and a common agreement that people could (or would) use
it when they deem it necessary. We had a cue: "I need to be leftie, here,
it seems to me that...".

However, only a handful of people actually gave the whole thing a chance.
It is very difficult to express what you have in your left hand column
skillfully (without making anyone defensive - but still raising an
undiscussable). Will and practice are two critical elements. Trust is
another, but I believe it is rarely sufficient as an initial condition. I
see it more as a by-product of discussing the undiscussables.

One thing I didn't try (and I might come to it) is experienced external
help. We're dealing with a very difficult subject and I always felt,
through this "experiment" that I needed help to understand subtelties,
intricacies and nuances in both the underlying theory and what the people
had to say in the few "open" discussions we had.

One thing is certain though, there is no one answer to the question.
Different "triggers" will work with different persons or group of persons.
I started with the theory (based on Argyris' Overcoming Organizational
Defenses)...

Christian

--

Christian Giroux lmccgir@lmc.ericsson.se System Support Manager, Technical Assistance Center Ericsson Research Inc. Montreal

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>