A Complexity Perspective
Consultants Experiences Related to (Their Own) Change
Dynamics
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting different results (O’Hanlon 1999).
I am not fond of the word ‘psychological’. There is no such
thing as the psychological (Jean Paul Sartre cited in: Laing
1969).
8.1
Introduction
Complexity science is studying the nature of dynamics in interacting people and
suggests that ‘order emerges for free’ without any central or governing control or
intention when the whole is operating in ‘edge of chaos’ conditions (Shaw 1997,
p. 235). Complexity science invites us to think more in wholes and see organisations
as ecosystems. Central to this perspective is the view that organisations can be seen
as networks of multiple, interacting individuals and groups that are fairly autonomous (Dent 2003). Each individual/group is constantly acting and reacting to what
the other individuals/groups are doing. Interacting people are co-adaptive, taking
‘mutual advantage of each other in order to change more effectively’ (Brown and
Eisenhardt 1998). Organisations whose members see themselves as part of an
ecosystem are often highly decentralised, collaborative (focus on relationships)
and adaptive and see change as normal and value based (Dent 2003). In this regard,
Stacey argues that self-organising processes are to be found primarily in what he
calls an organisation’s ‘shadow system’—that is, the complex web of interactions in
which social, covert, political and psychodynamic (informal) systems coexist in
tension with the legitimate (formal) system (Stacey 1996). For a generative OD
interventionist, this means actively working with a paradox—on the one hand,
working in an official role, being part of a legitimate control system, facilitating an
intended change effort, while on the other hand, simultaneously participating in a
(informal) shadow system in which no one is ‘in control’ (Shaw 1997, p. 235).
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8 A Complexity Perspective
In this chapter, we go into, in particular, the ‘complex responsive processes of
human relating’ or in short, the ‘complex responsive process’. This specific complexity perspective was developed by Stacey, Griffin and Shaw as a way of thinking
that emphasises the self-organising patterning of communicative action (Stacey et al.
2000). This way of thinking, as Shaw explains, invites us to ‘stay in the movement of
communicating, learning and organising, to think from within our living participation in the evolution of forms of identity’ (Shaw 1997, p. 235). Our blindness to the
way we participate in fabricating the conversational realities of organising is
compounded by the difficulty we have in thinking from within, in thinking as
participants, in thinking in process terms and, above all, in thinking paradoxically.
Another way of thinking about the issues raised by our participation, our interdependence and our contextual embeddedness is tackled in recent developments in
systems thinking and particularly in second-order intervening on a LIII learning
level as introduced in Chap. 6. In this regard, it is a matter of course that the
interventionist is part of the picture when studying the recursive nature of what is
going on between those who intervene and those who are supposed to be changing
(Vanderstraeten 2001). With this point, we argue in this chapter that the so-called
objective assumptions are to be replaced by assumptions that reckon with the
existence of a co-constructed world. Following Bateson in this, our knowledge of
what we think we know is the end result at that moment of our inner perceptions of
what we think we have learned and think we know as a basis for how to change
others. In other words, our inner world is a metaphor for the outer world or as
Bateson formulated it, ‘[e]ach person is his own central metaphor’ (Bateson 1972a).
In this chapter, we explore the complexity perspective regarding the practice of
consultancy and intervening. In doing so, we will introduce and explore the
following:
• The historical background of this field, how it relates to change and changing, the
contemporary debate in the consultancy literature and its main components as a
scientific field of research
• How to look at change from a first-person perspective by introducing a narrative,
with which we try to make a personal experience meaningful in such a way that
the reader can stand in a consultant’s shoes and relate to their own experiences
• How research practices such as autoethnographic research and community
inquiry can be used as an approach to research to describe and systematically
analyse personal interactive experience in order to understand cultural experience
in relation to other perspectives regarding this experience
• Looking into the first encounters between a consultant and a client, by taking a
closer look at the particular challenges and dynamics that are part of the
conversations regarding a contracting and the preliminary scoping of the system
between a consultant and a client
• The concept of a ‘pseudo exploration’, which can cause things to be really
complex, giving rise to insurmountable obstructions
8.2 Introducing a Complex Responsive Process Perspective
289
We start this chapter with a short overview of the development of complexity
theories in relation to organisational change. In Paragraph 8.3, we introduce a
personal narrative from a consultant’s perspective in which we discuss his inner
world and how it reflects on the way he intervenes in the outer world. It is a hindsight
reflection on a series of interventions undertaken in the health-care organisation as
introduced in Chap. 1, originally written together with Thijs Homan as an article for
the Journal of Organizational Change Management. In the same paragraph, we stay
with the narrative and discuss the research method and emerging themes and reflect
upon the things learned in the last chapters. In Paragraph 8.5, we introduce some of
the main challenges during the first encounters between a consultant and a client
system. The chapter closes with some reflections, a recap of the main findings and
some key discussion points.
8.2
Introducing a Complex Responsive Process Perspective
Understanding the complexity of organisations has been a long-standing concern of
organisation theory, starting in 1948 with Wiener’s ‘cybernetics’ (Wiener 1961),
which approached complexity as the science of control and communication processes (Boulanger 1969). In the early days, cybernetics had a crucial influence on the
birth of various modern sciences, such as control theory, computer science, artificial
intelligence and especially systems theory (Heylighen and Joslyn 2001). The basic
idea behind these modern theories is that a complex organism could not be truly
understood by breaking it down into and studying its apparent parts—to do so was to
overlook the crucial relationship between its components (Fitzgerald 1999). Later
on, through the 1960s, cybernetics as a field came to focus more specifically on goaldirected (social) systems that have some form of control relation, emphasising
autonomy, self-organisation, cognition and the role of the observer in modelling a
system. These so-called second-order cybernetics offer insights in how human
wholes use information to steer themselves towards their goals while counteracting
various disturbances (Boulanger 1969). As such, cybernetics promised to teach us a
great deal about human communication and changing organisations, but the promise
has been unfulfilled yet (Tompkins 1982).
During the 1990s, there was an explosion of interest in complexity as it relates to
organisations and strategy. Many of the articles that were published in this period
stem from attempts by meteorologists, biologists, chemists, physicists and other
natural scientists to build mathematical models of systems in nature (Gleick 1988;
Styhre 2002). In the process, a number of different but related nonlinearity theories
have emerged, the key ones being ‘chaos theory’ (Lorenz 1993), ‘dissipative
structures theory’, (Prigogine and Stengers 1984; Prigogine 1996) the theory of
‘complex adaptive systems (CAS)’ (Kauffman 1993) and the ‘complex responsive
theory’ (Stacey et al. 2002). Many of these theories arose from studies in the natural
sciences (e.g. Prigogine’s work on chemical reactions) (Prigogine and Stengers
1984), mechanical or electrical systems (e.g. Kaufmann’s studies of electrical
circuits) (Kauffman 1993) or animals (e.g. Goodwin’s studies of ant behaviour)
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(Goodwin 1994). According to Stacey (2003a), the main difference between these
theories is that chaos and dissipative structure theories seek to construct mathematical models of systems at the macro level, while complex adaptive systems and his
own complex responsive theory attempt to model the same phenomena by using an
agent-based approach. This means that instead of formulating rules for the whole
population, these theories seek to formulate rules of interaction for the individual
entities making up a system in which issues are incorporated such as voluntary
behaviour, participation and reflexivity (MacIntosh and MacLean 2003). Thus, these
latter complexity theories can and should be seen as a continuation of earlier
‘cybernetic’ and ‘systems’ efforts rather than a complete paradigm shift.
Compared with the complex responsive theory, the traditional theory of ‘complex
adaptive systems’ (CAS) sees the individual actor constituted as a rule-driven agent,
reacting to other nearby agents, who in their turn react to the focal agent being
informed by their own ‘internal’ rules (MacIntosh and MacLean 2001). A frequently
used metaphor for this way of reasoning is ‘a flock of starlings showing amazing and
unexpected global patterns’ (Homan 2016, p. 495). In the CAS framework, this
emergent collective behaviour is explained as a non-linear result of countless local
interactions of the rule-governed individual starlings (Homan 2016, p. 495). In
comparison, in the ‘complex responsive process theory’, attention is paid to the
micro-dynamics of local interactions and the ways global patterns can arise from
local interacting agent behaviour. Focusing on the profound understandings of group
and social processes, the complex responsive process research encourages
researchers to take seriously their own daily experiences (Stacey and Griffin 2005,
p. 35). For this, researchers of the complex responsive perspective use narratives
and develop reflective and reflexive inquiries and arguments about the way their
experiences can be understood.
Narratives are spoken or written accounts of connected events, making them
stories. From a research and interventionist perspective, narratives are important sense-making devices when facing uncertainty, helping people to structure their thoughts and bringing them into conversation with others. Although
narrative analysis has received some attention from scholars, it is still an
unexplored frontier (Van Ooijen et al. 2018). As Polster argues, much of the
verbal exchange between people during interventions is the telling of stories.
These stories report the critical events of a person’s/group’s life as seen,
ordered and interpreted by themselves, and as such they “reveal personal
qualities, replicate previous experience, accentuate conflict, communicate a
connectedness among people and evoke the drama of the experiences from
which the self is formed” (Polster 1995). The awareness that results can
redirect the perceptions of the person/group and increase the contact with the
self, others and the context. Once a theme has been identified, work can begin
on assisting the storyteller to reflect on the story in which new thematic
connections encourage new perceptions of the self, the other and the environment, that is, new perceptions of ‘reality’ (Wheeler 1998).
8.3 Introducing a Narrative from a Consultant’s Perspective (Van Nistelrooij and. . .
291
The use of narratives implies that the ‘unit of analysis’ in the complex responsive
process approach is the experience of interacting with others in local social settings.
Here the concept of complexity is not used to describe the context ‘in’ which the
individuals interact but as a fundamental attribute of the quality of the interaction of
interdependent participants (Stacey 2003b). Taking a complex responsive perspective provides a radically different way of conceptualising how organisations change.
This shifts a consultant’s attention away from the macro-perspective of change
management to the ‘messy’ micro-processes of our own interaction producing
unpredictable emerging differences and changes. Homan links the complex responsive ontology to ontological discourses like Alvesson’s ‘local positionism’
(Alvesson 2003); he positions it at the local emergent side of Deetz’s metatheory
of representational practices (Deetz 1996) and also relates it to Hardy and Clegg’s
categorisation of the dialogic approach, emphasising the role of researcher reflection
and reflexion (Hardy and Clegg 1997). As we will further elaborate on in the next
section, what the complex responsive process research approach has in common
with organisational ethnography (Ybema et al. 2009) is its primary focus of study:
the everyday experience of living and working in an organisation.
8.3
Introducing a Narrative from a Consultant’s Perspective
(Van Nistelrooij and Homan 2019)
The following narrative is built around an incident that took place during the ‘healthcare organisation’ case we introduced before in Chap. 1. With this narrative, we try
to make a personal experience meaningful in such a way that the reader can stand in a
consultant’s shoes and vicariously learn about and relate to their own experiences.
Following the first section in which we introduce the incident, we interpret the
incident briefly from contemporary consultancy literature. After this, we go into
the research methodology, introducing first-person inquiry and autoethnography as
an entrance for looking inwards. After the methodology section, we describe briefly
the follow-up of the incident and the main emerging themes we pick up during the
‘community inquiry’ sessions with several Dutch senior consultants. After a short
discussion, we end the narrative with some reflections and conclusions.
8.3.1
Introducing the Incident
“You called it ‘a structure taboo’, God knows why, but as far as I am concerned,
there is no taboo with regard to talking about structure here,” exclaimed the male
half of the two-headed board of directors directly to me (the consultant). He said this
during a collaborative large-group session in front of a full room of 40 executive
managers, all working in the same Dutch health-care organisation. When
confronted with this exclamation, it flashed through my mind: ‘Yeah, what do I
know?’ My gut feeling tells me that ‘structure’ was apparently not debatable.
Perhaps I picked it up during an earlier session with the preparation group or
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probably, and more likely, during one of the personal interviews I held with the
executives. I know for sure that I shared it on an earlier occasion with my client, the
same director who seems to use it now as something he could use against me in front
of the group. I was baffled. How should I respond? Is this something that all the
executives in the room know and share as ‘how things are’ or was it just something I
assumed? It was remarkably silent in the packed room, and I noticed that in reaction
to the emotional, somewhat angry and indignant words of the director, a sort of
shiver went through the audience. And not just through the audience—his direct way
of speaking clearly threw me off balance too. It felt as if everyone was looking at me,
thinking, ‘What will he say? Or was I imagining that?’ The silence continued, as
everyone was waiting for what would come next.
About 6 months before this incident happened, I (the consultant) accepted an
assignment from the two-headed board of directors. For my assignment, I was told
‘to help them [. . .] make the strategic apex of the institute function more effectively’.
Approximately 850 employees worked at the health-care organisation at that time,
attending to 2500 clients divided across eight different municipalities and
25 locations. Together with both directors, the executive managers—consisting of
heads of staff, branch managers and location managers—formed the strategic apex.
Both the directors and all the executives carried out tactical assignments on top of
their regular work. In fact, both directors quickly articulated that they wanted me to
help them to enter into a more constructive dialogue with the executive managers
about ‘what the new challenges in their work are’ and ‘why these challenges have
not been taken up’. According to the two directors, these challenges concern the
execution of tactical assignments. These tactical tasks were instigated by the
directors in order to bridge a vacuum between the strategical and operational level,
as a result of a reorganisation that was necessary. In their words, it was an act ‘to
clean up the administrative layer of regional managers and make the remaining
executive managers more responsible for the whole institute’.
The session did end happily—not because of what I did but because of my
hesitation to act, fundamentally doubting my own assumptions. This is the main
theme we will elaborate on in this section. Initially my assignment for this change
project made me enthusiastic. My role was to empower people, helping them break
out of what I saw as their ‘defensive routines’ (see Chap. 7). Some months before, I
started a dialogue with the whole system through a large-group intervention (Van
Nistelrooij et al. 2013). According to Letiche, health-care organisations seem to lack
a process both for engaging in dialogue and committing to doing so (Letiche 2008).
Such a dialogue requires the participants to take some time to step out of roles and
engage in a reflective process of exchanging impressions of what is occurring, what
is perceived to be at stake and what the context of the moment brings to bear. This
was exactly what I tried to realise with the first group intervention with a critical
mass of 200 people (see Chap. 5), which resulted in what I perceived as enthusiasm
to do something to break through the collectively felt impasse. Following the first
intervention, I conducted 20 interviews with a representative selection of the
40 executives, who were all invited to the aforementioned narrative session. This
meeting had a dialogical set-up, in which the results of the interviews were
8.3 Introducing a Narrative from a Consultant’s Perspective (Van Nistelrooij and. . .
293
comprehensively discussed. However, at the described moment in the narrative, it
did not feel as though a dialogue was taking place, and I experienced a deeply
unsettling mixture of conviction and indecisiveness. I felt confronted with the
boundaries of my own assumptions, hesitating to step outside my own pattern of
behaviour. As all these thoughts and emotions rumbled through my head in a split
second, I was reluctant to surrender my present self-construct, thinking I would put
myself in jeopardy and lose control of what—in my eyes—had to be done.
From an outsider’s perspective, the above-described incident may appear to be
easily resolved. Yet there is more in this moment than meets the eye. The personal
confrontation with my client, directly in front of a packed room of people, is
probably the most obvious. In general, situations like this do not usually make me
feel uncomfortable. Mostly, I handle them by asking the participants what they think
about the—in this case—statement of the board member; however, in this situation, I
hesitated to do so. I knew that his words had been picked up by the audience as a
message that was personally addressed to me—as something that I needed to take
care of personally, right at that moment. Yet, the theme of ‘organisation structure’
was beyond the formal scope of the assignment that I agreed upon with the director.
As we discuss in Interlude 8.1, the subject of scoping during the first encounters with
a client is not something to be spoken about lightly.
Interlude 8.1 The Importance of Scoping
In addition to our earlier introduction of this subject in Interlude 2.3, Interlude
3.6, and Interlude 5.3 and in Fig. 4.5, change is in the making when people
step outside the limited information that can be seen from any single place in
the system and shift towards developing an overview of the whole they are
(apparently) part of. It is amazing how quickly and easily behavioural change
can come with even a slight enlargement of our own perspective/context, as
this provides better, more complete and timelier information. As Meadows
warns us, it is a great art to remember that distinctions or boundaries are of our
own making (Meadows 2008). Finding a fitting context requires a diagnosis
that surpasses the immediate and goes beyond the initial reactions, beyond the
simple, beyond the ‘I’ and also beyond the mundane. This endeavour not only
requires the employees’ active participation but also that of management, or
even that of members of higher echelons as long as they have a stake or a
relevant perspective that relates to the purpose at hand. The premise here is that
by finding a fitting context, individuals will feel more attachment to the results
and outcomes, especially when there is a direct interaction with the members
of the higher echelons. This is a typical case of the so-called participation
dilemma (see Sect. 5.4.1)—management is necessary in order to reach selforganisation, not only in terms of providing the right space for co-inquiry but
also to enable management representatives to engage in the process themselves.
(continued)
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Interlude 8.1 (continued)
Donella “Dana” Meadows (1941 – 2001)
Was a pioneering American environmental scienst at M.I.T,
teacher, and writer. She is best known as lead author of the
influenal books The Limits to Growth and ‘Thinking in
Systems’ (2015). In this book the author leads readers through
the increasingly complex ways that feedback loops operate to
create self-organizing systems, in nature (from viruses to
redwood trees ) and human endeavor.
At the moment of the above incident, it seemed to me that, with the subject also
being out of scope, I could not say anything that would make sense whatsoever.
What is also interesting here is that what happened during the incident was
completely against my presumed role identity, underlying role assumptions and
convictions largely based on the publications of Schein (2009) and Argyris
(1991)—and contrary to the assignment to engage in a dialogue about the challenges
the participants face concerning tactical assignments.
8.3.2
Debates in the Consultancy Literature
Sturdy and his colleagues argue:
The success of the [consultancy] industry fuelled the belief that it was consultants who were
active and influential, a view that corresponded with the prevailing top-down depiction of
management innovation and knowledge. Consultants appeared to be powerful, high status,
new and important in what was happening in public- and private-sector organisational
reform. They were also relatively easy to identify, and, perhaps, identify with, as experts
and as abstract thinkers. Both management gurus and consultants seemed to have the
“answers” to increasingly complex problems and challenges (Sturdy et al. 2009a, p. 247).
Some scholars see consultants as instruments used by managers, as well as
symbolic and rhetorical devices, to legitimise their initiatives for impactful change
projects (Bouwmeester and van Werven 2011). Others see them as ‘experts’ in
‘managing transition processes’ (Goodstein and Burke 1991), by recognising and
accepting the disorganisation and momentarily reduced effectiveness that characterise this transition. Schein sees consultants in a ‘helping role’, based on the general
concept of ‘process consultation’ (Schein 2009, p. 147) as introduced earlier in
Interlude 4.3. This implies that a consultant should always select whatever intervention will be most helpful at any given moment, given all one knows about the total
situation. In this way of looking, great importance is attached to the development of a
cooperative relationship with the client, one that is based on mutual trust (Chalutz
Ben-Gal and Tzafrir 2011) and on the mobilisation of all stakeholders around the
8.3 Introducing a Narrative from a Consultant’s Perspective (Van Nistelrooij and. . .
Fig. 8.1 Consulting activities
seen from a ‘planned change’
and a ‘complexity’
perspective (cf. Shaw 1997,
p. 241)
295
From a planned change perspec- From a complexity perspective, the consultant:
tive, the consultant:
• Understands change as a consequence of designing and implementing a developmental strategy together with the client
system.
• Sees large-scale project plans
and political and ideological
control strategies as legitimate
ways of realising prior intentions.
• Contracts to deliver a predetermined unilateral objective, with
management favourite’ usual
suspects following a pre-plotted
roadmap.
• As an ‘expert’ practitioner
chooses a relative outside or
boundary (‘aboutness’) position
from which to diagnose, propose
and execute interventions.
• Tries to create a change in people’s individual and shared beliefs, values and attitudes.
• Understands change as unfolding in the ongoing paradoxical tensions during dialogical sessions, in which the
participants co-evolve.
• Dissuades managers from using inappropriate forms of
control to manage the anxieties raised when operating far
from certainty.
• Contracts for an emergent
process with a developing
learning infrastructure resulting in realising a coconstructed purpose.
• As a ‘generative’ practitioner
participates from a (‘withness’) position and becomes a
co-creator of organisational
change.
• Seeks to stimulate and provoke conditions in which people’s co-constructed worlds of
meaning that are spontaneously revised in interaction
• Focuses on relating and connect- • Focuses on changing interacing various individuals, groups,
tion patterns and feedback
and layers to the developing
loops operating at a local level
large scale (organisational)
within systemic configured
change.
groups that are representative
for the whole to change.
achievement of planned goals (Lalonde and Gilbert 2016). In the mainstream
literature on consultants and consultancy, the role and identity of the consultant
are generally clear: consultants are the ‘experts’ who know how to behave in a
pragmatic evidence-based way by rationally applying a universal set of applicable
tools and techniques (Kubr 2002).
At the time of the narrative, I identified myself as a process consultant (Schein
2009) who helps to design and implement beneficial dialogical interventions and
helps people to engage in learning processes (Argyris 1991). At that moment, this
way of thinking didn’t help me. I really felt overwhelmed by my feelings, incapable
of formulating my ideas in a coherent way, let alone rationally recalling suggestions
from academic literature on how to react adequately. Reflecting on this selfconception afterwards, I realise that one of my most emotional experiences during
the meeting described in the narrative was that it dawned upon me that my identity
and role were completely fluid and undetermined. In the joint reflections afterwards
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on what happened in the narrative, we realised that mainstream literature on consulting seems to assume a ‘reflective’ practitioner—one who is able to look at his
experiences in an emotionally detached way and rationally make decisions on how
to move forward while selecting and using academic literature as a guide. Yet, when
combing the literature about the possibility of reflecting in action, we came across
Stacey and Griffin, who state that in the process of distancing ourselves from our
actual experience, we rationally make invisible what we actually experience (Stacey
and Griffin 2005, p. 62). Moreover, as we went through other publications of these
authors, who assume a ‘complex responsive process perspective’ on organisations
(Stacey 2001), it became clear to us that the mainstream literature on consultancy
seems to promote an ‘aboutness’ perspective, focusing solely on thinking about the
client situation, helping the client and reflecting on the local dynamics at hand and
not on an ‘withness’ perspective (see Interlude 4.8).
As we recognised many elements of what happened in the narrative in Stacey and
his colleagues’ complex responsive process perspective, we decided to take up that
perspective to get a deeper understanding of what happened in the narrative. Central
in this complex responsive process perspective is, as Stacey puts it, the necessity to
take our everyday experience seriously and to move away from detached thinking
(Stacey 2007). From experience, Stacey means ‘the actual experience of interaction
in which we express hatred, aggression, greed as well as love, compassion and care’
(Stacey 2007), focusing not only on what consultants and leaders should do or ought
to be doing but also on what they are doing and experiencing in Lewin’s ‘here and
now’. Once involved in a local interaction, it is impossible to analytically step out of
it to rationally observe and diagnose what is going on. In the complex responsive
process perspective, thoughts, emotions and bodily reactions are regarded as being
co-constituted in interaction dynamics, making the stance of the distanced, objective
observer impossible, as one is completely involved in the local interaction: as in a
state of ‘thrown-ness’ as introduced before in Sect. 3.6.1. Taking the experience of
what one is actually doing in local interactions seriously, and subsequently reflecting
upon it, gives room for different views of what was happening at that specific
moment (Van Nistelrooij and Sminia 2010). In this view, self-consciousness, selfimage and our assumptions about how to react within a role we presume to have are
all regarded as emerging in the concrete local interaction, where at the same time we
continuously ‘take the attitude of the other’ (Mead 1934) when trying to make sense
of what is going on.
In contrast to the conventional framing of consultants, where consultants are
understood as coherent entities with a more or less fixed set of competencies and
skills, the complex responsive process perspective takes up Mead’s descriptive
concept of the ‘I-me’ dialectic (Inghilleri 1999) to understand the rumbling of
thoughts and emotions as described in the narrative. Mead assumes that we understand ourselves by looking at the reactions of others to our gestures and utterances.
In countless interactions during our life, we see how others react to our deeds. We
internalise and represent these reactions in ourselves as ‘me’s’, for instance: ‘[A]
s people usually react to me in this way, this is who I am as a child; as a consultant’.
In many different experiences and situations, different kinds of ‘me’s develop’.
8.3 Introducing a Narrative from a Consultant’s Perspective (Van Nistelrooij and. . .
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Furthermore, according to Mead, we develop a ‘generalised other’: a summarisation
of who we think we are (our self-construct), based on our own generalisations of
others’ reactions to our actions. Once involved in actual interactions, ‘me’s’ pop up
in our mind as voices, advising us what to do. Typically, more than one ‘me’ is
evoked in any interaction. When buying a car, for instance, two ‘me’s’ can emerge:
one boyishly saying, ‘Wow, with this car the girls will look at you!’, the other
warning, ‘this car is way too expensive’. Thus, ‘me’s’ pop up in actual conversations
as accumulated past voices of others re-emerging in the now. Next to the me’s there
is also an ‘I’ partaking in this dynamic. The ‘I’ is that which listens to the discussion
of the me’s. Furthermore, the ‘I’ is the one who acts; it is our spontaneous and
creative part, which sometimes follows the commandments of the me’s and sometimes acts completely unexpectedly (Inghilleri 1999).
To sum up, from a complex responsive process perspective, a consultant is not a
fixed entity with a predictable identity and a stable set of characteristics. According
to this perspective, who the consultant is and who the consultant thinks he or she is,
is intrinsically linked to the concrete interaction in which the consultant is involved.
Each specific interaction calls forth different ‘me’s’, leading to different ‘I-me’
dialectics. While interacting with an individual—the consultant continuously
‘takes the attitude of the other’. Hefty emotions can occur when the others do not
react in line with the consultant’s predictions, particularly when these reactions seem
to refute the generalised other (the self-construct). In the narrative, this concerns the
actual role and identity of the consultant. The actual interaction process can be
understood as a responsive process that is influenced by everyone yet controlled by
no one.
8.3.3
A Complex Responsive Process Perspective on Research
Taking on the complex responsive process perspective implies that we ground our
approach in the philosophical practice of first-person inquiry. First-person inquiry is
a self-reflective practice involving enacting inquiry in a manner that is distinct for
each person, suggesting that each consultant must craft his or her own practice and
pay attention to enacting cycles of action and reflection, being both active and
receptive. Such a self-reflective consultant pays attention to how to bring him or
herself into inquiry, reflecting upon apparent intentions, assumptions and choices. It
involves curiosity—through inner and outer arcs of attention—about what is happening and what part one is playing in creating and sustaining patterns of action,
interaction and nonaction. Which relates to Weick’s iconic question regarding
enacting change from Interlude 4.6: ‘[H]ow can we know what we do until we see
what we have produced?’ (Weick 1995). In this regard, narratives are used as
‘vehicles’ to translate these actual experiences to the reader in such a way that the
reader (virtually) can stand in the shoes of (here) the consultant. This function of
narratives relates to their quality criteria, as formulated by Connelly and Clandinin
(1990), and, for example, to the autoethnographic research approach of Ellis et al.
(2011)
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Autoethnographic research is an approach to research and writing that seeks
to describe and systematically analyse (graphy) personal experience (auto) in
order to understand cultural experience (ethno). Under autoethnography, the
researcher’s own experience becomes the topic of investigation. In this line of
research, the topic of investigation is the researcher’s own experience as part
of a local interaction dynamic that can also be compared with Denzin’s “thick
descriptions” (Denzin 2001), or, to be more precise, “thick inscriptions”, as
narratives are the researcher’s own selections and impressions highlighting
aspects of the situation deemed relevant by him. Thus, narratives function as a
specific “window” to certain subjective experiences rather than an “objective”
representation of organisational reality (Bate 1997).
As a method, autoethnography is a useful approach to understanding a case as
a personal narrative (Ellis et al. 2011) as we present here from an insider
perspective—a lens that is often neglected in today’s management literature (Stewart
and Aldrich 2015), especially within consultancy practice literature. Furthermore,
autoethnography is to be considered both process and product. Consequently,
autoethnography is one of the approaches that acknowledges and accommodates
subjectivity, emotionality and the researcher’s influence on research, rather than
hiding from these matters or assuming they don’t exist (Van Nistelrooij and Homan
2019). One of the major difficulties of such a first-person inquiry is that it requires
self-questioning and confronting things that are likely less than flattering about
oneself. This is probably why, despite its potential, building on personal experiences
as a source of data, it ‘has been criticised for being self-indulgent, narcissistic,
introspective and individualised’ (Wall 2006). In response to this criticism, authors
who support autoethnography have argued that this approach ‘is more authentic than
traditional research approaches, precisely because of the researcher’s use of self, the
voice of the insider being more than that of the outsider’ (Reed-Danahay in: Wall
2006). That is why, in recounting experiences, autoethnographers are supposed to
use not only their methodological tools and literature to analyse experience but also
their personal experience to illustrate facets of cultural experience, and, in so doing,
make characteristics of a culture familiar to insiders and outsiders. However, we
recognise with Chang (2008) that it is almost impossible to engage in
autoethnographic research without implicating others in the above-sketched incident
in Sect. 8.3.1. We don’t think that simply applying a universal set of ethical
parameters is an inadequate solution. When we read, for example, Tolich’s (Wall
2006) concrete suggestions for how to apply ethical guidelines to autoethnography,
we are uneasy with what we perceive as the unexamined privilege inherent in this
position. Nevertheless, we think it applies, because we seek to describe and systematically analyse personal experience in order to understand cultural experience (Ellis
and Bochner 2000, p. 273). Moreover, the autoethnography researcher ‘retroactively
and selectively writes about past experiences’ (Ellis and Bochner 2000, p. 275),
which are not necessarily experiences garnered in research activities. In sum,
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autoethnography can be a useful approach to enable understanding of social processes from an insider perspective—a lens that is often neglected in today’s management literature (Stewart and Aldrich 2015) and especially applied to consultancy
practices.
Stacey’s complex responsive process perspective encourages researchers not only
to take their daily experiences seriously (Stacey and Griffin 2005, p. 35) but also to
use narratives as raw material, to be reflected upon by the researcher together with a
group of fellow researchers. In correspondence with this line of reasoning, the
development of the narrative and the argument in this research effort was part of a
broader project of seven Dutch senior consultants (Van Ooijen et al. 2017). The
project started with the consultants writing a narrative about what they considered to
be an episode of ‘imperfection’ in their work, preferably an interactive moment with
a client or client system. After writing the narratives, a new round started in which
these narratives were reflected upon by several Dutch senior consultants. This round
took place over ten interactive meetings, in which all narratives were reflected upon
by all those present and all reflections were recorded. In these reflective
conversations, we emphasised the identification of important, central themes
(‘what is this narrative about?’, ‘what is the central plot?’), and an extensive and
critical literature review of these themes (‘what is known about these themes?’ and
‘does this theory/concept/model explain what is going on in the narrative?’). In line
with the complex responsive process assumptions (Homan 2016, p. 497), this
reflective process was not a solo activity conducted by the consultant (the ‘I’ in
the narrative) but a collective process of theorising and reflecting with relevant
others. In this case, the second author of the original paper brought in his expertise
to accurately interpret the first author’s experiences from a complex responsive
perspective. The regular meetings in which the consultant participated together
with the other co-inquiring consultants can be compared with Peirce’s ‘communities
of inquiry’ (Seixas 1993) as introduced and discussed in Interlude 8.2.
Interlude 8.2 Peirce’s Practice of ‘Communities of Inquiry’
A ‘community of inquiry’ is a fundamental notion in the philosophy of
pragmatism, which Charles Peirce is generally considered to have founded
(Shields 2003). Peirce believed that a distinguishing feature of science was its
social nature and that communication and community were key factors in
scientific discoveries (Peirce 1958). His work suggests that participants learn
not only by actively ‘making’ knowledge of their own but also by doing so
within a community that shares a common interest (Bruner 1986). In his 1877
original paper, Peirce starts to define inquiry by criticising ways of thinking
that ‘fixate’ on ingrained assumptions, thereby making them impervious to
change. Ideally, a ‘community of inquiry’ is a group of people that are united
by a shared interest, problem or issue. They have a commitment to address the
issue, problem or interest through a method akin to Lewin’s action research.
Central in a ‘community of inquiry’ is:
(continued)
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Interlude 8.2 (continued)
1. The ‘community’ which is not defined by time or space is something that,
nowadays, can be compared with a contained ‘dialogical system’. A common question, problem or interest helps to forge the connection. Is a focus
on the ‘here and now’ situation which requires further investigation and
action.
2. The ‘here and now’ situation which is a catalyst that helps or causes a
dialogic system to form, and it provides a reason to undertake co-inquiry
(Shields 2003, p. 511). The conceptualisation of the situation at hand by its
participants appears to be adaptable enough to be easily applied to
everyday life.
3. Its participants bringing in an ‘co-inquiry’ attitude to the problematic
situation.
4. The ‘co-inquiry’ attitude or experimental willingness to tackle the problem
using working hypotheses that guide the collection and interpretation of
data or facts.
5. That the outspoken assumptions and dialogue guidelines are viewed as
tools to address a given situation in the ‘here and now’.
To Peirce, the scientific method of ‘community of inquiry’ represents the
opposite of individualism, and just as Lewin after him later on, Peirce
contested that ‘the broadest speculative theories should be experimentally,
cooperatively and publicly verifiable’ (Buchler 1955). No individual alone,
according to Peirce, is worthy of trust (Haskell 1984). Therefore, the main
premise behind ‘community of inquiry’ as a scientific endeavour is that human
development requires cooperation and active participation of all those who are
involved in the process (Seigfried 1996). Presented in this way, a community
of practice is closely linked to the way of working as we described with action
research in Interlude 3.2, with dialogical systems in Interlude 4.7 and with
working with a process group as discussed in Paragraph 5.5.
Charles Peirce (1839–1914)
Was an American philosopher, logician,
mathemacian, and scienst who is
known as "the father of pragmasm“ and
who introduces ‘abducƟve reasoning’.
As discussed in Interlude 8.2, the results of the deliberations within the community of inquiry, consisting of seven Dutch senior consultants, were not constituted as
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301
‘the truth’, but rather as the ‘community’s’ current best opinions at that moment. The
truth that emerged is provisional, but, ‘in high wind and shoal water, even a light
anchor is vastly superior to none at all’ (Seixas 1993, p. 308). Moreover, this whole
research process of (re)writing, literature review, reflection and new experiences can
be seen as a process of increased objectivation where the researchers become more
detached while at the same time allowing them to immerse themselves more deeply
in their own and mutual experience (Mowles in: Homan 2016, p. 497).
8.3.4
The Follow-Up of the Narrative and the Resulting, Emerging
Themes
In this section, we will share what happened next in the above introduced incident
during the large-group session in Sect. 8.3.1. After that, some of the emerging
themes from our community of Dutch consultants discussions are presented, through
which it became painfully clear for the consultant (the ‘I’ in the incident) that he was
not embodying the organisational change that he was seeking and the importance of
not doing so:
Because I (the consultant) did not immediately react, the statement of the director hung
heavily in the air, which gave a feeling of discomfort. After all, the board hired me to help
them, right? However, at the same time, I also believed that my ineffectiveness to team up
with my client at that particular moment had much to do with how I interpreted the situation.
I found it difficult to parry in public or even to deflect the question back to the audience. The
question was posed directly at me. Moreover, the man who was also my client had said it in a
way that clearly did not tolerate opposition. It would also be useless to react to the content; in
that case, it would remain between us, which would make the rest of the audience (passive)
spectators. Yet, that definitely was not my intent—in fact, the opposite was true. In
consultation with both directors, the aim of this session was to enter into dialogue with
them and the executives. However, while all of this flashed through my mind, the female
member of the board of directors reacted, trying to save the situation and perhaps compensate for her colleague-director. She suggested that the interviews I had done had apparently
invoked this idea. A meaningful silence followed her reaction. I directly asked those present
if there was anyone who could confirm this. Thankfully, there was, but it was clear that there
was an (allegorical) elephant in the room—which no one dared to point out.
During the Dutch consultants’ group discussions, the following two themes
quickly emerged.
Theme 1 The Structure Taboo
The word “taboo” presupposed that within the organisation, there was a fear of
talking about the ‘organisation structure’. This became evident from statements like
‘We just had a structural reorganisation with a lot of hurdles; we have to move
forward instead of looking back continuously’. Taboos relate to emotions by placing
things in an intimate context. Therefore, in hindsight, it seems paradoxical to connect
the word ‘taboo’ to the word ‘structure’. Structure and taboo are two concepts that
instinctively do not match, and the application of taboo—as a suffix to structure—
makes it more difficult to discuss it. This appears to be illustrated by the fact that the
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director fairly but paradoxically states that he does not want to discuss ‘structure’,
albeit by saying that it is not a taboo. It seems to block everything. How great would
it have been if the director (or I, the consultant) had said at that particular moment in
time, ‘we/you have just been through an entire structural reorganisation yet, apparently, issues relating to structure remain, and it would be great if we could discuss
them’.
Theme 2 Self-sealing Defensive Routines
At the time of the narrative, there seemed to be a practice of fairly capable leaders
and executives who, as a whole, maintained an ineffective situation. Instead of
dealing with this, reference is made to a ‘structure taboo’. In other words, a grateful
excuse was given because everyone was in this slump, and everyone agreed with this
explanation for the apparent collective failing. This is remarkably similar to what we
describe in Sect. 7.3.1 as a situation dominated by ‘defensive routines’ (Argyris
1991, p. 100). These types of behaviour-entrenched habits, as Argyris argues,
‘protect ourselves from the embarrassment and threats that come with exposing
our thinking’ (Argyris 1991, p. 100). As discussed in Sect. 7.3.1, defensive routines
form a protective shell around our deepest assumptions, defending us against shame
but also keeping us from learning about the causes of such shame. As Argyris
continues, executives who take on the burden of having to know the answers become
highly skilful in defensive routines that preserve their aura as capable decisionmakers by not revealing the thinking behind their decisions. This defensiveness can
become an accepted part of organisational culture and blocks the flow of energy and
meaning in an organisation, preventing its members from collectively learning.
Moreover, these defensive routines are ‘self-sealing’; thus, they obscure their own
existence. This makes them overwhelmingly effective because it is very difficult to
acknowledge them, even if we know that we are being defensive. In fact, as was the
case in the health-care organisation, no one viewed the defensiveness as a problem,
and thus, the urgency needed to tackle it collectively was missing. The problem,
however, is that the health-care organisation as a whole was inert and failed to
function properly; it was even at risk of losing its position in the region.
Themes 1 and 2 above were the first to emerge during our reflective discussions.
In subsequent conversations, we began to see that these themes still had a high
‘aboutness’ character. Rational ideas and explanations surfaced about what was
going on in the narrative. At that moment, new questions emerged, like: who is
looking here? For example, ‘me’ as a researcher, an external consultant, a participant
or a stakeholder? And is this ‘me’ a constant, or does it change each time we talk
about this?
Theme 3 I Spy with My Little Eye
What was going on in the mind and body of the consultant at the time of the incident
can be described as an ‘I-me’ dialectic. In fact, even the term ‘dialectic’ is too ‘tidy’;
it felt as though a tremendously loud cacophony of voices were all frantically
shouting for attention, with questions like ‘To what extent is it useful to share my
analysis with the stakeholders, particularly when I have the sense that the
participants in the room are reluctant to take ownership of the problem?’ Moreover,
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‘How far can I, as a consultant, go when I am not part of the stakeholders’
constructed reality?’ And, ‘Is this whole set-up not my own creation, and are the
participants playing more than just a mere role in this construction as perceived by
me?’ Furthermore, the intense emotions can be understood as the experience of the
generalised other, the consultants’ self-construct of a ‘warm Scheinerian helping
consultant’, going down the drain. This very experience called forth more ‘me’s’,
giving all kinds of additional suggestions and ideas about what was going on and
how to ideally react. Apparently, this melee of cognitions and emotions was so
overwhelming that eventually the ‘I’ became paralysed. Unequivocal answers to
questions like ‘who am I as a consultant?’, ‘what is my role here?’ and ‘what
evidence-based dialogical interventions can I do to help these people to empower
themselves?’ went out of the window.
In an ideal situation, one of the ‘me’s’ would have swiftly taken control, making it
clear what to do next. Hand in hand with this ideal ‘me’, a unique set of assumptions
regarding ‘what is real’, ‘what seems to be true’, ‘how things work’ and ‘how to
intervene’ would also present itself. Yet, building on Mead’s insights, this set of
assumptions is not regarded as an individualistic ‘possession’ or ‘competence’ of the
consultant. First of all, it was the actual interaction that locally brought forth this
‘me’. Second, this ‘me’ is not something invented by the consultant but is rather the
result of many years of experiences being internalised by the consultant. This
amounts to the conclusion that the ‘knowledge’, ‘competencies’ and ‘facilitating
role’ of the consultant are not individually fixed but deeply social. It is this specific
set of ‘me’s’, triggered in this specific situation, where the ‘me’s’ are subjective inner
mirrors of countless earlier social experiences. Worse still: as described, the ‘battle’
between all the ‘me’s’ (and their respective assumptions) that popped up at the largegroup intervention was so fierce and evoked so many emotions that it became
impossible to react.
When attempting to understand the experiences described in the narrative in this
way, new questions emerge about what a consultant is and does. ‘When will I know
things for sure?’ And “what does ‘sure’ mean, when I understand it as one of the
‘me’s’ who has become dominant in my ‘I-me’ dialectic?” “How do I get to know
that ‘my’ assumptions are solid for a sound and effective intervention when there are
several ‘me’s’ in me vying for their own definition of ‘sound’, bearing in mind that
apparently these ‘me’s’ were evoked in this situation?” What does the concept of
‘diagnosis’ mean? Is a consultant someone who unilaterally determines the imperfect way in which the client system works and starts to communicate this as a reality
with which all have to comply? Or is the ‘diagnosis’ something that does not reside
‘between the ears’ of the consultant but ‘between the noses’ of those interacting,
reflecting the power relations that develop amongst them? The challenge, as we saw
in hindsight, is that a consultant has to be aware not just of this unilateralism alone
but also of the themes that emerge in the interaction during the intervention. Yet, in
our reflections, even this last conclusion seemed to be too ‘aboutness’. Is it at all
possible to think, feel, experience and reflect while simultaneously interacting with
others? Moreover, aren’t we yet again rationalising away our daily experience of
‘thrown-ness’?
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8.3.5
8 A Complexity Perspective
An Epistemological Knot
The understandings of what was going on in the narrative, using Mead’s concepts,
trigger all kinds of epistemological questions, like: ‘How [does] the interventionist
[come to] know about another system’s knowing?’ (Keeney 1983, p. 21), and ‘How
can we be certain of our intervention’s effectiveness?’ Such questions lead to what
Keeney calls an ‘epistemological knot’ (Keeney 1983, p. 28).
An ‘Epistemological knot’
Epistemology is the study of the justifiability of claims to know. The
examination of what consultants and clients think they know, what they can
know with certainty, and how they know what they can know constitutes the
area in which things can easily become quarried and tangled up.
Afterwards, all the involved consultants learned from this personal inquiry and
interactive reflections that as every consultant will operate on the basis of some set of
assumptions (one or more dominant ‘me’s’), the key is to learn to operate with
freedom at the level of one’s own assumptions. As O’Hanlon and Wilk put it more
crudely, ‘have you got a theory or has the theory got you? And if you’re stuck with a
theory, doesn’t your client get stuck with it too?’ (O’Hanlon and Wilk 1987). What
we also came to see is that when conceiving and facilitating the collaborative largegroup session and thinking about change, I (the consultant) was focused more on the
behaviour of the executives and directors than on my own interventions. I had asked
them to reflect upon the presented outcomes of the interviews as I analysed them,
and I challenged the participants to stimulate self-reflection and reflexivity. I acted as
if I was an outside observer of what was unfolding between us; thus, I did not think
about myself as a subject of the change and interaction dynamics.
8.3.6
A Short Discussion Regarding the Narrative
As Eriksen argues, organisational policies can change; however, it is only through a
fundamental change in who organisational members are in relation to one another
(as in the interrelated connection between LII and LII as discussed in Sect. 6.3.2) that
an organisation can meaningfully change (Eriksen 2008). This self-transformation is
not conceived as a soloistic activity within the consultant but as a dynamic and
emerging responsive process going on in the (‘inner’ and ‘outer’) conversations of
everyone involved in the change interactions. This is also the central premise of
Stacey’s complex responsive process perspective, which we utilised in this paragraph to get a deeper understanding of the experiences as lived through and
described in the narrative. As we would like to demonstrate with the narrative,
reflections and analysis, is that unpredictable developments and direct attacks on
the (power) position and the role of the consultant do not always fit into the self-
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305
perceived role of a consultant nor in the occasionally heroic images of consultants
presented in the mainstream literature. In the conventional literature (Kubr 2002),
these developments are regarded as noise or, at best, as exceptions to the rules and as
deviations from predictions, which are to be expected and framed as ‘resistance to
change’. Once framed in this way, the consultant is, yet again, usually in familiar
territory, where he or she can use additional diagnostic tools, theoretical models and
an evidence-based repertoire of interventions to ‘overcome’ this resistance.
In line with the complex responsive process perspective used in this paragraph,
we contend that, as with every other person, a consultant’s language, position,
identity and behaviour are a reflection of his or her underlying ‘personal’
assumptions: the ‘me’s’ that are triggered in a specific interaction situation and the
emerging dialectic processes between the ‘me’s’ and the ‘I’. The combination of
being ‘thrown’ into local interactions, together with the physical impossibility of
overseeing all possible interactions, implies that no one is able to have a complete,
distanced and objective overview. Understanding experiences described in the
narrative from a complex responsive process perspective implies that the classical
notion that ‘a consultant should always select whatever intervention will be most
helpful at any given moment, given all he knows about the total situation’ becomes
an illusion. Any understanding of the ‘total social setting’ is nothing more than a
local theme emerging in a specific interaction, reflecting the ‘dance of I’s and me’s’
going on in the minds of the consultant and of all the other interlocuters. Yet,
sometimes consultants have the tendency to myopically see their truth as ‘the
truth’. This opens the possibility that they are sometimes surprised and
dumbfounded once they are confronted by completely different sense makings
about existing situations and the role and identity they possess.
8.3.7
Some Concluding Reflections Regarding the Narrative
The intense experiences of the consultant in the narrative are difficult to explain and
to understand using only mainstream consulting literature. Having used several
concepts and ideas from the complex responsive process perspective on
organisations, we contend that this perspective can shed complementary light on
the realities of the work of consultants. Interaction processes can have a non-linear
quality, where even the smallest gestures can provoke major changes in the emergent
meanings and power balances going on in the client system. The complex responsive
process perspective is able to give a central stage to developments and processes
that, in mainstream literature on consulting, are regarded as noise, deviations and
distractions. This implies that the broadly accepted image of the ‘flawless’ consultant
(Block 2011) becomes an almost unattainable idealistic and normative image,
which has little explanatory power for understanding the daily experiences of
intervening. Furthermore, a consultant is not only understood anymore as the heroic
one who knows, oversees and acts purposefully but as a human whose thoughts,
emotions and actions and identity emerge in local interactions hand in hand with the
development of local power balances. Trying to think rationally is only one of the
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dynamics going on—one ‘me’ who thinks that he is right. Furthermore, going
through intense emotions, being completely surprised and not knowing what to do
next are all regarded as integral parts of the daily practice of consultants. Even the
meaning of concepts such as ‘consultant’ and ‘client’ can only be understood from a
local, contextual and historical perspective as we will try to do in the next paragraph.
To sum up, we suggest that additional research that takes up a complex responsive process perspective on consulting can assist in obtaining a richer and more
practical understanding of the praxis of consulting (Billing 2007). Furthermore, we
suggest that collective theorising about, and reflecting on, consulting experiences,
using narratives as raw material, can be a fruitful method for deepening our understanding of the praxis of consultants. De-emphasising the ideal image of the modern
consultant opens a new window for the consultant as someone who only understands
what he is once engaged in local interactions with people of a client system—not an
actor who is the primum movens but just one of the agents partaking in local
interactions and relational networks, where understandings of identity emerge and
develop in each conversation at the time.
8.4
Consultants’ Challenges During the First Encounters
with a ‘Client’
As we tried to show with the above narrative, a consultant who intends to ‘objectively’ assess, as a relative outsider, the various perspectives of a client system’s
stakeholders are prone to placing him/herself, including his or her diagnosis, outside
that same system. As with every other person, a consultant’s language and behaviour
reflect his or her personal perspective, and new realities emerge and are maintained
in and through conversations with others (Ford 1999). This is especially true for the
first encounters between a consultant and a ‘client’. In this section, we take a closer
look at these first encounters and their particular dynamics as being part of the
conversations regarding the contracting and the preliminary scoping of a social
system as co-constructed in the interaction between a consultant and a ‘client’. In
general, these first encounters consist in gaining and establishing an entry; agreeing
on a working contract; formulating preliminary proposals and decisions to act; and a
first round of data gathering. These first encounters with a ‘client’ and/or various
members of the client system are interactive and collaborative, with the consultant
taking a variety of facilitative stances (Block 2011, p. 99). These encounters are
themselves understood as significant ‘interventions’ in an evolving assignment (Ford
1999). In this section, we discuss four of the major challenges that may occur during
these first encounters.
8.4 Consultants’ Challenges During the First Encounters with a
8.4.1
307
The First Consultant’s Challenge: Defining the Client
and a Client System
As Schein argues, we refer to ‘clients’ as if they were always clearly identifiable, but
in reality, the question of who actually is the client can be ambiguous and problematical (Schein 1997). Since the 1990s, there has been a significant growth of
academic interest in the consultancy industry (Hislop 2002; Sturdy et al. 2009a).
Consultants only exist in relation to clients, and the nature of the client-consultant
relationship and the role of the client in shaping this relationship have tended to
remain neglected and unexplored (Hislop 2002). So, what is a client? Matching
dictionary and everyday definitions, the response might seem straightforward:
someone who receives help from a professional person (Alvesson et al. 2009,
p. 253). However, as Alvesson and his colleagues argue, clients are typically
presented as relatively monolithic, organisational entities with attention given to
diversity between firms and projects rather than client diversity within them
(Alvesson et al. 2009, p. 253). In general, the myth of the unitary client still remains
today—in which he, the client, is mostly portrayed as an individual.
As Schön sees it, the first encounters between a consultant and a client system are
of utmost importance for the potential success of an organisational change (Schön
1983). For this, it is of great importance that a consultant and the targeted ‘client’,
during these first encounters, establish a clear and thorough picture of their reciprocal interests and expectations. However, as Alvesson and his cowriters argue, one of
the counterintuitive reasons for establishing such a picture is that a consultant cannot
blindly assume that the targeted ‘client’ is acting in the interest of the whole
organisation, or at least not wholly so, even if such an interest is articulated. In
this regard, compared to the practitioner-oriented literature, the academic literature is
a bit more rigorous in pointing out, for example, that there is a possibility that the
targeted ‘client’ can also use his or her role for their own individual, functional or
managerial political purposes—legitimation and control—or as a scapegoat for early
failed initiatives (Alvesson and Johansson 2002; McKenna 2006; Sturdy 1997). This
also presents, however, a partial conception of the targeted ‘client’, overemphasising
a fixed role or position. It is thus important to de-centralise and pluralise ideas around
the targeted ‘client’ at even the most basic structural level—to move from stakeholder to stakeholder positions and their interrelated dynamics (Alvesson et al. 2009,
p. 255).
The neglect of exploring first encounters with a targeted ‘client’ is less evident in
the more prescriptive practitioners’ literature on consultancy, often written by
consultants themselves. For example, one of the first rules of consultancy practice
seems to be to identify the key power brokers and decision-makers in a client
organisation, especially those with the authority to commission external advisors
(Buchanan and Badham 1999). These presumed decision-makers can be the first
‘contact’ and also the one who is responsible for taking care of the problem (Schein
1997). But this isn’t a rule per se. It is also possible that this first contact is the
targeted ‘client’ but not the one who makes decisions. For example, in the narrative
in Sect. 8.3.1, both decision-makers (the members of the board) were also primary
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responsible, but as it turns out, and what complicated things, they held the executives
responsible for not executing the tactical assignments in the right way. So, we have
two ‘clients’ and all the executives as primary stakeholders, together forming the
‘client system’.1 Similarly, and more generally, Arnaud suggests that “the word
‘client’ only rarely designates a single unique person” (Arnaud 1998), which is why
most scholars, in this regard, seem to prefer to use the term ‘client system’. That is
why doing a ‘differential diagnosis’ (see Interlude 5.4) is always executed with more
than one person and preferably with all who represent this (client) system.
Who is going to be part of the client system depends on the process of scoping,
especially regarding:
1. The purpose—the goal or targets of the interventions, and in relation to this
2. People—who has a stake or feels directly affected, in other words, who is a
stakeholder, belonging to ‘the client system’ and is to be invited to participate in
the upcoming meetings of the process groups
3. Relationships between participants on the one hand and with the purpose on the
other hand
It is important to try and understand the perspectives of the preliminary
participants themselves—the ‘native’s’ or ‘inside’ points of view, even if we delimit
interest to those who are broadly supportive or ‘pro’ realising the purpose. As a
procedure for establishing the right scope, this suggestion can be useful in serving as
a key starting point. It is less static, and also less focused on the consultant’s
perspective or, for that same reason, on that of an individual targeted ‘client’.
Furthermore, it is primarily based on direct contact with people who are supposed
to have relevant perspectives or at least know who has and who, therefore, can be
invited to the following meeting. Trying to establish a full representative picture in
which we try not to focus too much on the consultant/‘client’ perspective is not
because these particular perspectives aren’t relevant, but, as we will discuss in the
next section, we don’t want them to dominate the other perspectives.
8.4.2
The Second Consultant’s Challenge: Avoiding a Pseudo
Explanation
In the behaviourist-oriented research tradition within the field of psychology, there is
still a lively conviction that, all things being equal, people’s past actions are often a
good predictor of their future behaviour. In other words, people who have behaved in
a certain way at one point in time are likely to do so again (Bentler and Speckart
1
What really complicated things in the case of the narrative was the absence of a consensus on who
was responsible for what (and why). In other words, there was no shared ‘current reality’—not
regarding the solution and, more importantly, not even regarding the problem at hand in the ‘here
and now’.
8.4 Consultants’ Challenges During the First Encounters with a
309
1981; Ouellette and Wood 1998). The data of the research in this tradition suggest
that participants’ perceptions of their past behaviour often influence their decisions
to repeat the behaviour in the future (Albarracín and Wyer 2000). However, these
studies also mention many exceptions to this general rule, and many of these
exceptions are related to the fact that these studies are conducted under ‘artificial’,
laboratory circumstances. Be that as it may, consultants with a psychological/
analytical disposition are more prone to trying to understand people’s behaviour in
which they shape and execute their work and interactions with others. But when we
are talking about real daily circumstances, to what extent is knowing why others did
do certain things in the past a vantage point for helping them to initiate change in
their daily work?
We wish to point out here that when diagnosing a situation, it is important to ask
questions to those who co-construct the situation, questions that are about the here
and now, and not why someone behaved the way he or she did. In this regard, it is
illustrative to paraphrase O’Hanlon’s rhetorical question, namely, ‘What is the sense
of letting ‘psychology’, or ideas about [. . .]why things are wrong in what other
people do, dictate the course of their lives?’ (O’Hanlon 1999, p. 3). It is obvious that
in order to be solved, a problem first has to be an existing problem, formulated in the
participants’ own concrete terms as they relate to the (change) purpose at hand. As
Watzlawick and his fellow authors explain, the translation of a vaguely stated
problem into concrete terms permits the crucial separation of problems from pseudo
problems (Watzlawick et al. 1974, p. 111). In the case of formulating a pseudo
problem, elucidation produces not a solution but a dissolution, i.e. it worsens the
existing problem and the perceived complexity of it. The same is true for the
narrowly related pseudo explanation, as we discuss in Interlude 8.3.
Interlude 8.3 Pseudo Explanation
As stated by Robine, ‘there is no other reality than that which we co-construct
in a relationship’ (Robine 2011). The early interactionist Thomas wrote that
‘facts’ do not have an existence apart from the people who observe and
interpret them and depend for their existence on different people entering a
situation and defining certain elements of it as real. This condition is
summarised by his often-quoted axiom that we introduced before in Sect. 6.
4.3: ‘(. . .) if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’
(Thomas and Thomas 1928). In other words, perception and meaning can be—
and mostly are—transformed and modified by context and interaction, which
as a process has a certain circularity in it.
Typical examples of pseudo explanations produced by interventionists
include “People stay inert because they experience a lack of ‘ownership’”;
“People don’t want to change because there is ‘a taboo’ on discussing change
(as was the case in the narrative)”; and “People resist change because they
have a low ‘readiness for change’”. These pseudo explanations seem to
(continued)
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8 A Complexity Perspective
Interlude 8.3 (continued)
correspond to the analysis as described in the third theme in the above
narrative and also seem to lack the wisdom of an alternative frame—that of
the executives themselves, who are supposed to realise the change in the first
place. These explanations are tautological in themselves and orient us towards
what cannot be changed. They focus us, for example, on past experiences,
people’s assumed personality, and as in the case in the narrative, on the
claimed ‘untouchable’ organisational structure. As we discuss before in Sect.
7.3.1, this kind of tautological reasoning can also be regarded as a (social)
defence mechanism.
Creating and communicating a pseudo explanation make change unattainable and create real problems because the suffering it entails is very real
(Watzlawick et al. 1974 p. 56). To quote the America screenwriter Robert
Ardrey in this regard, ‘while we pursue the unattainable we make impossible
the realisable’ (Audrey 1970). A wisdom that is perhaps best illustrated by
Watzlawick and his colleagues’ joke about the drunk who is searching for his
keys, not where he really lost them, but under the street lamp, because that’s
where the light is best. This sounds funny, but only because the joke makes it
explicit that a solution is attempted not only away from the problem (and is
therefore doomed to fail) but also because the fruitless search could go on
forever—again, the attempted solution is the problem. In everyday life
situations, this fact usually remains outside the awareness of all concerned;
the cure is not simply worse than the disease but rather is the disease. As if in a
logical salto mortale, these consequences can intensify the existing problem
but can also become the cause of new problems. It then makes sense to try and
change them.
Acting on a pseudo explanation, therefore, can give rise to a delay in the
communication between the interventionist and the receivers of the change
message, as is the case with a pocket veto, in the way we describe it in
Interlude 7.9. This is the case because the receivers don’t acknowledge the
explanation and, because of this, don’t react as expected (in the eyes of the
interventionist). When confronted with such a non-reaction, the interventionist
easily becomes irritated, doing more of the same and thus initiating a circle of
escalating commitment (as described in Sect. 6.2.2).
In sum, interventionists who do not take sufficient account of the construction
margins of the participants can give rise to these participants being forced into
pseudo realities that are unbelievable and unworkable for them, thereby creating
insurmountable obstructions, making the situation more complex as it already is. If,
however, an interventionist respects the participants’ construction margins and
co-constructs in the here and now—what the problem is, what it contains, what
the whole is and what the parts are—there is a greater chance that the resulting
diagnosis or explanation of their situation will be as it is (Czarniawska-Joerges
8.4 Consultants’ Challenges During the First Encounters with a
311
1991). Under these conditions, they create not only insight into what is going on,
thereby reducing the perceived complexity, but also create a workable perspective
for the nearby future.
8.4.3
The Third Consultant’s Challenge: Starting ‘Fresh’ on a ‘Myth
of Objectivity’
Questioning a client perspective on ‘what happened’ might clarify what actions have
been taken in the recent past to address a persisting ‘problematic’ situation and the
perceived connection between the ‘problematic’ situation and the way in which it
has previously been addressed. With this, a first impression is established of the
experiences, opinions and the lived reality of the ‘client system’. The premise here is
that the way in which the problem is framed by the targeted ‘client’ relates to how it
is (subjectively) defined and ultimately is being addressed and recently has been
approached through the whole social system. Consultants are usually ‘strangers’ to
the organisational routines in question (Simmel 1992). In order to become effective,
a consultant is supposed to work out during the first encounters with the client
system a preliminary consensus regarding the current reality that the client system is
in. To reach this consensus, it is plausible that a consultant will relate him or herself
to the internal interactional patterns and at the same time disturb the client system’s
perception of these routines to establish different possible points of leverage. This
means that the position of a consultant has to be close and distanced at the same time
(Elias 1987). The client system’s patterns of interaction are neither written nor are
they thoroughly conscious or rigorous objectively stated facts. As introduced with
diagnostic OD in Chap. 4, it is plausible that one of the first challenges for a
consultant has to be the stimulation of a self-conscious reflection by all involved
in order to deconstruct this first impression before he or she can co-construct a new
one (Baitsch and Heideloff 1997).
Relatively recent studies depict the first encounters between a consultant and a
‘client’ as a process of constant indeterminacy, within which boundaries constantly
get negotiated and reframed as the consulting project unfolds (Czarniawska and
Mazza 2003; Fincham 1999; Pellegrini 2002; Sturdy et al. 2009b). For example,
approached from a complex response perspective, it is believed that the first
encounters between a consultant and a client are far more recursive and dynamic.
For example, as Stacey argues, ‘every time two humans interact with each other the
actions of one person has consequences for the other, leading to others reacting in
ways that have consequences for the first, requiring in turn a response from the first
and so on through time’ (Stacey 1995). Thus, an action taken by a person in one
period of time feeds back to determine, at least in part, the next action of that person.
The feedback loops that people set up when they interact with each other are
non-linear. This is because the choices of people are based on perceptions that
lead to nonproportional, unpredictable and an infinitive number of reactions. There
can be all sorts of nonconscious reciprocal influences going on during the first
encounters between a consultant and a ‘client’, which can even, probably somewhat
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oddly, be compared with the idea of a chameleon on a mirror, as described in
Interlude 8.4.
Interlude 8.4 A Chameleon on a Mirror?! (Keeney 1983, pp. 172–174)
It is well-known that a chameleon cannot prevent its colours from changing
when there is a change of colours in his direct surroundings. So, imagine
placing a chameleon on a mirror or in a mirror box (https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v¼kdycRpWOAu0). If a chameleon is, for example, placed in a blue
environment, something (not so) peculiar happens: the chameleon changes its
colours to blue. Apparently, the colour blue in the direct environment of a
chameleon acts as some type of threshold, after which the colour of the
chameleon changes in a matter of time. This image of a chameleon on a mirror
is a good example of the smallest divisible unit for which one can speak of
systemic circular relations, for example, between the first encounters of a
consultant and a client. Placed on a mirror, a chameleon generates a feedback
process whereby a change of colour in the mirror leads to a change of colour in
the chameleon. This phenomenon arises when there is sufficient time between
the chameleon’s sensor and the effector—the colour as it is reflected by its
environment, directly in the mirror. Because the colour changes between the
chameleon and the mirror are out of phase, the chameleon tries continuously to
adapt when it senses a change of colour in the mirror. It tries to reduce the
difference but ensures—because of its attempts to reduce differences—a
recursive pattern leading to endless repetition. This is an example of how a
solution ensures the continuation of a problem, as can be the case in the first
encounters between a consultant and a client as discussed in Sect. 8.4.2
regarding a ‘pseudo explanation’.
Keeney, from whom this metaphor originates, poses the following
questions: ‘Is the consultant a kind of active mirror?’, ‘Is the client the mirror,
motivated to ask questions by the interventionist’s changes in colour?’ Or, in
other words, are the changes in colour between the chameleon and its direct
environment a metaphor for a complex circular systemic pattern between the
consultant and a client?
With the metaphor in Interlude 8.4, we want to argue that the first encounters
between a consultant and a ‘client’ don’t start as if the starting situation is a tabula
rasa; there is no such thing as a ‘fresh’ or ‘neutral’ start in change processes. The
intention to come to a noninfluenced first impression in this regard is in itself
admirable but also nonrealistic. This is because of:
1. The simple fact that a client invited a consultant who is, as in the example of the
case in the above narrative, specialised in organising a dialogue with the whole
system gives the impression that the client is already thinking in solutions.2
2
[sic] Organising a dialogue with the whole system is not a solution in itself; it is an instrument or in
other words, a mean to an end.
8.4 Consultants’ Challenges During the First Encounters with a
313
2. The idea that a consultant couldn’t come into a client’s office and not influence
the data that he or she observes, because things are interactionally influenced as
they speak (O’Hanlon and Wilk 1987, p. 267). The reason for this is that a
consultant not only brings a specific ‘outside’ perspective but also uses specific
language and implicitly or explicitly expresses assumptions that do not per se
correspond with the ‘current reality’ as the ‘client’ perceives it.3
In the words of Bloomfield and Vurdubakis, consultants ‘represent reality in
order to act on it, control it or dominate it, as well as to secure the compliance of
others in that domination’ (Bloomfield and Vurdubakis 1994). If these conditions
appear favourable for the ‘client’ as well as for the consultant, habitual, routinised
use may be expected, which could pave the way to short cuts, making the first
preliminary diagnosis prone to establishing a ‘pseudo explanation’. In light of this
practice and underlying motives, it is nearly to be expected that a pseudo explanation
is in the making, as was in hindsight one of the first things that went wrong in the
above narrative in Sect. 8.3.1. As convincing as these arguments may be, it doesn’t
mean per se that things during these first encounters have to go wrong. For things to
go as constructively as possible, it is conditional that both the consultant and the
members of the client system are convinced that, whatever the outcome of their first
encounters may be, it is not the definitive diagnosis of the client system’s ‘current
reality’, and moreover, that it also does not imply the definitive solution. Furthermore, Schön describes the first encounters between a consultant and a client system
as ‘a web of moves’ (Schön 1983, p. 131), which begins with explicating both their
respective frames and the interpretative schemes that they use to make sense of the
situation. Thus, as Schön continues, the problematic situation gets assessed in a
co-constructed preliminary diagnosis that helps the consultant to explore and evaluate his or her frame’s consequences and necessary conditions for future
interventions. Presented in this way, during their first encounters, a consultant and
the representatives of a client system discursively frame problems and solutions to
ensure they are acceptable, and that possible reciprocal uncertainties or anxieties are
removed (Clark 1995; Turdy 1997).
3
O Hanlon and Wilk cited Bateson who was apparently fond of quipping that one cannot not have an
epistemology, and this would apply both to interventionists and to clients. Both the client’s and the
interventionist’s respective epistemological presuppositions cannot not influence how they decide
what the situation ‘is’ cannot not influence (From: O’Hanlon and Wilk 1987, pp. 7–8). Which seems
closely related to Watzlawick c.s.’ Communication Axiom that, ‘One cannot not communicate.’
Because every behaviour is a kind of communication, people who are aware of each other are
constantly communicating. Any perceivable behaviour, including the absence of action, has the
potential to be interpreted by other people as having some meaning (From: Watzlawick et al. 1967).
314
8.4.4
8 A Complexity Perspective
The Fourth Consultant’s Challenge: Formulating a Leading
Question with a ‘Dialogical System’
Confronted with all kinds of possible differences between existing perspectives in a
process group, it is to be expected that participants will initially use persuasion to
strive to create some form of consensus on what is going on. Although reaching for a
consensus seems to be the overarching goal, it is not the first objective that the first
meeting(s) of a process group should realise. Rather, the participants, including the
consultant, need to stay focused on exploring, inquiring and establishing a common
ground of what is to be expected from being a member of the process group, what is
to be expected of their role and what is to be established in the first meetings. One of
the things that helps during these first meetings of a process group is to establish a
so-called leading question.
A leading question should be sufficiently abstract to allow for the unification
of all perspectives present in the process group and sufficiently concrete to
demarcate the problematic situation and provide enough energy and direction
for undertaking the next steps. A leading question includes the following
components:
1. An unambiguous demarcation of the purpose (i.e. content)
2. Identification and denomination of the most important stakeholders
(i.e. context)
3. A description of the level of ambition and measure of participation
(i.e. process)
Examples of a leading question, formulated during the first encounters with a
process group, are:
Example 1: How can we work together as one team, so that together we may reach a
faster pace, focused on three focus points with simple management?
Example 2: Why are no steps forward being made, despite having knowledge of our
problematic cooperation, management and client relations?
A preliminary scope of a system can be helpful in determining a leading question
during the first sessions. When the leading question needs some adjustment during
the later sessions, it is possible that the preliminary scope needs to be scaled up as we
discussed before in Sect. 4.4.3. Scaling up the scope may well involve sweeping in
new stakeholders shedding new light on things at hand (Midgley et al. 1998).
Adjusting the scope repeatedly during these first meetings makes the process rather
iterative—that is with two steps forwards and one step back. Because of repetitive
adjusting of the composition the group while keeping the same items on the agenda
during these first sessions, participants may perceive a lack (of linear) progress. That
8.5 Some Closing Reflections
315
is why, during the first sessions with a process group, it is important to that the
participants define for themselves:
1. If they are stakeholder or not. That is, if they feel directly affected by the issues in
their work.
2. The meaning of this and its consequences in terms of scope and impact and then
together demarcate the preliminary scope of the client system.
3. The reciprocity in their mutual relationships so that there is no dividing line
between them and as such no subgroups within the process group.
4. The interventionist-client system relationship, which means that the consultant
and the targeted client both are being received as stakeholders and thus as full
members of the process group.
5. Define the coherence of the process group by stressing the sharing of the same
change purpose and with this, trying to establish a common ground
amongst them.
6. What makes the process group a safe place in which openness, community
inquiry and self-disclosure are the norm and something we can speak up about?
8.5
Some Closing Reflections
1. Some General Denominators of Intervening from a ‘Complexity’ Perspective
From a ‘complexity’ perspective, intervening means we intervene:
1. On more than one level in the same instance. For example, recognising the
importance of positive labelling and staying away from pseudo explanations
(L0) and acting on a manifest, explicit level (LI), but always in combination
with a intervention on a meta level (LIII): simultaneously reflecting on our action
to learn from it with all participants.
2. From an inside-out perspective (based on ‘withness’ thinking).
3. With an open mind regarding what is happening, not why it is happening or why
the situation has developed or escalated to the state it is in. In other words, we are
dealing with the situation as it is, in the here and now with the—effects and not
with their presumed causes.
The premise underlying these points is that intervening from a ‘complexity’
perspective means that we do this in a world that is not only ours but in fact is a
world we share with others. To sum up, we can only understand our world as a whole
if we see ourselves as being part of it; as soon as we attempt to stand outside, we
divide and separate. Bateson stated that we can only speak of a participative world
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8 A Complexity Perspective
view when all those involved are restored to the circle of community and the
community to the context of the wider interrelated, social world.4
2. A ‘Complexity’ Consultant’s Perspective Compared with that of a Planned
Change Perspective
Planned change is supposed to be achieved by working through the stages or
phases of a process, based on Lewin’s original ‘theory of change’ (Schein 1988). As
first elaborated and applied to diagnostic OD by French and Bell (1999), there are
many variations based on this original conceptualisation of how to change
organisations (Shaw 1997, p. 236). In the same vein, change management, as
conceptualised by Kotter, is viewed as a series of sequential steps in terms of partly
overlapping simultaneous activities, so that all phases are themselves understood as
significant ‘interventions’ in an evolving assignment (Kotter 1995; Appelbaum et al.
2012). This paradigm of planned change consulting has come to be shared over the
last 25 years by both consultants and their actual and potential clients (Shaw 1997,
p. 236). Instead of offer a preplanned change programme, a ‘complexity’ perspective
seems to offer an emergent, one-step-at-a-time approach on a local basis. As
depicted in Fig. 8.1, with this approach, a consultant tries to discover and create
opportunities to work with the lived issues and tasks that exercise people formally
and informally in their daily working environment.
3. Understanding First Encounters as the Subject of Research
The first encounters between a consultant and a targeted ‘client’ can be regarded
as a process of pragmatic experimentation, in which a unique situation is then
‘understood through the attempt to change it’ (Heusinkveld and Visscher 2012,
p. 287). As Heusinkveld and Visscher argue, consultants’ sociopolitical skills, and
particularly their use of language, have special significance for shaping a client’s
perception regarding the situation of the client system (Heusinkveld and Visscher
2012, p. 287). Normally, the consultant and the client discursively frame problems
and solutions during these first encounters to ensure they are acceptable and remove
possible client uncertainties or anxieties. That is why the way a consultant frames a
perceived situation as an enacted practice is not only relevant in terms of success and
being effective for initiating change in a client system; it is also theoretically relevant
for taking this practice into account for further research. In the words of Heusinkveld
and Visscher:
4
In ‘Steps to the ecology of mind’, Bateson writes, ‘The more we align and are in service to the
greater systemic whole, then the more graceful and harmonious are we in our own living and
movement. Internal harmony is only possible when there is harmony in the collective circuits of
mind and in the wider ecology. It is only when we live gracefully in service of the greater system of
which we are part that we receive the grace of beneficence bestowed from the greater system on its
parts’ (Bateson 1972b).
8.5 Some Closing Reflections
317
In turn, we argue that to better understand the possible impact of consultants and their
commodified forms of management knowledge on management and organisational practice,
we need to examine how consultants frame organisation concepts as enacted practices.
Informed by practice-based approaches, we seek to explore empirically how consultants’
framing moves, related to their dispositions and perceptions of what is feasible in a specific
situation, encourage or inhibit possible translations of management concepts within the
context of a consulting assignment (Heusinkveld and Visscher 2012, p. 288).
Recap
• Complexity science studies the nature of dynamics between interconnected
people and suggests that ‘order emerges for free’ without any central or governing
control or intention when the whole is operating in ‘edge of chaos’ conditions.
Complexity science invites us to think in wholes and see organisations as
ecosystems. Central to this perspective is the view that organisations can be
seen as networks of multiple, interacting individuals and groups that are fairly
autonomous.
• The ‘complex responsive process’ perspective is a subdiscipline within the field
of complexity science that emphasises the self-organising patterning of communicative action. The ‘unit of analysis’ of this subdiscipline is the experience of
interacting with others in local social settings. The concept of complexity is not
used to describe the context ‘in’ which the individuals interact but as a fundamental attribute of the quality of the interaction of interdependent humans. As
such, it is focused on the everyday experience of living and working in an
organisation.
• In contrast to the conventional framing of consultants, where consultants are
understood as coherent entities, the complex responsive process perspective takes
up Mead’s descriptive concept of the ‘I-me’ dialectic. The ‘I’ is the one who acts;
it is our spontaneous and creative part, which sometimes follows the
commandments of the me’s and sometimes acts completely unexpectedly.
According to a complex responsive process perspective, who the consultant is
and who the consultant thinks he or she is, is intrinsically linked to the concrete
interaction in which the consultant is involved. Each specific interaction calls
forth different ‘me’s’, leading to different ‘I-me’ dialectics.
• Additional research that takes up a complex responsive process perspective on
consulting can assist in obtaining a richer and more practical understanding of the
praxis of consulting. Furthermore, collective theorising about, and reflecting on,
consulting experiences, using narratives as raw material, can be a fruitful method
for deepening our understanding of the praxis of consultants.
• Seen from a complex responsive process perspective, there are at least three
challenges during the first encounters with a ‘client’: (1) defining the client and
a client system; (2) avoiding a pseudo-explanation; (3) starting ‘fresh’ on a ‘myth
of objectivity’; and (4) formulating a leading question with a process group.
• This brings us to the conclusion that de-emphasising the ideal image of the
contemporary consultant opens a new window for research.
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8 A Complexity Perspective
Key Discussion Points
1. Seeing Leadership from a Complexity Perspective
Perceiving consultancy from a ‘complexity’ perspective means that we try to see
more things at the same time, from an ‘either/or’ to a ‘both/and’ perspective. Thus,
we shift our perspective to seeing ‘a complementary gestalt’ with connecting
patterns and mutual dependencies. By doing so, we soon recognise that to enhance
leadership competences, we need to attend to the leadership flow between both parts.
Yet most leadership development efforts still focus on the individual out of context
and act as if leadership resides solely inside the leader.
• Define what seems to be distinctive for the field of ‘complexity science’ and
discuss its relevance for the field of consultancy.
• What are the parts of the complementary gestalt mentioned here?
• What does it mean in terms of consultancy development training programmes
that we need to attend to the flow between the parts of this gestalt?
2. Double Descriptions and Doing a Differential
According to Gregory Bateson, for change to happen, it is better to have two or more
descriptions of the same context rather than one—what he calls the principle of
‘double description’.
• Define ‘a double description’ and argue why it is important for generating
change.
• Argue why a differential diagnosis is in essence a double description—creating ‘a
moiré effect’.
3. The Map Is Not the Thing Mapped
Korzybski’s dictum is also cited as an underlying principle of neurolinguistic
programming, where it is used to signify that individual people do not in fact have
access to ‘objective’ knowledge, but only to a set of beliefs they have built up over
time regarding reality. Therefore, it is considered important to be aware that people’s
beliefs about reality and their awareness of things (the ‘map’) are not reality itself or
everything they could be aware of (‘the territory’).
• Argue why it is important for interventionists to be aware of the distinction
between ‘the map’ and ‘the territory’.
• What could happen if they weren’t?
• Relate Korzybski’s dictum to the social constructionist premises from Chap. 1.
Describe some of the similarities in reasoning.
8.5 Some Closing Reflections
319
4. An Epistemological Knot
Obviously there seemed to be some hesitation on behalf of the consultant’s
behaviour in the narrative; this can be interpreted as doubting the effectiveness of
his assumptions, with questions like ‘What do I know?’ and ‘What do I not know?
The understandings of what was going on in the narrative, using Mead’s concepts,
trigger all kinds of epistemological questions, such as: “How does the interventionist
come to know about another system’s knowing?’ Such questions lead to what
Keeney calls an ‘epistemological knot’.
• Define an epistemological knot and discuss its relevance for the role of
interventionists.
• What seems to be the right way to avoid or to cope with such an epistemological
tangle?
• Discuss the relevance and effectiveness of using Mead’s ‘I-me’ concept for
interventionists.
• Describe the essence of the pseudo explanation used by the consultant in the
narrative and argue why this pseudo explanation stood in the way of generating
change.
5. Defining the Client in the Narrative
As Alvesson argues, a consultant can also be in a situation in which he or she does
not know for whom he or she is working or where he or she is working with several
clients whose goals are in conflict with each other. In the same vein, a consultant can
identify different purposes that differ from those identified by the client (system).
• Argue why a demarcated system has to have one change purpose that relates to
all stakeholders.
• Argue whether you think there were one or more purposes in the demarcated
system in the health-care organisation in the narrative.
• Formulate as specifically as possible the purpose(s) you identify in this case.
• Do the consultant and the client system seem to have consensus about this? Argue
why or why not.
Moreover, as was the case in the narrative, the consultant can identify others who
for themselves: (a) do not see their own problems and (b) would resist being seen as
‘clients’ in the meaning of primary owners or (c) even as ‘stakeholders’.
• Argue what this means in terms of system demarcating—intervening and
changing.
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8 A Complexity Perspective
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