When Fred Nickols
shared the news of Chris
Argyris passing away, it was a rather litmus test of sorts on the ODNet
list. Firstly, it was a relay from Prof Elena
Antonacopoulou, of GNOSIS, University of Liverpool Management School.
Secondly, there were very few who surmised his contributions to Organisation Development, as compared to when some greats in Organisation Development passed away earlier this year.
Elsewhere
outside of the ODNet, there was a fitting tribute from a Harvard Professor of Information Technology who
began with this quote ““When a sage dies all are his kin and should
mourn the passing.” – The Talmud".
Prof.
Andrew Macafee says little about
him, and yet; the little he shares stuns with its accuracy and impact. “I wish his work got
the attention it deserves. Part of the reason why not, I believe, is that he
was not only clear about organizational failure modes, but also about how much
time and effort were needed to get past them. He didn’t offer quick fixes or ‘the
4-hour organization.’ Instead, he stressed that it was a real slog to make
things legitimately better. I think his honesty cost him some attention,
probably even a lot of it, but that’s a tradeoff I’m sure he was happy with.
Chris was the most intellectually honest scholar I’ve met; watering down his
medicine to make it go down easier would have been anathema to him.”
It was in the early 1990s that I began reading Overcoming
Organisational Defenses. I was an ‘internal’ then eking a living out of
holding up a promise for the brave new world of Human Resources Development in
a family managed firm. Fortunately for
me, the young scion there took a fancy for the very literature Argyris penned from research. As business leader, he began to
see the minefields and bypasses in our firm with. I was in awe of the thinking
and the lucidity in Argyris’ reasoning. It drew parallel with the raw freshness
of Igor Ansoff’s work on
Corporate Strategy of the 1960s. Heady were the days of investing in this
line of work. We went through the pain of learning that classical
Organisation Development is without frills and fancy and a lot of hard work on cognitive patterns and emotional re-framing.
Later in my own academic work regarding the evaluation of Organisation Development, I began to see the utility of theory in action, especially insofaras the life of an interventionist is concerned. The era of ‘whole systems thinking’ was picking up currency in interventions too. Today, when there is tension in the field out there to examine effectiveness of organisations beyond its own boundaries, it is but natural to enquire if the theory-in-use at one’s own firm would be similar or different to those firms outside it. When I got to meet Chris at San Francisco in 2006, he was just done with a superlative demonstration of how Appreciate Inquiry as a construct was lacking in procedural elements of theorisation. Alone, he took on a room of nearly 100 practitioners and consultants in Organisation Development on the aspect of theorisation, and none could meet his reasoning prowess, despite them wanting to.
Later in my own academic work regarding the evaluation of Organisation Development, I began to see the utility of theory in action, especially insofaras the life of an interventionist is concerned. The era of ‘whole systems thinking’ was picking up currency in interventions too. Today, when there is tension in the field out there to examine effectiveness of organisations beyond its own boundaries, it is but natural to enquire if the theory-in-use at one’s own firm would be similar or different to those firms outside it. When I got to meet Chris at San Francisco in 2006, he was just done with a superlative demonstration of how Appreciate Inquiry as a construct was lacking in procedural elements of theorisation. Alone, he took on a room of nearly 100 practitioners and consultants in Organisation Development on the aspect of theorisation, and none could meet his reasoning prowess, despite them wanting to.
This is probably the closest reason I can think of as to why
the late Ranjan
Acharya decided to have me on his team. He was the essential learner, who
wished to bring to his situation the most effective that learning could offer. I remember him peering
through the expositions I made to explain my work, like a child letting the
ocean of organisational learning wash over the infinite sponge that he was. All
I can say is that today, 27th November, Ranjan’s birth
anniversary in 2013, the poignancy of Prof. Macafee’s quote from the
Talmud, could not ring more truer.
In closing, I must mention that I had attempted a live application of
Argyris theory in the week gone by. I held out the following Argyris tenets through
a series of reflective questions I requested professors to engage each other with in the room. ‘There
seems to be a universal human tendency to design one’s actions consistently
according to four basic values:
1. To remain in unilateral control;
2. To maximize winning and minimize losing;
3. To suppress negative feelings; and
4. To be as rational as possible – by which people mean
defining clear objectives and evaluating their behavior in terms of whether or
not they have achieved them.’
Principals and Professors alike huddled in private with me in the lunch
break to say that their understanding of organisational learning shifted most with
my session. Needless to say, I was proving to myself, that Argyris was not only
original, but pure of thought and honest in action. I think the mention of what I state hereafter really got under the skin of educationists who wished to know the relevance of Learning Organisations.
I asked "And would you know
how he got to doing what he is now famous for in organisational learning? Well,
he reflected deeply on his former secretary’s statement when he returned to
collect his personal belongings from the military establishment that he served.
She told him in a pleasant tone and cheerful voice, which Chris had never seen or
heard before in work-life, that while in office, he was seen as like a terror
and difficult to speak with from that standpoint. So, driving back home, he
thought why was so much human behavior so self-frustrating, particularly in
organizations? In particular, his devotion was to the question, what is it that
prevents people from stating their truths in their organisation(s)?"
Seldom do such souls as Argyris walk this planet, unfettered, pristine and uncompromising in inquiry. Some learning can be unpleasant too, is it not?
