Latest / Complexity Cogitators Podcast / #012 - Philosophy in Organizations
Transcript
- Joakim von Prónay: Marco Marco: Joachim, we're back at it again. Joakim von Prónay: We are back at it again. It's been an involuntary absence. But here we are. Life got in the way. Marco: knife does have a tendency of lifeing. Joakim von Prónay: Exactly. And during our absence, we have been philosophizing. Marco: as we always do. Joakim von Prónay: As we always do. And I at least wanted to have a conversation with you. And since you're here, you also want to have that conversation with me, which is a good sign, about the role of ⁓ about the role of philosophy in organizations. Perhaps what role it plays, what what it is, how it can be used. Because my philosophizing has gotten me to a point where I would say it's not only inevitable, you will philosophize and you will use philosophical approaches in organizations, whether you think you are or not, and it's incredibly valuable. Marco: And I agree. I've come to similar conclusion that... While we might not call it philosophy, we employ a lot of an activity that you and I might call philosophizing or what we're going to get into today probably about creating concepts in organizations and or using others concepts and reasoning around them, which is itself I would say philosophy work. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because we did we we have talked about one concept from Deleuze and Guattari before, ⁓ nomadology. And they also have a very fascinating publication that is called What is Philosophy? And this is also what has inspired my philosophizing about this, because as you already ⁓ mentioned here, the they claim As philosophers, the purpose of a philosopher and the purpose of philosophy, in their words, is to create concepts, to come up with ideas connected to certain problems and essentially progress the thinking through concepts. That is that is the main point. Marco: Yep, and also to do that in order to learn new ways of relating to reality and to each other so that you can live better lives. which is a bit in contrast with how philosophy has been seen historically, right? That it's been more about how one should live and arriving at some kind of truth about the world or the universe. Joakim von Prónay: Yes, exactly. Yes, it's a i i it has been heavily, heavily linked to ethics and ethical behaviour. And as you say, what you should and should not do. Whereas Deluz and Gotari simply claim that you can detach it from the ethical aspect of it and simply by creating concepts and and furthering the conversation, you are That tha that's the point. And I think if you if you reduce it to that My view of it fits very well into how organizational work happens. especially connected to organizational development, transformations, whatever frame of reference or whatever whatever word you ⁓ want to use to describe that part of it. Marco: And not to mention strategy and culture work in organizations are heavily focused on what kind of concepts you use, how you create them and how you relate to them. So I would say it's heavily intertwined in organizational work. Joakim von Prónay: Mm, mm-hmm. I agree. I agree. But w why do you think so few organizations actually talk about philosophy? Marco: ⁓ I think it's about utility or perceived utility. That philosophy and activity work related to philosophy is not seen as useful in itself and it's let's say hard to monetize, right? It can seem fluffy and non-actionable when you can... I don't know, go get a framework when someone's been doing the concepting and philosophizing for you and then you just install it. But that's a bit of a rant. I think those are the kinds of things you would do to actually doing, let's say, philosophy in your organization. What do we actually value and how do we want to organize and what kind of words and concepts do we want to to explain or have a conversation about that? When instead you can borrow a concept from another context. Joakim von Prónay: Yep. No, I agree. I agree. Marco: Or what do you think? Do think there's other patterns? Joakim von Prónay: No, I No, I I pretty much agree with you on this one. And I think but I I think where the the misalignment or the misunderstanding of of what I and what we now deem or label as philosoph philosophy or philosophical work in organizations, one of the one of the foundations required to create concepts is to understand the problem. And my my frustration here with what you're saying as well, it's so easy to borrow a framework or borrow a model or borrow a concept from someone else who has already done that work and just apply it, you're missing the fundamental point of coming up with the concept yourself. Because that requires you to understand the problem. And if someone has come up with a framework, a model or a concept that you want to borrow. You you must understand that they have not solved your problem. They have come up with that to further the conversation in their context, addressing their problem. It might look good on paper, but it is nowhere near what you're trying to do. Or the details in their context will be fundamentally different from your details. So, this is the the the groundwork that needs to be done here is to understand the problem. And when you do that, and if you do that, if you fundamentally understand the problem that you're trying to solve in your organization and your context, then you you will quite easily be able to come up with a concept to further the conversation about the problems that you're facing in your organization. So the I think that the shortcut many organizations want to take there. That's the That's the wrong shortcut to take. Marco: Right, except if it is the OKR. Joakim von Prónay: except if it is OKRs because that's a flawless framework. Marco: But it is an example of a concept. And just to sort of calm myself out a little bit, it is one of the examples that is employed lazily instead of understanding how you want to execute your own strategy. Joakim von Prónay: It is, it is. Marco: Okay, what is a concept then in this context? Joakim von Prónay: That's a good question. I think we'll bounce that back to you because I think I will be able I will probably just stumble into the definition of a model that it's something that represents something else. Or simplifies and try to describe Marco: I think it's ⁓ its simplest form, it's a symbol or a group of symbols ⁓ that we locally will attach some kind of meaning to. and it can be more or less well defined. But definitions don't travel over contexts. So I think a concept is just the symbol and it gains its meaning in its context. Sometimes you can attach some explanation to it, but it will mean different things in different places. Let's say the OKR for example. So that is a concept. is a bundling of an objective which means something and you will see this very widely. organization what an objective is and attach that or something that's called key results and that too will vary widely ⁓ across organizations and even within the same but there is a kind of sentiment that it is used for strategic execution to sort of encode some kind of organizational intent and a way of following it up. And there are books that have tried to explain this, but that doesn't change, that is interpreted and acted on differently in organizations. So while it creates some similar patterns in what kinds of conversations it provokes when introduced or used, it doesn't fix them in any meaningful or deterministic way. So I would say that the work of the OKR then is just what kind of conversations does it create and does it help us in this organization to organize better or reach the results that we would like to reach or have a shared understanding of what it is we're trying to reach. It's also useful. So the concept is just an anchor for that conversation, I would say. Joakim von Prónay: Hmm. No, absolutely. And you said something in the beginning there that really caught my my my ⁓ thinking. ⁓ but I already forgot how you phrased it. You said meaning doesn't travel over context or wh what you Marco: Yeah, something like that. mean, so you can transfer a symbol or the name of a concept or attempt to define it, but it will mean different things in different contexts. So meaning doesn't travel between contexts, something to that effect. Joakim von Prónay: Yep. Yeah, exactly. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And that attaches a lot to the the little rant I had before, where you need to do the groundwork to understand the problem and that like the the collective meaning making of understanding the problem and coming up with the concepts within. That meaning making doesn't travel over contexts. You can add a description to it, as you say, but The description will have a different meaning, and thus the concept will create will have a different meaning in a new context. And this is this is a very similar to what Deleuze and Guattari talk about as the plane of imminence. When they try to try to answer the question: what is philosophy? If the purpose is to create concepts, then the plane of imminence is this. fundamental meaning making that happens in order to create the concept. And you can't. Th you you can't simply skip it. There's there's no sh there is no shortcut around the meaning making. You need to fundamentally attach it to your context. Marco: I'm going to say that it happens whether you want it or not. Because as soon as you're exposed to a concept, you will form an understanding of it. And then the question is only how do you and others engage with it after that exposure? Joakim von Prónay: Hmm, true, true, true, true. That's interesting. So here then it might be a a a question of the the the chicken and the egg. Which comes first. If you lay out the plane of immanence, so you create the foundation to understand and create meaning, and that ⁓ and from that the concept emerges or the concept is created in in contrast to the other way around. You take a concept and then there will be meaning making. You will a plane of imminence will be created, but it's based on a concept that has been brought in. So is there an ⁓ An order of operation challenge here, perhaps. Marco: Perhaps I haven't thought of that. Joakim von Prónay: I thought of it now, perhaps. Because I think it is as you say, the the meaning making will happen regardless. It might just be are you deliberate about it? Or Yeah, maybe we're going back to strategy. What is your strategy? Marco: No, I'm struggling to recall the details about the plane of imminence, but I remember it as the plane of ⁓ all potential, right? So every potential concept, unformed and unconnected. So I might be wrong about this, but let's play with the idea that I, my psyche, my history of and my experience of life ⁓ has created a particular configuration of understanding. So when I hear a word, I will understand it differently than you might. So there's already a kind of configuring, there's certain degrees of potential of what might happen when I'm exposed to a concept. And when you do this in a room of other people who have a similar, well, they have a configuration in a similar way, but it's probably different. I think that ⁓ the order of operation then is, you know what? what I was about to say. Joakim von Prónay: Too bad, it sounded interesting. Marco: Yeah, I'll see if I can come back to the con... Joakim von Prónay: Your understanding of plane of immanence. Marco: Yeah, it's rusty. ⁓ It's been a couple of years since I read it. I wish I had read it on this occasion. But ⁓ let's go back to concept making in organizations. ⁓ If we want to be a little bit practical. ⁓ Have you thought, if you think back, can you think back of any instance where you've been actively creating or having an organization engaged with concepts? Like what is a typical philosophical work from your point of view? Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, I think so. I think it's unavoidable. I think it's my modus operandi. I think I always do it. Because as I said, I I believe it's the the the main part of one trying to understand the actual problems of the organization, regardless of the goals and the outcomes that they want to achieve. What are the things that are holding them back? And ⁓ one concept that I'm currently re revisiting is ⁓ my idea of pragmatic planning in software development organizations. Essentially how to increase predictability in software delivery on enterprise scale. I call that pragmatic planning as a concept to address the challenge of unrealistic planning that I see over and over again. So th that to me would be would that would be a concept that I has have created. Marco: Wanna talk about it a little more? How would you employ that concept in organizational work? Joakim von Prónay: Mm, maybe. Yeah, I think that's the right question to start. That's the the right angle to fall into. Because first and foremost, I say it addresses the idea of predictability. Then then we must first agree on what we mean by predictability. Because that part will be different from all organizations. They will have their own interpretation of what that means. And to but Marco: I mean, and we had a fruitful conversation about our different understandings of the... So, of course, that's it. Yeah. Joakim von Prónay: No, but as as a as a starting point, i it it's generally to find the the the the least the the smallest common denominator in What ⁓ I lost how I was gonna say that. But when it comes to so when it comes to predictability in enterprise software organizations, the The general take that I experience is we need teams and departments to be able to say a delivery date or a very small and narrow delivery window for a very large piece of of software that you're going to develop. It's very often output oriented and connected to delivery dates. And when I talk about predictability in organizations, the Hard work is to try to change this conversation to outcome oriented and ⁓ that the delivery is seen as reliable, meaning do the teams and the departments do what they say they're going to do. And if they say if they do what they say they're going to do and they achieve the outcomes that are important, then the whole conversations around what we actually do, so the output and the delivery dates and the delivery windows become irrelevant. So that's one of the fundamental that that's part of the fundamental groundwork that that I do when I try to establish the concept of pragmatic planning. And this is as you can imagine, this is ⁓ More or less easy or hard, depending on the organization's essentially cultural or emotional attachments to the problems surrounding this. Like what type of culture is dominant in the organization and how do they actually execute their strategy or how do they claim they execute their strategy? I think it's very hard for me to continue. Or I can't I can continue. ranting about this for a long time, but it's hard without a specific example, which I don't have readily available right now. But that that would be one one part of it. So how do you begin to establish such a concept? Marco: Again, a thought or an observation about what you just talked about is that while you had a top-level concept, which is pragmatic planning, ⁓ an effective employment of that would mean establishing the meaning of several other concepts that I find many organizations struggle with. Let's say, for example, the difference between output and outcome. That is also a philosophical conversation to have with the organization, even if you can tie it to something in reality more or less, but that distinction is not always as sharply experienced by some people that I've worked with as I experience it, and probably as you do by the sound of it. So often it's useful to sort of try to, I find that I have to break down that kind of, let's call it a high level concept because it depends on others that you might need to sort of establish. Anyway, it was just a thought that came up when you talked about it. But as we said before, a lot of our work ⁓ also depends on introducing ⁓ philosophy or philosophical concepts from... other contexts, let's say just the concept of agility for example, or what does agile mean, ⁓ often ends up being a fairly philosophical conversation. And even though there's like the only canonical description of the word is in the Agile Manifesto, but the concept has gained its own life and meaning in a lot of, like there's a lot of, let's call it secondary literature or interpretations of it. that also traveled poorly. So I end up doing a lot of that, especially, ⁓ well, right now I'm working on this is Scrum Master. ⁓ And... and I find... No, I shouldn't call out my current working place. Let's edit that out. But I do end up having to give my version, my understanding of what agile means in a way that might land in the organizations I work in. So I would say that is at least a kind of philosophical work that I end up doing a lot when it comes to sort of imported symbols, concepts I mean. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, I agree. I think this this part of the work is incredibly important to to align or consolidate understanding of the concepts that are dominant in the organization. A more particular frustration I have is when when someone asks me to do something, and you just and there is an as assumption that we understand, we both agree on what the outcome means. And then I go away and do something, and I come back with the result, and the person in question simply points out what I did wrong. Instead of A g ⁓ instead of acknowledging that there must have been a misunderstanding, or we must have assumed that we understood what we ⁓ what what each other what we meant, and then there was a misunderstanding. Instead of acknowledging that, clarifying it, and then moving forward, you just point out what I seemingly did wrong, but I achieved the outcome successfully, in my opinion, or in my view. So that that's happens that probably happens a lot. Marco: Yeah, you didn't do it the way I expected you to. That's the critique rather than you got the job done. Joakim von Prónay: Hm. Yeah, exactly. And I think what we're saying here is that even that work is is philosophy, that's philosophical to create a shared, shared understanding and shared meaning making. Marco: Yeah, but I just caught my mind challenging that statement because we came into this saying that the work of the philosopher is to create concepts and then is the work around ⁓ Managing is the wrong word, but working with the interpretation of the concepts ⁓ and organizing around it might not be the work of a philosopher, but is it organizational philosophy then? Joakim von Prónay: or organizing organizational philosophy. Marco: organizing organizational philosophy. I think I've done that. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah, I have absolutely done that. No, but that's fast that's a fascinating ⁓ fascinating take because I I can clearly see a lot of the work is just to to organize and facilitate everything around. And maybe we're coming back to the idea of servant leadership, creating the right circumstances for the right things to happen and have the right conversations. And how do you what what would you not that we need to call it or name it anything, but what would you call the work that is about enabling the a fertile ground for Philosophical work in organizations. Would you call it philosophy or would you call it something else? Maybe that's a question we don't need to dive into. Marco: I right now because we're in this conversation I am tempted to say of course it's philosophy but I'm not sure that conclusion will survive. ⁓ I think I will end up with a different name for it but it's definitely philosophy adjacent ⁓ based on how I understand it right now. Because that is an phenomena I've observed, a kind of frustration if you will, is that... Well, I've stopped being surprised, but in general, it seems like there is a reluctance to do the work of creating a shared understanding of organizational symbols. A few organizations do it excellently that I've came across, and that makes it a lot easier for them to organize around those ideas, or at least it creates interesting patterns around those concepts. that are fruitful for the organization. But a lot of concepts have so even if I've thought that they seem central to the organization's understanding of itself or what it's doing, that understanding is still, let's say, unevenly distributed. And that these sometimes a variation of understanding creates a generative kind of conflict. But sometimes it does not. That sort of... It creates a pattern of noise instead of generative one. So that is the kind of environment that you would like the thing that you're pointing at. How do you increase the readiness for the organization to engage in a conversation of in a process of finding a more constructive understanding of these concepts. What would you call that work? That's a good question. Joakim von Prónay: Dunno. Identity identity what? Marco: It's certainly related to culture. interesting. Maybe we have a future work title for ourselves here. Joakim von Prónay: Maybe we do, yeah. No, I also find that f ⁓ fascinating that thought that as you say, the organizations that do put in effort in d doing the work and creating a shared meaning around the symbols that are that are prevalent in that organization. They do have I I I think they I I was gonna say fertilize again, but I think they encourage or make it easier for individuals to create a corporate identity and and identify with the organization itself. Marco: I mean, in my head, I have a pretty clear example of an organization that's been very effective at doing this. And that's given me concepts that I still use or refer to and that still shape my understanding. And it's an old shared professional context of ours. Should we name them? I don't know how this works. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah. I don't know, maybe we we tease it and then if we can get Eric on a ⁓ on a episode, then we can specifically talk about it maybe. Marco: ⁓ all right. I don't know how much I should say then because... Okay, let's try this anyway and then let's see what we cut out later if it's appropriate or not. Joakim von Prónay: Yeah. Yeah. Marco: So one thing they did, or still do I imagine, is that every year they selected a word or a phrase to be the theme of the year. And this theme was used recurringly across conferences, across cultural gatherings, and the symbol was repeated in different ways. And it found its way into conversations, sometimes into casual conversations ⁓ of the employees. ⁓ And those symbols were doing a lot of work of shaping conversation and organizational understanding, and not only of the organization, what it valued, but also your own role in the organization, and sometimes the role of your colleagues. So some of these symbols had profound effects on the organization. One of them went on to become the logo of the organization indeed. ⁓ So I would say that's ⁓ from my point of view an extremely successful deployment of organizational philosophy and it still inspires me. both in the creation and application of these concepts. At that time I didn't think of it as philosophy and it's now in the rear view mirror that I can sort of connect that to what we're thinking about today. Joakim von Prónay: Mm. I have the same view. Marco: And now looking back at it, I think it gives me a little bit more courage in coming up with concepts that can seem strange or give old words new meaning or even sometimes make up new words that can act as anchor points for the conversations that we would like to have without necessarily dictating the conversation. Joakim von Prónay: Yep. I think that's the I think that was the most powerful part. Marco: Which one? Joakim von Prónay: Just that it didn't dictate the conversations. It just gently pointed in a direction and left it open to interpretation. Marco: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And let the organizational conclusions or individual conclusions emerge around that. So that was, yeah. Well done. Joakim von Prónay: Indeed. Marco: But I do try similar tricks sometimes in organization in my work. Not as... I don't know if eccentric is the right word, but they usually feel a lot more grounded in... Because I work in organizations that aren't used to that kind of conceptual work. But I do engage... people I work with in naming the concepts themselves out of times. Sometimes I name it, I pick something out of the conversation, of the context and say, and give this pattern of conversation a name and attach, so I sort of pick out the concept based on the context and because the people who are in the room to sort of, in the moment of that capture, then the concept gets its own life and meaning. That's the way that I work with. concept creation in organizations. Joakim von Prónay: Mm. It's fascinating. So more Pragmatically, do organizations need to acknowledge that they're doing philosophy or philosophy work? Or can they just continue as their Marco: You I don't think there's any inherent value in calling it philosophy. I think... there is some growth to be had. to sort of accept it as a discipline that is useful in organizational contexts, because there's a lot to learn and find from other thinkers. I think in general organizations or people that do organization work don't spend enough time thinking about how they think. because they're busy doing all they're doing. Joakim von Prónay: Yes, that last part I can absolutely agree with. Marco: And that is, if anything, would say would be a good reason to start exposing yourself to philosophy. Joakim von Prónay: Yep. To think about how you think. And especially the the the collective intelligence that exists in organization and the col collective processes at play. I've I've tried to ⁓ I have one prominent experience where I tried to really introduce this idea and this this in general as a concept to the organization, as a capability that they didn't possess, and a capability that would be incredibly valuable. Marco: Do you mean collective intelligence? Or something else? Joakim von Prónay: Yes, so like building building the capability to reflect on how you think as an organization, not as an individual, but as an organizational capability. Marco: ⁓ yeah. in a row. Joakim von Prónay: It was somewhat successful. Marco: collective meta-intelligence. Is that it? Because we are invited a lot of times to think about how we do things in retrospectives and then in a lot of them, sessions, we spend a lot of time thinking about how do we actually do things sometimes about how we feel. But it usually doesn't address how do we think about how we think. So like the... sort of philosophical plane of organizational life. Joakim von Prónay: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, what you and I are doing here is essentially a result in us having thought about how we think, because this is an exercise and an experiment in you and I thinking out loud together. Because we know this progresses our thought and our thinking on whatever us is on our mind. So this is this is an example of us doing that thing. And I think more organizations should do things like this, maybe not record a podcast, but having conversations for the sake of having the conversation. Because I can tell you already now. ⁓ forty two minutes into the recording time, that I've had a lot of new ideas and a lot of new sprouts shooting off in different directions that I might continue to explore or might not, but it's been very, very interesting and very insightful. Marco: Yeah, same. A lot of neural pathways connected today. Joakim von Prónay: Do you have any other concluding thoughts? Otherwise I feel like that was a good it's a good I have a good feeling to round it off here. Marco: just feel like a good time. Maybe we'll have an after talk about some of my other concepts. Sorry. Joakim von Prónay: Maybe. And then you can sh then you can share those in our newsletter. Marco: ⁓ yeah, let's do that. Alright, I think I'm happy there. Joakim von Prónay: Cool. Me too. Marco, thank you for the conversation. Marco: Thank you Joachim and have a good time until we meet again. Joakim von Prónay: Until next time. Ciao. Marco: to rules.