Jane Gaukroger, Managing Director of The Change Able Project - To explore what we mean by organisational wisdom. - To explore whether this is the ‘highest order’ priority for the organisational developer. - To consider the implications for our own development as practitioners.

1. Developing organisational
wisdom – how do developers
respond?
SDF Spring Conference 18 April 2013
Jane Gaukroger

2. 2
Organisational wisdom – focus of
this session
• How do we define it?
• Why is it important to us?
• What might if mean for our development practice?
• What does it mean for me as an individual
developer?
… the contribution of
the OD practitioner to
organisational wisdom

3. Context for this research
• A personal search after a career spent in people
management and development
• A concern about some of what is happening in
our organisations – questions of ethics, integrity
and behaviour
• Howard Gardner (2011) and The Good Work
Project
‘Good work is good in the excellent, technical sense; the worker knows his stuff,
is highly skilled, and keeps up with the latest knowledge and techniques.
Good work is good in the phenomenal sense; it feels good, feels right, is
personally engaging, yields experience of flow. Finally, good work is good in
a moral sense; it is carried out ethically, in a way that is responsible, and in a
way that serves the wider good, even (indeed perhaps especially) when it
goes against the immediate interests of the worker’.
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4. 4
Banks role in financial crisis
Top pay
MPs expenses
Media/phone hacking
NHS care

5. What are all of these issues
saying …
• Are we missing something in our organisations?
• Is it a quality which cannot be achieved simply
through rules, regulations, legislation?
• Is it wisdom?
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6. What responsibility have we had
as developers?
• Have we played a role in setting these cultures?
• Have we been paying enough attention to what
really matters (what do we think really matters?)
• Or have we been trying our hardest – but lacking
influence?
• We can do better than this!
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7. HEIs – positive association with
wisdom
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8. Wisdom challenges in HE?
• Commercialisation
• Shifting academic role
• Maintaining quality in new markets
• Continuing investment in non-vocational, applied,
scientific disciplines
• Academic freedom…
‘The more managerial neo-liberal institutional cultures of the
last decade require a corporate perspective, with less
scope for individual (or institutional autonomy)’ Linda
Holbeche 2012 Changing times in UK universites – what difference can HR make?
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9. DEFINING WISDOM
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10. What words do you associate
with wisdom?
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In general?

11. Definitions of wisdom – dictionary
Capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to
life and conduct; soundness of judgement in the
choice of means and ends; sometimes, less
strictly, sound sense, especially in practical
affairs: opposed to folly
(OED, Second Edition Volume XX, 1989, pp.421)
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12. Classical philosophers on wisdom
Philosophy – From Greek meaning love of (philos) and
wisdom (sophia)
•Socrates: The reflective life
‘The unexamined life is not worth living’
•Plato: Ideas/Truth
Exploration of the true causes of all things
•Aristotle: Phronesis
Capacity to act with regard to human good
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13. Psychologists on wisdom
Csikszentmihalyi and Rathunde (1990)
•Wisdom as a cognitive process – understanding
the workings of the world
•Wisdom as a virtue – understanding how to order
our actions to achieve harmony with the world
•Wisdom as a personal good – an intrinsically
rewarding experience that makes us feel happy
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14. Psychologists on wisdom
Baltes and Smith (1990) ‘Berlin Paradigm’
‘Good judgement and advice about important but
uncertain matters of life’
5 crtieria:
•Rich factual knowledge about matters of life
•Rich procedural knowledge – strategies for
judgement and advice
•Life span contextualisation
•Relativism
•Uncertainty
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15. DEFINING ORGANISATIONAL
WISDOM AND HOW WE MIGHT
APPLY THIS
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16. Definitions of organisational
wisdom
Surprisingly few!
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17. Business thinkers on wisdom –
learning perspective
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Zeleny 1987,
Ackoff 1987
Not much
attention the
wisdom level –
just too difficult?

18. Business thinkers on wisdom –
leadership perspective
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Courtney 2001
Sees managerial wisdom as integrating knowledge
with moral concerns
• ‘Knowledge involves the ability to act intelligently
and to learn. Wisdom guides knowledgeable
actions on the basis of moral and ethical values’

19. Business thinkers on wisdom –
action perspective
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Jennifer Rowley (2006)
‘The capacity to put into action the most appropriate
behaviour for an organisation, taking into account
what is known and the legitimate concerns of its
various stakeholders’

20. Activity 2
•Would it be useful to have a clearer focus on
organisational wisdom?
•What might this mean for what we pay attention to
in our development work?
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21. WHAT MIGHT THIS MEAN FOR
MY DEVELOPMENT AS A
DEVELOPER?
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22. Wisdom development
Bigelow (1992)
Proposes a model to include development of:
• Practical knowledge
• The metacognitive (knowing about knowing)
process associated with management of
knowledge and its limitations, uncertainties and
contradictions
• Metacognitive processes associated with seeing
and learning from experience
• Image of self as part of a larger system
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23. Meacham (1983)
‘The more one knows the more one
knows one doesn’t know’
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24. Reflections on business education
after the financial crisis
Currie, Knights and Starkey (2008)
‘ Every cloud has a silver lining. There could be no
more opportune time to reflect critically on
business schools and the education they (we)
profess to provide…it is beholden on us to reflect
more deeply and critically on the purpose of
business school education’.
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25. Activity 3
•What would more attention to organisation wisdom
mean for our own professional development – depth
of our learning on ethics? philosophy? psychology?
•And what about our own reflective practice?
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26. If you are interested in being part of a
research study with OD practitioners next
year please get in touch!
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