From 13-15 December 2019 Bristol Leadership and Change Centre hosted the 18th International Studying Leadership Conference, which was attended by around 140 delegates from 13 different countries.
The conference featured three keynote addresses (Prof Peter Case from UWE, Prof Sonia Ospina from the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and Prof Elena Antonacopoulou from the University of Liverpool), a panel discussion at City Hall (chaired by Prof Robin Hambleton with contributions from Mayor Marvin Rees, Kalpna Woolf and Andy Street), five parallel streams (including almost 90 separate papers) and a gala dinner at the Marriott Royal Hotel on College Green.
Participants have been invited to submit their papers for a special issue of the journal Leadership on the conference theme of ‘Putting leadership in its place’, which will be edited by Neil Sutherland, Gareth Edwards, Doris Schedlitzki and Richard Bolden.
“A tale of two cities” – that’s how a colleague described Bristol
when I asked for an introduction. There’s
something ominous about the image of parallel universes inhabiting the same space.
In the Charles Dickens novel, the two cities are Paris and London in the late
1700s as social order breaks down under the burden of inequality and industrial
transformation. The political and industrial revolutions were tipping points
from which unforeseen transformations followed around the world. We may be at a
similar point now, and in April 2020 we will host a one-week ‘Round-Tables for Experienced Managers’
to examine what’s happening at the front line, in the experience of people who
are leading, managing and organising businesses, public services, social
enterprises and cross-sector initiatives.
Participants come from all over the world, with
contributions from world-leading experts including Professor Henry Mintzberg and Professor Jonathan Gosling. In 2020
the RoundTables will be hosted for the first time in Bristol, in partnership
with UWE’s Bristol
Leadership and Change Centre. As well as those lucky enough to take part in
the whole process there are opportunities for local organisations to host short
investigative visits, when they will be subject to curious but friendly
scrutiny – always a source of intriguing insight and provocative questions.
Titled ‘Managing Around the World’, the programme
concentrates on the challenges that each person is facing. In structured, progressive
peer-to-peer exercises we analyse and re-frame those challenges, bringing fresh
insights and broader perspectives. We visit local organisations (in
multi-national teams) and delve into the dynamics of ‘two cities’ Bristol.
The outcomes are likely to be personal and practical for
most people because of the focus on each organisational predicament. Most of
the activities are readily adapted to use in organisational and community
settings. Equally exciting is the opportunity to pool all this experience of
leading, managing and organising towards fresh insights of what’s happening on
the ground, around the world and in Bristol: are we really at a tipping point? Where
are tangible and significant responses to the climate emergency, artificial intelligence,
post-colonialism? What are the most hopeful of these, and what more could each
of us do?
The RoundTables programme has previously inspired
significant projects, such as Professor Peter Case’s work
with front-line health services in Zimbabwe, Namibia and Eswatini. Eliminating
malaria is a real possibility after years of successful control; but success
depends on active intervention on a case-by-case basis. This in turn relies on
local knowledge, resourcefulness and cooperation across health and community
activists, and on the ability to invent customised responses in unpredictable
and complex environments. Because ‘Managing around the world’ combines systemic
perspectives with focused attention to each actual challenge, and does so with
the front-line people involved, it has been a means for organisational
re-invention – in humble, particular, humane ways, and demonstrably effective. In
fact the model developed in Zimbabwe has now been adapted again to support the
integrated care process in several parts of the NHS.
But back to Bristol – can this one-week programme be an
effective catalyst for the ‘two cities’, and for the way we organise, lead and
manage? A catalyst is a temporary architecture that enables new realities to
emerge. That’s our aim for ‘Managing Around the World’, which will take place
at the MShed on Bristol’s historic harbourside from 26th April to 1st
May 2020.
As the local host, we pleased to invite current and former
students of UWE, Bristol and members of our networks to join the programme at a
discounted rate, or to accommodate visits from the programme participants. The
programme will be co-directed by Anita Gulati, a
long-term associate of UWE and lead for the Bristol Leadership Challenge
programme delivered across the city in 2017-18.
To find out more about the RoundTables and register your
interest please contact Lucy
Wilson at UWE and visit the programme website here.
Professor Peter Case’s research on malaria healthcare service provision expanded to Namibia this year. Peter’s research teams – including three recent Zimbabwean graduates from the FBL Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership – are currently working with Namibia’s Vector-borne Diseases Control Programme to combat malaria by improving frontline prevention and treatment of the disease in Kavango Province.
In order to help make the overall Organization Development for Malaria Elimination work sustainable in the region, FBL is supporting a fresh cohort of twelve students (pictured) to complete a postgraduate certificate in Professional Practice in Change Leadership. The module was launched this week with a two-day course delivered in Rundu by Dr Greyling Viljoen. By all accounts, the taught programme was very well received and students gave extremely positive feedback on their experience. The efforts of FBL’s Professor Carol Jarvis and Felicity Cargill should also be acknowledged as they have assisted greatly with setting up the course and enrolling the new cohort.
Most of the students enrolled on the module are also members of project task force which is developing and implementing detailed action plans for malaria healthcare improvements in Kavango. Following the PPCL course, they will be working with Dr Viljoen and one of the Zimbabwean graduates from last year, Munashe Madinga of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, to review and further refine service improvement plans.
The overall project in Namibia is a collaboration between UWE and the Malaria Elimination Initiative, University of California San Francisco. The work is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
[Image: Back row: 1. Ms A Augustu, 2. Ms Loise Ambata, 3. Dr K Mapanga, 4. Ms A Ashivudhi, 5. Ms Julie Neidel, 6. Dr H David 7. Mr M Madinga
Front row: 1. Mr S Shashipapa, 2. Ms I Mendai, 3. Dr G Viljoen, 4. Ms E Eises 5. Ms S Haingura, 6. Mr S Nairenge ]
Senior Lecturer in Strategy and Enterprise, Pam Seanor recently hosted a workshop for NMI, a payment solution company, in Lego ® Serious Play®. Read her account below:
Written by Pam Seanor
Between practice and theorising
Serious-playing with Jayne Purcell, Service designer, we facilitated a day workshop with NMI – “You’ve probably used NMI’s software when booking a train ticket, paying for parking, ordering a burger or most recently making a contactless charity donation, without realising it! NMI develops the most trusted payment software for mobile, online, and in-store payments that is relied on and used by millions of people worldwide, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year” ( https://bristolcalling.com/company/nmi/ ).
As such, the organisation has explicit creative processes and outputs that come together worked on by differing teams. Further, NMI have recently been engaged in a merger and are now part of global organisation with offices in Chicago, IL, New York, NY and Salt Lake City, UT. The Bristol office wanted to try out LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® with the intention to come together over their working within a changing work culture, how they work and how they are going forward as the organisation grows.
We created a space to exchange ideas and develop awareness of differing perspectives and complex themes that encompass social aspects of group practices and activities aiming to reach out to the members of the organisation (Nicolini & Monteiro 2017). Based this encounter, we address the following applying a practice-based approach to entrepreneurship (Nicolini 2012) in part using Lego bricks to play seriously and in part to reveal collective critical reflection.
LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) is a process underpinned by theorizing and
there is increased interest of how academics are using it and more widely
serious play with a purpose (Statler et al. 2011). For instance, Gauntlett
(2015) stated “it is a playful method of differing applications to help
gain insights in to personal and collective understanding of a problem as well
as imagine possible futures”. The process has common ground rules/ etiquette: posing
the question – the purpose of the workshop; constructing models; sharing and
listening to others; reflecting (White paper on LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® 2013). Both Jayne and I are trained LEGO® SERIOUS
PLAY® facilitators. Where Jayne has been a Certified facilitator for a decade, I became an LSP facilitator in January. We have been
collaborating to devise skills workshops and structured tasks and prompts for
learning ePortfolios in my enterprise & entrepreneurship modules with
undergraduates – so I had been practicing playing with Lego with large numbers
of students. Even so,
it was a little daunting taking a low-tech tool like Lego to a creative/high
tech organization, including members of the Chicago office who travelled over.
And, as a critical researcher I want to
speak to how challenge is a central part an LSP workshop. Statler et al. (2011)
noted the paradox of serious play as a process of working through paradoxes
rather than removing all tensions and contradictions that arise in everyday
work practices. On the one hand, I am really interested in working with
organization to create “other” spaces for play (Hjorth 2004), on the other hand
I am hesitant to promote play as an outcome similar to how organizations like
Google seem to be using it managerially to keep people at work to be more
productive (Ashton & Giddings 2018). However, as a facilitator, my role is
not to intervene, nor to promise participants specific organizational outcomes
from the workshop.
It was not possible for all members of NMI to take part; the workshop was 5 groups of 10 participants at each table. These groups were arranged by a member of the NMI team as they often work together on projects in the organisation.
The workshop offered an opportunity to engage in play activities that they would not normally do in work and differing types of social encounters (e.g. to the worst holiday model build we had one participant share a poem of this family holiday – An ode to a dead cat).
We had initially intended to move members of teams around during the day; however, we felt some flexibility was needed and discussed this with the organiser and chose to keep within teams to better draw people out. After the morning practising how to play the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® way, the afternoon was focused on play and “the spirit in which we do what we do, the feel of the team”.
Taking care not to include any people in these images, photographs were taken of models metaphorically representing some of the real-world concerns about working at NMI. The focus is the model. Each post-it note is a few words to describe the key point of their model. Prior to the photos being taken by one of the members of the NMI team, permission was asked to use them in this blog.
Anyone not wishing to be included was asked to speak with one of us as facilitators. And, the draft of this blog was sent for approval prior to circulating. In the spirit of participants telling their own stories, rather than me as a researcher crafting the narrative, the following are examples of differing metaphors to represent their ideas.
Before, I want to highlight that we offered a day for the workshop 9.30AM – 4PM to give participants the opportunity to get used to playing and to play. Even with this time, we could not cover all that we hoped, and we agreed with the organiser that this was a useful starting point from which he could take forward ideas emerging.
WELCOME – A model of feeling welcomed – a few participants newly joined the team – of the team engaged in their open plan office and sitting with their computer screens in front of them and of taking the time to be welcoming.
BRISTOL FOOD & DRINK – This model depicts the area near the office. The location is in the harbourside reflected with the bridge and one of the harbourside cranes created to show the value of being able to go out for coffee/lunch in these areas and of the value of regularly seeing sea birds (and of socialising after work).
COMPASSION – this model holds 2 key metaphors, the rainbow towers and the ladder above as bridging together the organisation. This also reflected other models that were of diversity and balance and valuing members of the team – here represented by many mini figures.
KNOWLEDGE & WISDOM – A concern of change for one was nurturing and maintaining the knowledge and wisdom shared by people who have long worked in the organisation represented by this tower/library build.
At the end of the afternoon, every shared model was placed and presented first one, then the next, and then next, on an empty table and briefly explained by a member of the team creating it. All participants were asked to gather round the table, to listen and once every model had been presented to have a look round. This process was to allow space for all ideas to be heard. These models can be seen in the link, motion image of the shared models created by all of the teams.
Learning -awareness- collective reflecting
Gutzan
and Tuckermann (2019) noted “Although scholars have begun theorising the social
notion of collective reflection in organisations, empirical studies
illustrating these often-neat theoretical conceptualisations are still rare”. Through
the use of Lego, as above, a few common themes were raised and heard – one of
the members of the Chicago office commented that she had no idea people felt
these ways. Feedback after the workshop was generally positive (NMI created a
quick and dirty survey to capture participant views).
We
did not assume that collective reflecting would only occur on the day. Instead,
that it would be ongoing to improve organizing at NMI. Rather than my words, I
offer an email from one of the management team who organized the day of
listening to the messages from the day and reflecting afterwards –
In short; the event was a great success. We were really encouraged by the feedback and the response. Both during the day and afterwards. Personally, I think it was a 10 out of 10. I don’t think I could have hoped for much more.
Having discussed it with a few people, they did find it difficult to transition from literal to symbolic. Maybe it’s related to the type of people that computer science and maths attracts – I’m not sure. Irrespective, many broke through and it was clear that as the day progressed people were increasingly engaged (…) By the time that we reached the final model everyone has loosened up and were contributing something. The final model “build” where everyone put something on the table and spoke was really interesting. There was a great feeling of culture, purpose and it highlighted to myself and Matt what was important to the staff at this time. Clearly culture and location! Our office move was always going to be about maintaining our identity and culture, and it was clear that location would be very important, however during that particular session the real importance came to the surface.
We may well buy some Lego for the office. It’s on the list of things to discuss …
As such, NMI are not only seeking new location and also creating “other spaces” for play. Too, we are discussing the possibility of further serious play sessions for other members of the organisation. One aspect that somehow escaped mention in planning conversations and a meeting before the workshop was of the intended move of the office location. In hindsight we might have built more in to the intention of the day in this seemingly contradictory objective of a move and of the challenge of creating an “other” space.
This blog has been written to grapple with the paradox that Matt Statler and his colleagues speak of in serious play that might bridge between theory and practice and to provide a point of contact for future research of how we might make the challenges in theorising of serious play and collective reflection more useful for practitioners, and what we as academics might learn from practitioners. If you are interested in discussing these ideas of how serious play might contribute to critical approaches to organisation studies and/or creativity throughout the organisation to address challenges as part of the stream of entrepreneurship as practice, please contact Pam Seanor – pam.seanor@uwe.ac.uk
Thanks to Nigel and Emily for the use
of his photographs and for inviting us to work with you and members of the team
at NMI Bristol.
Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies, Dr Jenna Pandeli was invited to take part in a panel discussion on the BBC world service podcast ‘In The Balance’.
Alongside Nila Bala and Chandra Bozelko, both prison reform advocates from the US, they discuss global prison labour and its exploitative potential as well as offering potential solutions to develop prison labour into something that is rehabilitative and better for society.
On Tuesday 25 June Bristol Business School hosted the ‘Unlocking Performance through Employee Engagement Conference’ in collaboration with Engage for Success, CITB and ILM. This was the first Engage for Success conference hosted outside of London, and it was fantastic to hold it here at UWE Bristol welcoming over 170 external delegates to the Business School.
The main theme of the event was around harnessing the skills of people and resources to reach new levels of engagement to boost productivity and save costs. There was also a focus on creating and sustaining employee engagement during challenging times, and with limited budgets, as often experienced by SMEs.
The event was chaired by Dr. Gareth Edwards, Associate Professor of Leadership Development at UWE Bristol, whilst Noordin Shehabuddeen, Director of Bristol Business Engagement Centre at UWE Bristol, welcomed the delegates, who came from a variety of professions from within the South West including the construction industry, accounting and finance, and local government.
The conference was treated to some excellent keynote speakers focusing on the necessity for employee engagement now more than ever, to case studies from baby food manufacturer Ella’s Kitchen to Wilmott Dixon, a local construction company, who were recently ranked the 4th Best Company to work for by the Sunday Times.
There then followed a series of interactive workshops led by invited guests who are also ambassadors for Engage for Success, and a rather intriguing energiser event led by the Creator of Joy at Inspire me, who was able to create a credible rock choral version of ‘Aint No Mountain High Enough’ in just 20 mins – definitely an occasion which you had to be part of to actually believe.
The event concluded with a keynote address from Andrew Sandiford, Managing Partner of local accountancy firm Bishop Fleming, followed by a panel discussion to answer questions submitted by the delegates throughout the day. It was evident that employee engagement is everyone’s responsibility, and many of the questions centered on how to do this if given little or no budget, as well as strategies as to how to gain support from the cynics and buy-in from senior management. Support was certainly gained by everyone present, and we were delighted to have hosted such a fantastic event.
