Reflections on "Exploring the Unspoken"

In a strictly hierarchical organization, the only learning that takes place is the learning of the individual at the top. Everyone else obeys orders. An organization without learning will only survive in very stable conditions. In practice, of course, the lower ranks actually learn and adapt without being told to do so. But hierarchies tend to learn slowly, especially because a lot of effort goes into preserving the superior status of those at the top, inevitably an anti-learning activity.

(p18, The Three Ways of Getting Things Done: Hierarchy, Heterarchy and Responsible Autonomy in Organizations).

Gerard Fairtlough's analysis of hierarchical structures brings into focus several of the major questions and issues raised during the discussion of a workshop entitled Exploring the Unspoken: Learning to have difficult conversations using the visual and performing arts. The workshop, organised by the Society for Organisational Learning, brought together a drama group (Steps Drama) and a visual artist (Julian Burton). Both are experienced at working with employees of large organizations to address problems in inter-relational behaviours.

One of the lasting impressions from the workshop was the shocking realisation that many people spend every working day living in a stagnant state of fear and silence: not feeling able either to contribute positively to their company with ideas or suggestions for improvements, or to communicate any problems they are experiencing with their colleagues. Julian Burton showed the group a picture he had created while working with a large engineering company, in collaboration with several employees. The picture did make an immediate impact, invoking negative feelings of chaos, incoherence and isolation. However, when examining the individual cameos that made up Burton's picture, it struck several members of the group that the feelings expressed were relatively tame. The shocking part of this particular picture came from the knowledge that the artist had, at the request of the participants, omitted to represent the most risky statements about the company's functionality, or rather the lack of it (for example, the confession "We gang up on whomever the boss victimises") and that the censored version caused such feelings of panic that the project was held back for three months before it was shown to the CEO. This led to some discussion over how far the artist is ultimately responsible for the welfare of the organisation and individual people he or she is working with. The group was unsure whether the artist's function in this context should be merely to create an image, or a piece of theatre, and release it back into the conditions that engendered it, or whether the creation of the art is such a challenging intervention that it brings with it a moral obligation to surround the moment the art is unveiled with a process of repairing the damage revealed by the art, or risk making the situation worse.

Fairtlough's book opens up a discussion that examines possible reasons behind such unconstructive experiences of working environments. It is easy to see how the power structure of a hierarchical organisation can have a stifling effect on communication, particularly looking up the chain of command; whether or not there are personal difficulties involved in a working relationship, it is far easier to ask an equal or subordinate to change a behaviour than it is to ask a superior. However, both Fairtlough's observation and the work of Julian Burton and Steps Drama touch upon more complicated questions about change in organisations and in individuals.

The workshop began with the enactment of a typical workplace scenario. The two actors from Steps Drama became two particular characters, each with pre-determined flaws and agendas. Relying on the help of suggestions from the group attending the workshop, the actors allowed the characters to improve their inter-relational skills, thus achieving a productive outcome from what began as a broken working relationship and a wholly dysfunctional meeting. Very early on in the discussion following this improvisation, the group identified that a main function of Steps Drama's work is to bring the participants to a state of awareness and that the most important awareness for achieving positive change is not the ability to see flaws in other people or systems, but rather the recognition of what needs to change in oneself: i.e. self-awareness. Robbie Swales from Steps Drama commented that the people they work with always seem to pitch any discussion about personal and/or pertinent work-related issues at a level with which they are comfortable. An interesting effect of the use of art as a tool for organisations is that it makes possible such a choice, by offering a distance and anonymity which, by its very nature, is at once a part of reality and yet remains one step removed from it. A quotation attributed to Elizabeth I on the event of her seeing Shakespeare's Richard II comes to mind: "I am Richard II, know ye not that?". Yet the truly subversive part of the artistic process happens when its effects differ from the initial objective. Julian Burton observed that while many organisations commission his work with the objective of communicating a new business strategy (down) to their staff, it almost invariably highlights a host of deep-rooted and hidden, silenced or communally-denied problems throughout the company.

Mind the Gap

If you live in Britain, ‘Mind the Gap’ [sila berhati-hati ruang di platform in Bahasa Melayu] will almost certainly have entered your awareness like an absent-minded gall wasp burrowing its way back into an oak apple on discovering that it has forgotten some Cynipoidean essential. (Which reminds me, I have just learnt that a robin’s pincushion is technically known as a bedeguar.)

Today I’m thinking about gaps and ‘being late’. In The Feeling of What Happens Antonio Damasio’s talks about the “half-second delay”. That is to say, the half-second delay between action and cognition. Neural monitoring and video recording technology have now shown definitively that an action is set in motion before we decide to perform it. We do before we decide to do. In this sense, consciousness takes time to build. “We are late for consciousness”.

Looking at or talking to someone else we can also, in this half-second, observe reactions and passing clouds of emotion and affect on the other’s face - preconscious reactions of which he or she is often unaware.

As Nigel Thrift has observed: “we require a microbiopolitics of the subliminal, much of which takes place in the half-second delay – one which understands the kind of biological-cum-cultural gymnastics that takes place in this realm.”

Then I read Dr Melissa Lamar’s paper on neuroscience and decision making – based on a presentation she made recently at a SOL-UK meeting. In it, she explains how emotion informs our decision making at a level somewhere below our awareness (subliminally, in Thrift’s words).

Talking about experiments with packs/decks of cards, where ‘players’ discover by trial and error that some decks are more favourable, she says:

“Using galvanic skin response measurements of micro-sweating, researchers discovered that ‘advantageous’ decision making and the learning process behind it occurs before individuals can verbally explain their card choices. Thus, before being able to verbalize which are the ‘advantageous’ and ‘disadvantageous’ decks, individuals are picking from the ‘advantageous’ decks and showing elevated levels of micro-sweating suggestive of negative emotions immediately before picking from the ‘disadvantageous’ decks… [These studies] would suggest that while cognitive operations are essential to decision making, emotional and physiological influences on these processes are also present.”

Read the full article on our website here.

I'd never heard of micro-sweating (probably don't get out enough). A Google search for microsweating found details of the card experiment here. It turns out that Damasio did the experiment. Here I am doing this painstaking detective work, putting together different bits of the half-second jigsaw – only to find that Antonio is way ahead of me. So remember, you read it here second.