Writing in organisations

The reason for my journey to Devon was to hear McGilchrist speaking at the one-day Limbus conference at Dartington Hall.* Since I can’t possibly do justice to his thinking in a short blog post, I’ll just share a few thoughts and phrases that have continued to circulate in my mind since the event:

How we pay attention makes a big difference.
Only living beings can pay attention to the world. (A machine can carry out tasks, but it cannot attend, says McGilchrist.) And the fact that we have a divided brain – as apparently all animals and birds do – means we can pay attention in complementary but very different ways. In essence, the left hemisphere enables us to control and manipulate things, steering our attention to detail, clarity, analysis and a-leads-to-b logic – all very useful for our survival. The right brain, on the other hand, allows us to understand the wider picture and deeper meaning and is at ease with connections, paradox, myth, metaphor implicit meaning and feelings.

The modern world is out of balance.
Symptoms of the dominance of left-brain thinking strike me every day – e.g. public services increasingly ruled by measurement and marketisation; people getting busier and busier, lacking the time for reflection on deeper meaning; and interacting more with their devices than with other humans. And this left brain emphasis can make us blind to many things that matter, such as quality, feelings, context and environment.

The left brain has a close relationship with communication and information technologies (or so it seems to me).
Evidently we invented writing mainly to be better able to control and organise things (the left brain’s preference). But then of course every tool or technology we invent makes new things doable and ends up “acting back on us”. Writing, for instance, made highly-organised societies possible, but it also opened the door to excess bureaucracy. Let’s not forget, though, that technologies are intrinsically neither good nor bad – what matters is how we use them. Nowadays some of us feel overloaded by email and distracted by smart phones, but these newer tools also enable a lot of people to work whenever and wherever they want.

Metaphor is a crucial way of understanding the world...
...and was viewed as such up until the Enlightenment in the 18th century. “A lot depends on what you compare things with,” went on McGilchrist. If you compare them with machines, for instance, it has certain consequences. Today, our language is suffused with the machine metaphor – again and again, I am struck by how unthinkingly people use words like “mechanisms” and “feedback” when talking about human communication. In my view, this sloppy use of language cloaks some deep assumptions. It also makes it harder for us to grasp that human communication involves feelings, is interactive, and is seldom (if ever) unambiguous. McGilchrist used a striking metaphor himself, likening left-brain thinking to clear, translucent water, and right-brain perception to the ocean: deep, dark and mysterious.
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That’s enough for now, but I don’t want to finish without mentioning briefly how struck I was by the quality of McGilchrist’s talk. For a whole hour he spoke in a slow and calm manner, barely consulting his notes. I think this allowed him to stay connected with his surroundings and attentive to the human beings in the room. And he projected just one slide: a picture of the majestic mountain he sees from his home on the Isle of Skye. He used it to illustrate the different ways in which we can perceive the world. We might associate the mountain with history, weather, spirituality and the senses, for instance. Or we can simply say “it’s just a rock”. But that would surely not do it or ourselves justice.
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* I'd like to thank the organisers, Farhad Dalal and Julia Vaughan Smith, for putting so much time and thought into the day.

** Astonishing when you think that our alphabet has just 26 letters and (if I’ve got it right) computer algorithms consist essentially of the same 26 letters, plus 10 numbers (0-9) and some grammatical and mathematical symbols.
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In his inspiring booklet ‘Gelassenheit’, Heidegger explored what it meant to think. I was especially struck by his distinction between two kinds of thinking. These have been interpreted as ‘calculative thinking’ (‘rechnendes Denken’) and ‘meditative thinking’ (‘besinnliches Denken’), but a more current translation to my mind would be ‘instrumental thinking’ and ‘reflective thinking’ (or perhaps even ‘contemplation’).

Let’s start with the instrumental kind of thinking. This is what we are doing whenever we calculate, analyse or plan - and it is indispensable. But it is only one kind of thinking. If we rely on it too much, we neglect our capacity for reflective thinking. We then become thought-less, in a sense.

The value of reflective thinking on the other hand is that it allows us to stand back and contemplate the meaning of commonplace things, including our own inventions. It is this kind of thinking that enables us to be thought-full about how we use technology.

The dangers of today’s communication technologies

At the time of Heidegger’s talk (1955), the technology at the forefront of people’s minds was atomic energy, but his insights can help us think about the communication technologies that increasingly dominate our lives today. To my mind, thoughtless uses of such technologies include things like: peering endlessly at a tiny screen while sitting with a friend; writing an email about a sensitive or complex subject when a conversation would have been more useful; or commissioning a report and then failing to engage with the author’s findings and insights.

Yet the real risk facing us, warns Heidegger, stems not from technology itself but from the fact that we are so ill-prepared for the profound changes that are quietly at work. In this situation, the best we can do is to pause occasionally to reflect on how we are using our machines and gadgets. We can take time to contemplate whether we might be in danger of becoming slaves to the very inventions that were supposed to improve our lives.

We have created a pretty mad world in some of our larger organisations. I am thinking especially of health and education, where bureaucracy and top-down control seem to have taken over – and that’s not just in the UK. 

Over the Christmas period we had a visit from an old friend of my husband who is a General Practitioner in southern Germany. Prompted by my curious questioning, he began to overflow with stories about documentation gone mad. For example, after every patient visit, he now has to enter his diagnosis into a computer system by selecting from a long list of codes. He is also supposed to note whether each diagnostic code he selects is: (a) certain, (b) suspected or (c) can be excluded. 

This system, he says, not only creates extra work but also encourages doctors to provide “invented” diagnoses. In other words, it distorts how they record a patient’s condition. The system originated in Australia, but “the Germans have perfected it”, he noted with a smile. The computer even offers blocks of text for cutting and pasting.

Documentation is not a bad thing in itself. But when taken to excess, it robs practitioners of time they could otherwise be spending in conversation with people. Our GP friend explained that he has always taken proper patient histories/stories (same word – Geschichte – in German). He also continues to handwrite his notes, as in his view patients prefer their doctor not to be glued to the computer. 

As I reflected on his words, it occurred to me that those who put in place these systems implicitly undervalue health professionals’ experience, memory and ability to make connections and patterns.

How has this madness come about?  As always, there are multiple influences at work. The one I immediately think of, given my interest in uses of writing, is that many people simply do not understand, or stop to think about, how written communication works – and how it can actually hinder communication. Managers and policy makers in particular seem to accept without question the value of detailed documentation. Additionally, they are often remote and disconnected from what is happening on the ground – they don’t and can’t be present to the human exchanges between patients and health professionals, for instance. And of course all the bureaucratic rules and procedures are reinforced and perpetuated by the inevitable power relations among practitioners, and between practitioners and managers or policy makers.

After talking to our doctor friend, I happened to be reading a book called “Wilful Blindness” by Margaret Heffernan. In it, the author describes how most people in organisations – even when they sense or know there is something wrong – tend to stay silent. She provides copious examples (in banking, in the army, in private companies, and also in the NHS) of people following orders, clinging to convictions or submitting to groupthink. And on top of all that, many work long hours and are under relentless pressure to pursue efficiency and cut costs. These conditions make them even more likely to develop tunnel vision and just do what they are told. 

In the face of what he sees as senseless bureaucracy, what does our German GP do? “Resignation” was the word he used. But he did nevertheless point to some small acts of subversion. For example, having handwritten his patient note, he only enters the absolute minimum information (the diagnostic codes) into the computer. Or he refuses to sign what he sees as time-wasting, superfluous documents presented to him by staff in the care home that houses some of his patients. He knows that the nurses there spend hours documenting everything in great detail, and presumably therefore less time really caring for patients. Why should he sign a piece of paper just because the computer system adopted by the home spits out a whole page detailing each patient’s medication? 

These small subversive acts make our friend unpopular with some of his colleagues. But he works in a single-handed practice and only has a few years left before he retires, so he can afford to risk being the odd-one-out. 

No doubt much of what he experiences is equally in evidence here in the UK. 

What would it take for this bureaucratic madness to change – a new generation of doctors willing to challenge and question? So far, according to our friend, junior doctors in Germany show little sign of starting a revolution. If anything they are more compliant than his contemporaries. 

He also regrets that the trainee doctors he comes across are no longer taught how to take proper patient histories and are less likely than their older colleagues to examine patients physically. Instead, they rely on technological scans and tests. People going through medical education today also get fewer opportunities to see patients than he did. This is because (mercifully perhaps) they no longer work such long hours.
 
Perhaps one day the current culture of bureaucratic control will just become outmoded. People may decide it has run its course or that it has simply generated too many distortions. I suspect it will take not only some very obstinate and courageous individuals but also some kind of collective rebellion. 

Related reading
Margaret Heffernan. Wilful Blindness, 2011.

For me, this year has been one of reviewing how I want to live and work for the next few years. It has become clear that the most pleasing daily routine is to start with breakfast and some reading, then write for the rest of the morning, have lunch and spend the afternoon doing something else.

Every book about the writing process seems to recommend spending at least a few hours each day writing.

This morning I had only got as far as the reading stage when I heard our current guests, a Dutch couple, enter the kitchen downstairs. I decided to join them in my morning gown for a cup of tea and some talk. While staying with us, Jos has been working on a biography of a prominent Dutch politician; Ilda has been painting portraits of people with Alzheimer’s.

At some point our talk turned to the subject of narrative writing. Jos works with a group of PhD students in Amsterdam: “When asked to write narratives, what they produced wasn’t narrative at all,” he said.

“What did they do instead?” I asked. “Did they generalise?”

“Yes,” he replied. “They abstracted – maybe that’s the same as generalising – and they wrote about how things should happen in their organisations.”

“I expect abstraction comes naturally to them,” I went on. “In our society, we swim in an ocean of abstract concepts and categories. The students probably can’t see the water they are swimming in. So much of the language we use in organisational life is remote from any lived experience. Somebody I know once said that we’ve ‘become lost in our abstractions’.”

“It’s as if we live in a parallel universe,” Jos reflected.

I started thinking about what kind of conversation I might have with the students in Amsterdam about narrative writing and abstraction. The way I see it, writing has enabled humanity to develop complex abstract thought. But writing is such a versatile tool; it can also be used to develop other kinds of thinking, such as stories and narrative accounts of experience.

I mentioned Marshall McLuhan and his notion that the tools we invent shape us. For me, this perfectly encapsulates our complex two-way interrelationship with writing. It sparked a further thought from Jos: “We could explore with the students how the narratives we create shape us. At the moment, they view their working lives and academic study as separate spheres.”

“And narrative writing could help bridge the gap,” I suggested.

Before long, all three of us felt ready to go off and do our morning’s writing or painting. I am reminded again as I write this how inspiring it can be to allow conversations to emerge from the cracks and crevices in one’s daily writing routine.

Epilogue – how writing reflective narrative changes us
If we write a narrative account of our own experience, unexpected insights usually emerge. First we tell a story, then we re-read our own words, and finally we reflect further on what is emerging. The very process of writing changes us.

Related reading
Marshall McLuhan. The Gutenberg galaxy. University of Toronto Press, 1962.

David Abram. The spell of the sensuous. Vintage Books, 1996.

When you feel you’ve had an epiphany, it’s disturbing to come across somebody challenging it. Mine was about the influence of literacy on society and the effect of writing on me and my life. 

About 12 years ago I came across Walter J Ong’s writing about how oral societies thought and spoke. Non-literate people, I discovered, used words that were close to the living world. They spoke about practical situations. In contrast, since the introduction of the alphabet some 4000 years ago, and especially since the invention of printing, literate society has become fonder and fonder of logical analysis, abstract categories, theories, arguments, rules and plans. 

I went on to discover a book by David Abram describing how Australian Aboriginals walked across the Outback, using stories to orient themselves but also using landmarks to trigger the stories. And I stumbled across Leonard Shlain, who argued that writing played a central role in the emergence of monotheism. 

It was as if a lid had been lifted off my world. All of a sudden, I saw my own and other people’s writerly habits in a new light. I began to question how people used writing in organisational life – elaborate written agendas, minutes, proposals, strategies, wordy presentations. Even the use of flip charts started to annoy me. I developed a conviction that much of the writing I saw in organisations was getting between people. It wasn’t serving communication, creating better understanding or doing any of the things it is so good at.

What seemed to question my belief in Ong's thinking was a book called Writing Space. It had sat unread on my bookshelf for a decade but recently caught my eye again. The author, David Jay Bolter, pointed out that many scholars have criticised the “technological determinism” of Ong and his predecessor Marshall McLuhan. As Bolter put it, writing technologies (writing and printing) are not autonomous agents that can alter our culture as if from the outside, because they themselves are part of culture. They shape and are shaped by social and cultural forces. In particular, writing and printing developed alongside institutions and practices such as schools, the law and modern bureaucracy. Without writing, these institutions could not exist in their current form, but without these institutions, writing could not permeate culture in the way it has. 

So, rather than saying that writing has “transformed human consciousness”, as Ong wrote and I accepted, one might say that different cultures choose to exploit writing technology for different purposes. Western culture has used it to develop and privilege abstract and bureaucratic ways of thinking. 

What about all the new communication technologies, such as the web, email and mobile telephony? In the interests of brevity, I’m not going to address the immense topics of email and texting here. 

Instead I will focus on the link, that revolutionary feature of web technology. Links entice us to jump about, often taking us to another page or website. We may even end up unable to find our way back to where we started. For many, the link raises doubts about the future of the book, the essay and the article, although the funny thing is, according to Bolter, that most academics, managers and non-fiction writers have stuck with linear text. Prose is still with us. To me, this is not altogether surprising, given that new technologies do not always replace old ones: the phone continues in use despite email, the novel despite film, the train despite the car, and prose despite hyperlinks and multimedia publications.

Personally, I love well-written prose by an insightful author. I like being taken by the hand and led through unfamiliar territory, whether fictional or factual. I may choose to read the text in my own order, and to skip passages that bore me, but I still value the “curatorial work” the author has done for me, selecting and ordering the material in a way that helps me get to know the subject and keeps me turning the page. (I even prefer a book made of paper to my underused Kindle, but that is a whole topic for another day.) 

Long live the author! Long live the book, the essay and the thoughtful article!

Related reading
Walter J Ong. Orality and literacy. Routledge, 2002.

Marshall McLuhan. The Gutenberg galaxy. University of Toronto Press, 1062.

David Abram. The spell of the sensuous. Vintage Books, 1996.

Leonard Shlain. The alphabet versus the goddess. Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1998.

David Jay Bolter. Writing space. Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001.

Alison Donaldson. Writing in organizational life: how a technology simultaneously forms and is formed by human interaction. In Ralph Stacey (Ed.). Experiencing emergence in organizations. Routledge, 2005.

Learning from experience: 
why history matters in organisational life

In a recent publication, I muse on why one comes across so little history in organisational documents today. In my view, it has something to do with the subtle influences of communication technologies, including writing, printing and more recently computers. Added to those is blanket application of scientific thinking and managerial ways, especially in the public sector. 

In my own small way, I try to redress the balance by writing narrative accounts to describe and evaluate organisational activities that have evolved over time and are hard to measure. I take pains to incorporate process thinking and emergence in the narratives I write, using people’s own words as much as possible and paying attention to detail.

“In order to see more clearly, here as in countless similar cases, we must focus on the details of what goes on; must look at them from close to” (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953)

Writing case studies and organisational histories does not just involve looking backwards. It is also about understanding how we came to be where we are today and what that might mean for the future.

“Good historians, I suspect, whether they think about it or not, have the future in their bones. Besides the question ‘Why?’ the historian also asks the question ‘Whither?’.”  (Carr, What is history? 1961).

While breakfasting in bed this morning, I reached out for my smartphone to see if there was anything interesting on Twitter. I ended up reading assorted items about Mandela, the health service and cod-chips-and-beer. This (Twitter – not cod and chips) is a habit that is growing on me, as it gives me more tailored news and ideas than I get when I listen to the Today Programme.

But then I started thinking about what Twitter in the morning really means. It is as if I am with my friends in an 18th century coffee house (see above) discussing what we are reading in the newspaper and what we have experienced over the past week or so. 

But I’m not. I’m actually peering into a small screen, occasionally glimpsing a blurry image of a friend on their Tweet.

What if I tried to re-create the coffee house culture with my friends and contacts in Hove?, I thought. Brighton and Hove have dozens of excellent cafés, and ever since I moved here 18 months ago I have felt an urge to spend more time in them. I would certainly do so if I knew I was likely to run into a friend or an interesting conversation there.

Neil Postman's 1992 book "Technopoly: the surrender of culture to technology" is highly relevant to the subject of writing in organisational life today.

First, Postman lays out how every technology, including writing, alters human thinking. He then goes on to show how bureaucracy has come to be about the pursuit of efficiency above all else:

Problems arise when bureaucratic techniques (e.g. standardised forms, categories and labels, opinion surveys) are applied by "experts" to every problem in society without looking at context or history. This :

Of course, the information explosion that began in the 20th century has only served to reinforce the rule of the bureaucrat.

In case this all sounds too negative, Postman's final chapter includes some suggestions about how to resist technopoly. Most are related to education. For example, he recommends that every subject (including scientific ones) "be taught as history". That way, people can begin to understand that "knowledge is not a fixed thing but a stage in human development, with a past and a future". History, Postman says, teaches that "the world is not created anew each day, that everyone stands on someone else's shoulders." And histories, in a nutshell, are "theories about why change occurs".

All of this speaks to the role of the written word in society today. For me, Postman's book provides a strong argument for (a) restricting the use of bureaucratic techniques to technical problems only, and (b) taking history seriously in every field.