Items tagged "Polarity Management":
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Interview with Barry Johnson: Polarities, Dilemmas, and How to Manage Them In OrganizationsBarry and I had been having breakfast at my favorite B & B in Cleveland, when we took a few moments to talk about Polarity Management. He has been working on the phenomenon of interdependency for over 30 years. In this interview he talks about what polarity management is and the new terminology of “infinity factor.”
Barry shares a story from an organization he worked with that had a high value for autonomy in their employees and programs. However, this was leading the isolation and competition between them. They had a new desire to move toward greater integration. But, they used a typical gap analysis and treated the move toward integration as a solution to their problem, rather than a polarity to manage (meaning the polarity between autonomy and integration). This resulted in failed attempts to move toward integration until they began using a polarity management approach. Find out more about Barry’s work at: Polarity Management Associates.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 23
- date:
- Mar 4, 2012 (a Sunday)
- time:
- 5:10:00 (2 months ago)
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]Polarities and Paradoxes
This is the 3rd installment of a 4 part series on Kurt Lewin’s influence on understanding leadership.
In this 3-minute piece Earl Braxton takes a look at polarities. For those of you who follow my posts and the work on this subject, you might find it interesting how he defines and addresses polarities: “What seems like two separate and opposite phenomenon, are separate manifestations of the same continuum.” Examples include love and hate, up and down, individual and group, strong and weak, hot and cold.
Earl thinks of polarities as gifts from the universe. However, one of the risks contained within this gift is that we can “…get sucked in one or the other and lose track of the other.” We might forget that we have choices that include the full range on the continuum. For example, Earl argues that when you are angry or hurt, that is a choice and there are other options sitting there, waiting for us. We might get so focused on hate, that we forget we have a choice and can embrace the other side of the polarity, which is love.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 8
- date:
- Mar 4, 2012 (a Sunday)
- time:
- 12:00:00 (2 months ago)
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Balancing Participatory and Directive Management In Community Based Organizations
One of the reasons I started studying organization structures, org psychology, and general organization development was to find more lenses that helped me explain my own experience in the groups I was a part of. Polarity Management is one of those gems that has help tremendously in that effort.This article takes up the question of whether community based organizations should use participatory or directive management practices. That has been one of the most prevailing issues in every organization I’ve belonged to from Universities to Community Organizing Groups. The article I’ve written here introduces the concept of polarity management to understand this common dilemma.
Comments from readers:
“I just finished reading for the third time, BREATHE! I am totally using it in my presentation tomorrow at the Young Women of Color and Trans Leadership Symposium. Just what I needed.” - Adriann Barboa, Young Women United, Albquerque
“Yay polarity management! I can’t wait to put this to use!” - Radha Patel, United Nations Population Fund, New York City
“I think the article hits on a great issue CBO’s face on a regular basis. Damn, if only we would have known this earlier.” - Ray Padilla, High School Teacher, Las Cruces
Over the years there have been competing trends in community based organizations, and particularly in community organizing groups. One trend has called for participatory management. This approach is in response to legitimate concerns over the downsides of directive management, which include autocratic decision-making, the inability to tap the wisdom and leadership of members and staff, and abuse of power.
The other trend has called for a “strong hand” and directive management. This has been a response to equally legitimate arguments in organizations that have become unable to manage themselves and have become immobilized…
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- date:
- Mar 3, 2012 (a Saturday)
- time:
- 12:00:00 (2 months ago)
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3 Common Myths in Managing Social Justice Groups
Ann Caton, partner at Potomac Group and Adriann Barboa, of Young Women United, teamed up to present “The Dream and the Drama: Ups and Downs of Alternative Organizational Structures” at the Sister Song conference here in DC.This workshop created an all too rare space for 20 women from various organizations around the country to talk about the dynamics taking place inside of their organizations. There are few places where grassroots groups are able to discuss these issues and receive support in addressing them. Ann and Adriann presented best practices from Young Women United, a polarity management model on “participatory and directive management,” and frameworks for understanding the exploration of alternative structures.
As a part of this workshop, Ann shared a new paper on three common myths in managing social justice groups. Read her paper:
3 Common Myths in Managing Social Justice Groups:
“Most social justice practitioners take on the work of organizational management not by choice but by necessity. We make our way by luck and instinct, trial and error, and seldom pause to share what we’ve learned. For our collective consideration, I offer here three myths that I often find - and that I once subscribed to fully - in the management of social justice groups.”
1. Conflict is unbearable
Organizers and activists can look like an angry bunch - interrupting meetings, blocking traffic, picketing people’s homes. In our efforts to win victories for our communities, we are apt to defy social convention and spark conflict on purpose, in public y con gusto. Outside the walls of our organizations, we are warriors. Inside those walls…eh, not so much.
It’s a given that every organization has it’s own unique culture…READ THE FULL ARTICLE.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- date:
- Dec 18, 2009 (a Friday)
- time:
- 9:47:00 (2 years ago)
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
New Trend: “Infinity Factor” used to describe the energy system within interdependencies and Polarity Management
Listen to my interview with Dana Wilcox on the story of and genesis of “infinity factor.”I was sitting with Dana at the end of a week in Chicago where we had been participating in a learning community that has been meeting for over 15 years around issues of Realtime Strategic Change and Polarity Management. I asked her about the term infinity factor and where it started. The interview was in front of a large window looking out on a busy Chicago street and happened to be just a few feet way from where she had been the moment the phrase came into existence.
The term, “Infinity Factor” in part, highlights that there is a natural dynamic or energy system that is present in human systems. This energy system is represented by the infinity loop wrapped around interdependent pairs. This new language emphasizes the energy system is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is there to tap. The infinity factor can help to illuminate and help us more effectively use other models in OD like Appreciative Inquiry, Real Time Strategic Change, Gap Analysis, or even Bion and Basic Assumption groups. On the other hand, the “Polarity Map” is a useful way to help systems and groups tap the enegery system and manage the tension in dilemmas we face.
The management or tapping of the underlying energy system can be a purposeful and choiceful one - meaning that awareness of the polarities and infinity factor theory expand the choices available to us. If we are unaware of the energy system, it is still going on, we just have fewer choices that could otherwise ease our conflicts and support our individual or group development.Tags
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- # of plays:
- 20
- date:
- Nov 6, 2009 (a Friday)
- time:
- 3:00:00 (2 years ago)
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