You will recall the three elements of wisdom identified in Chapter 1.

• Values: Values guide wise action
• Rationality: Knowledge is required but insufficient for wise action
• Power: Wisdom is action-oriented

Previous chapters have looked at the interplay of either values and power or rationality and power. Let us now combine all three to gain insights into how to approach problems and then take action to fix them.

Organizational action is a group activity. To act, therefore, we must contend with the values, rationalities, and power of others.

Progress requires that we find groups willing to support our efforts. To act, we will need to develop new bureaucratic rationalities, as the previous chapter discussed. Doing this requires support from people with authority to make those changes. We may need resources such as personnel, equipment, and money to translate our ideas into reality. We need to convince people who control those resources to help us.

Similarly, our actions may threaten the activities of other groups, which may create resistance to our goals. Others may use their power to prevent the creation of new bureaucratic rationalities that we desire or limit our access to the resources we need.

In the face of this complexity, how can we use the insights into values, rationality, and power that previous chapters provided to foster organizational wisdom? This chapter explores that question by discussing how people can use values and rationality to solve complex problems. Since creating action in an organization is a group activity, this chapter then discusses ways to develop allies to support you in your endeavors. It then considers how to manage resistance and conflict from groups that might oppose your actions, followed by a discussion of how to create champions who drive your cause forward.

Using Values and Rationality to Solve Complex Problems

Values guide wise action. In general, the problems groups and organizations identify are related to the values they pursue. For example, a finance department may focus on the value of sustainability. Consequently, the problems it sees will likely be related to sustainability. It is worth remembering, though, that organizations require the realization of multiple values to thrive.

Knowledge is required but insufficient for wise action. One reason this is true is that our understanding is often limited and flawed. Each form of rationality presented in Chapter 5 provides clarity in some aspects of human activity but is blind in others. Solving problems requires us to bring appropriate forms of rationality to bear.

We can improve our problem-solving ability by bringing multiple people and perspectives together in the process of collective reasoning. Through collective reasoning, people representing different value positions and relying on various forms of rationality come together to create a more vibrant picture of the situation. Let’s explore these ideas in more detail.

Using Appropriate Forms of Rationality to Solve Problems

Each type of rationality discussed in Chapter 5 has strengths in certain areas. For example, economic rationality has advantages when you are trying to discover how to use your resources most productively. When you are trying to understand the social dynamics in a specific social setting, however, contextual (cultural) rationality may be more appropriate. Thus, when solving a problem, it is vital to understand which form of rationality is suitable for that situation.

That said, we get a more vibrant picture of our situation by bringing multiple rationalities to bear. For example, using contextual (cultural) rationality may help us determine how to best apply the results of our economic rationality to a specific organization.

In short, consider the nature of your problem and assess the rationality most appropriate to solve it. Then, broaden your thinking by applying different types of rationality to enrichen your view of the situation. Applying multiple types of rationality by yourself may be challenging to accomplish. Luckily, in organizations, you are not alone.

Collective Reasoning as a Way to Solve Problems

A person can only know so much. Additionally, most forms of education develop only one or two types of rationality. For example, science programs focus almost exclusively on technocratic rationality. Thus, people may lack the capacity to use other forms of rationality effectively.

A solution to these limitations is collective reasoning. ^[1] Through collective reasoning, you bring multiple people with different perspectives together to deliberate on a problem. With enough people, the insights of one person can compensate for the blindspots of another.

A challenge that may occur when performing collective reasoning is that different people may approach your problem from different value positions. Finance personnel may focus on robustness, scientists on innovation, nurses on public interest, and so on. Though this can lead to disagreements, remember that social systems require a multiplicity of values to thrive. The goal you should set for your team is not, for example, how to achieve public interest at the expense of sustainability, but how to achieve both public interest and sustainability, and all the other values people hold.

We see several examples of collective reasoning in the Seniors Program from Chapter 7.

Wisdom is action-oriented. Taking action in an organization requires the support of others. The next section discusses how to build that support.

Building Supportive Alliances

Regardless of your position in the organization, you will require the support of others to act. Recall from the opening of Chapter 3 that seventy percent of major change programs fail. They fail because groups within the organization resist the change. These failures occur even when senior management wants the change to happen. Even the CEO requires support from groups within their organization if they want their actions to take hold. How do we create that support?

There are many educational resources through bookstores, business schools, and consultants discussing issues of leadership and change management. Rather than reiterate those resources, this textbook focuses on the organizational wisdom framework–that is, values, rationality, and power. It views the process of finding allies to support your actions as exercising the power tactic of producing power relations. This section considers the roles that values and rationality play in creating these power relations.

Using Values to Create Allies: Producing Power Relations

As described earlier, people establish organizations to pursue a set of values. For example, Canadian society created healthcare organizations to pursue the terminal value of public interest using instrumental values of altruism, innovation, robustness, sustainability, and dialogue. Generally, you will find your organization will enable actions consistent with its values and will constrain actions that violate them.

Let’s assume you have identified an action your organization needs to take. Perhaps it needs to revise its hiring practices or reduce its carbon footprint, or any other action you may deem necessary.

When planning how you will create this action, one of the first things to reflect on is whether you need the support of any stakeholders within the organization. If your activities are limited in scope, you may be able to implement it by yourself. A teacher in a classroom, for example, may be able to change their teaching strategies without needing support from any other area in the organization.

Often, though, you may need support from other departments to implement a change. For example, you may need funding to buy equipment, or personnel to perform required work, and so on. If that same teacher wanted to reduce the average class size in their school from thirty-five to thirty students, for example, this would require the agreement of many departments to implement. The remainder of this chapter assumes the need to gain support from other areas in your organization (or beyond).

When attempting to drive action in your organization that requires the support of others, the first thing you must do is identify the organization’s terminal and instrumental values. There are several ways you can achieve this understanding.

• Review the organization’s mission and vision statement along with strategy documents that senior managers have created. Sometimes these documents will explicitly state the organization’s values. Other times, you may need to intuit the values implied in the goals it has set for itself.
• Spend time observing the organization. What does it do? Which activities does the incentive structure promote? Are certain actions constrained? You will then need to reflect on what values those actions imply.
• Recall from Chapter 4 that organizations require a multitude of values to thrive. Many organizations will assign different groups or individuals the responsibility of pursuing different values. For example, in hospitals, physicians, nurses, and healthcare workers assume responsibility for the value of public interest, which they achieve through caring for the sick. Administrators, however, focus on balancing the budget and ensuring the hospital has the resources it needs to function. Those activities imply the values of sustainability and robustness. Does your organization have a similar division of labor? Which departments are responsible for which value? How do they pursue that value? How do departments interact with each other?

Once you understand the values guiding the organization, you must reflect on how the activities you wish to perform align with the organization’s terminal and instrumental values. Because organizations require many values to thrive, your actions may align with all the organization’s values (which is rare) or align with some but not all values. Other times, your activities may deeply contravene the terminal values of dominant groups. Let’s see how to handle each of those three situations.

When desired actions align with all organizational values:

• Great! You will need to use the power tactic of defining rationality to ensure critical stakeholders see how your desired actions align with the organization’s values.

When desired actions align with some but not all organizational values:

• Focus on the values that do align with your organization’s values. Define rationality to position your efforts in stakeholder’s minds in a way that highlights areas of overlap.
• Identify those groups in the organization whose values align with the action you wish to take. You might consider presenting your plans to them as they may be able to offer you support as you move your efforts forward. Doing this is an example of producing power relations. Even if these groups are unable to provide direct assistance, they may be able to speak on your behalf to powerful stakeholders, which builds your base of support.

Reflect on the impact groups pursuing unrelated or conflicting values may have on your desired action.

• There may be no impact. Your desired actions may not affect another group’s pursuit of their values, and so you may be able to ignore each other.
• There may be passive resistance. Some groups may be indifferent to your actions, while some may even wish you well. Others may want you to go away and stop bothering them. For whatever reason, these groups may be unwilling to provide resources or support that you need to succeed. What you will likely see in these cases is others using tactics of the second dimension of power. Rather than engage in open conflict or seeking to influence others against you, they will avoid or suppress conflict.
• There may be active resistance. Other groups pursuing different values may see your actions as a threat to their activities and will use their power to stop you. That is, they may use tactics of the first, second, or third dimensions of power.

What if the action you wish to take is incompatible with the terminal values of dominant groups within the organization? Making progress in this situation will be difficult–extremely difficult. In this case, you have some tough choices to make.

• Organizations can act unkindly towards individuals or groups that express incompatible values. If the groups you are working against possess sufficient power, you may find yourself ostracized by your colleagues. You may experience fewer opportunities for advancement. You may find your work discredited and your reputation challenged. You could lose your job.^[2] In such situations, you may wish to reconsider whether you want to take action. Perhaps you would be better off moving to an organization whose values align with yours.
• There are times, though, when organizations need to change. Sometimes an action must be taken because it is the right thing to do. Examples of such cases include if the organization is acting unethically or self-destructively. In such cases, implementing the action you wish to make requires a significant amount of power. You may need the power of executive management to drive such actions. Alternatively, you may need to find stakeholders outside the organization that possesses the capacity to influence its actions. This is an example of using power against the organization.
• The world needs brave people to take courageous action. This textbook, however, would be remiss if it failed to tell you that such people are often treated poorly by the organization they seek to change. If your actions are incompatible with the organization’s values, and you attempt to exercise power against it, the organization may use its power to stop you. Depending on the organization’s ability, the result can be destroyed careers, reputations, and lives. Be sure to assess the political landscape in which you operate thoughtfully. Think through whether you need to create the change you are envisioning before acting against an organization’s values. Consider how you might protect yourself if the organization chooses to retaliate.

This section considered the role of values in the production of power relations. The following paragraphs examine the role of rationality in producing these alliances.

Using Rationality to Create Allies: Producing Power Relations

Through the application of different forms of rationality, we understand our world and justify our actions. Thus, convincing other people and groups to support your efforts requires you to apply the appropriate rationality to persuade them to do so. The following sections explore how to do this.

Values Come Before Rationality

Generally, rationality never operates alone. Values guide our use of rationality.^[3] If people perceive your values are incompatible with theirs, no amount of rationality will convince them to join you.

Thus, your first step is to evaluate the overlap between your values and those of other stakeholders.

Defining Rationality as a Means to Produce Power Relations

Defining rationality is a tactic of power through which people and groups convince others what is rational. People want to be rational. They want others to perceive them as reasonable. Thus, as Chapter 9 discussed, by defining what other people consider rational, you can influence their behaviors. Producing power relations requires you to define rationality because you must convince others that supporting you is the sensible thing to do.

Defining rationality to produce power relations requires at least two steps: (1) demonstrating value alignment and (2) using the right form of rationality. Another way to rephrase this is you must convince others that you are doing the right thing (value alignment) in the right way (rationality alignment).

Showing Value Alignment

People are more likely to support you if you can demonstrate that doing so will help them advance the values they pursue. Chapter 4 discussed various ways values interacted, including terminal versus instrumental values. It also considered how time affected values. Some actions have an effect in the short term, others in the long term. In some cases, one action that might achieve a value in the short term may undermine it in the long term.

When considering which people and groups to approach, assess the values guiding their actions. Evaluate the ways your values and theirs might interact. Perhaps your terminal value is an instrumental value for them, or maybe your actions solve a long term problem they have ignored due to short term time pressures.

Then, when you approach them, define rationality is such a way that they see how supporting you advances their values. Let’s look at the Seniors Program for an example of this.

To define rationality effectively, however, you must use the right form of rationality, an idea that the following section explores.

Using the Appropriate Forms of Rationality

As alluded to in Chapter 5, different groups may emphasize the importance of one type of rationality over others. Banks, for instance, may favor economic rationality when making decisions. An art gallery, though, may favor body rationality. Before you approach people to support your actions, you must first learn their preferred form rationality. The more you incorporate that form of rationality into your argument, the more compelling they will find it.

Though you may emphasize the rationality your audience finds most compelling, draw on other forms of rationality, also, to create a rich web of understanding. Each type of rationality taps into different areas of the mind. The more deeply someone’s mind is engaged in your argument, the more compelling they will find it. The actions of the fellowship in the Seniors Program demonstrated this.

Collective Reasoning as a Seans to produce Power Relations

As described above, collective reasoning is an act of deliberative democracy where many people join together to share ideas and debate important topics. Beyond the ability to develop superior solutions to problems,^[5] collective reasoning also has the benefit of producing power relations.^[6]

There are several reasons why collective reasoning builds relationships. When you ask a group for their ideas, and you then take their beliefs seriously, respect between you and that group grows. Mutual respect between groups is a foundation for creating strong relations. Additionally, when a group sees that an activity incorporates their ideas, they become motivated to perpetuate that activity.

In short, by incorporating the rationality of others into yours, not only will their respect for you grow, but they will become invested in the success of your plans. Again, we see several examples of this in the Seniors Program.

A reason that producing power relations is essential is that any action you might take in an organization may result in resistance. A strong network helps you overcome this resistance. The next section considers resistance in detail, outlining why groups might resist you and exploring ways you and your allies might manage it.

Resistance & Conflict

Wisdom is action-oriented. Taking action may lead to resistance, if not outright conflict, from groups affected by your actions. Though conflict may refer to the use of violence, as we often observe in social systems experiencing severe unrest, in the context of this textbook, conflict refers to nonviolent antagonism between two or more groups. This may manifest as groups’ use of all the tactics of power available to them to actively undermine and eliminate the “threat” posed by others.

These conflicts may arise due to incompatible values, differing rationalities, or both.^[7] Let’s explore each of those reasons in turn as well as ways to manage this resistance.

Disagreements Between Values

Groups may resist you if they perceive your actions as a threat to the values they pursue. These value conflicts may lie across three dimensions: conflicting terminal values, conflicting instrumental values, or the time scales when actions have their impact.^[8]

 Conflicting Terminal Values

Terminal values are the ends we find worth achieving. Conflicts arising out of conflicting terminal values may be difficult to solve because each party is, fundamentally, trying to achieve different things. You may recall from Chapter 4 that organizations use several means to negotiate these types of conflicts, including the following.^[9][10][11]

• Firewalls: The organization tasks different departments with the pursuit of different values.
• Cycling: One set of values dominate. Over time, resistance grows until a new set of values become dominant.
• Casuistry: Individuals rely on experience with similar conflicts to resolve current ones.
• Bias: One set of values falls out of favor.
• Hybridization: Individuals attempt to reconcile competing values.
• Incrementalism: Individuals slowly favor one value over time.
• Compromise: Competing values each sacrifice some of their aims to accommodate the other value.

Conflicting Instrumental Values

Instrumental values describe the means we find appropriate to achieve an end. Chapter 4 presented several examples of situations where groups shared terminal values but had different instrumental values. That is, even though they each sought the same outcome, their focus on different ways of achieving that outcome led to a tension between the groups.

In addition to the tactics described in the preceding section to resolve such conflicts, defining rationality to focus on the terminal values you share might reduce the resistance between groups pursuing different instrumental values.

Conflicting Time Dimensions of Values

Chapter 4 discussed how the time scales over which different groups achieve their values might lead to resistance. The actions of one group to reach a value in the long term may compromise another group’s ability to achieve that value in the short term. Again, using the methods described above to focus on those values that overlap might reduce the resistance you face.

Disagreements Between Rationalities

Sometimes, different types of rationality conflict. For example, technocratic rationality showed that the Seniors Program delayed frailty. Physicians concerned with patient care should, therefore, adopt it. Economic rationality, however, told doctors that doing so was financially unviable. In that situation, economic rationality won.

Similarly, as Chapter 7 described, when deciding what to call the patients eligible for the Seniors Program, technocratic rationality suggested “pre-frail seniors.” Seniors, however, disliked this name. These people felt healthy. Their body rationality told them the word “frailty” was inappropriate. Their emotional rationality told them the concept of frailty was frightening, and they were unwilling to have the word applied to them. In this situation, however, technocratic rationality won, and the fellowship chose to call their target patient “pre-frail seniors.”

Why did technocratic rationality lose to economic rationality when physicians were deciding whether to adopt the Seniors Program but win over body and emotional rationality when deciding what to name the patient?

Generally, when different forms of rationality lead different groups to disagree, the rationality used by the group with the most power wins.^[12] In Canadian healthcare systems, bureaucratic rationality assigns ultimate authority for treating patients to the physician. They have control over what interventions to prescribe. Thus, when economic rationality informed doctors of their inability to adopt the program, economic rationality won.

When choosing what to name the patient, however, it was physicians who were responsible for identifying which patient was eligible for the Seniors Program. In Canada, doctors practice evidence-based medicine (i.e., technocratic rationality). Thus, the name in the literature–pre-frail seniors–was the name they understood. Since physicians had the power to enroll patients, the fellowship deferred to doctors’ technocratic rationality over the patients’ body and emotional rationality.

The key message is this. When your use of one rationality leads you to disagree with someone using different rationality, if you have more power, your rationality will likely win. If the other person has more power, their rationality will win.

As the experience of the fellowship showed, however, even if another person’s rationality wins, you can still make progress if you have good insight into values, rationality, and power systems at work.  The fellowship displayed this when they adjusted bureaucratic structures to change the conclusions of the physicians’ economic rationality.

When Resistance Turns Into a Fight

The fellowship had evidence the Seniors Program delayed frailty. They knew how to postpone a terrible affliction. Yet, when physicians’ economic rationality concluded that doctors were unable to adopt the program, the fellowship bent over backward to create new systems to change the cost structure of the program. If the fellowship knew how to delay frailty, why not force doctors to adopt it? The BC Health Authority’s CEO championed the program. The fellowship could have asked him to drive compliance, but this never happened. Should we not fight for what we believe is right?

Fighting in this context refers to the direct use of power to coerce others to comply with your wishes. Rather than seeking an agreement, you wish to force someone’s unwilling compliance. They, in turn, use their power to protect themselves and defeat you.

Fighting is always an option. There are times when a confrontation may be necessary. There are at least four dangers, however, with allowing a disagreement to escalate to a fight, so choose your battles thoughtfully.

1. You might lose. Even if you have more power and authority in the organization, the possibility exists that you will lose an outright fight. The costs of losing a confrontation can be severe. The project you want to succeed may die permanently. You may lose influence in your organization. You might lose your job.
2. You will create enemies. Whether you win or lose a fight, you will create enemies. In an organization, people and groups need to work together on many projects over long periods. If you make an enemy over one project, you compromise your ability to make progress on all the other projects over which they have influence now and in the future.^[13][14]
3. The first casualty of war is rationality. Remember from Chapter 6 that one of the tactics of power is ignoring rationality. When people and groups seek to overpower others, rationality vanishes. During conflicts, people are not interested in rationality. Instead, they focus on survival and defeating their enemy. Bald power plays dominate, pushing rationality aside.^[15] 
4. You miss out on the potential of collective reasoning. In the above example, technocratic rationality told doctors one thing, economic rationality another. Economic rationality speaks to values of sustainability and robustness. Yes, we want our healthcare system to prevent frailty, but we also want it to be sustainable and robust. It is not that technocratic and economic rationality conflict, but rather that they speak to different aspects of the overall challenge our healthcare system faces. The healthcare system does not “win” if one rationality defeats another. The system needs both rationalities, as well as others, to thrive. True innovative breakthroughs come not from defeating other rationalities but from blending them through collective reasoning.

Recovering After a Confrontation

Leaders have to make decisions, which invariably upset someone. Sometimes people choose to strike at you, forcing you into a fight. There are occasions when people’s interests are irreconcilable. Despite the best intentions, fights sometimes happen.

Should you find yourself in a battle, proceed with an awareness of the dangers of fighting listed above. Act to mitigate those dangers as you can. Pay particular attention to the second danger, the enemies you might make. It is those enemies that increase the risk you will find yourself embroiled in future confrontations. Once a fight ends, think about who might harbor resentment. Can you make peace with them? How might you establish a stable relationship?

‘Stable’ is, perhaps, the operative word. You may not like each other, and resentment may linger. Still, it may be possible to establish a system (i.e., bureaucratic rationality) that reduces the risk of future encounters escalating to conflict.

So far, this chapter has explored how you might use insights into values, rationality, and power to create effective organizational action. This desired action only happens, however, if people put in the time and effort to make things happen. The following section explores how we can use the framework of organizational wisdom to motivate people to act.

Finding Champions to Help

As you read the above sections, you may have recognized that taking action to pursue values in an organization can be difficult. You may have also noticed there are personal risks if your actions threaten the terminal values of dominant groups. Those observations are valid. Taking action is hard and does involve risk.^[16] Why, then, would anyone ever take action?

We often see that meaningful change is driven by what we call, for lack of a better word, champions. That is, people who ‘champion the cause.’ These champions possess specific characteristics.^[17]

• They are passionate about the cause they champion. They exhibit enthusiasm, optimism, and resilience.
• They possess the skills needed to produce useful power relations.
• They possess sufficient bureaucratic rationality to know how to implement activities in their organization’s structure.
• They are adaptable.
• They are realistic about what they can accomplish within their organization.

Finding someone who has all these criteria sounds like a tall order. What makes someone choose to develop these attributes?

The answer is values.^[18] When a person holds a personal value very firmly, and then they see work in their organization that aligns with that value, a fire is lit within them. They become passionate about that work. That passion then motivates them to take on the effort and risk needed to drive action. The enthusiasm they have when speaking about their work inspires others, contributing to the production of power relations. Their belief in the importance of their work gives them resilience and adaptability to keep trying to overcome constraining structures.

As identified in the description of champions, though, this passion is tempered with realism. Champions possess the contextual (cultural) and institutional rationality to understand what their organization can reasonably accomplish. They also understand which forms of rationality have legitimacy in those organizations and use that form of rationality to their advantage.

For now, the key takeaway is this. It is the alignment between values that leads to the creation of champions. This observation has implications for you personally as well as for those in a position to recruit personnel.

You will find that work which aligns with your values will motivate you to strive toward significant accomplishments. From the perspective of recruitment, the more you can hire individuals whose personal values align with the work you do, the higher your ability to build a team of champions. A later chapter will discuss this further.

This chapter discussed various approaches for individuals to combine values, rationality, and power to create effective action. Whereas this chapter focused on actions or insights an individual might use, the next chapter focuses on activities groups might perform to develop organizational wisdom.