Bureau Zee

Lost in Translation, found in translation

Lost in Translation, found in translation – translation as mediator on the boundary between languages and systems-in-the-mind

Nietzsche described translation as a form of conquest – this description was one of several feelings evoked for the authors during an international group relations conference. The conference had two official languages. This is not unlike many situations in today’s organizational life, where people collaborate in languages that are not their mother tongue. In this context, the boundary between two or more languages can be conceived of as a space in which meaning can get gained or lost, and where translation, or the translator, becomes the mediator of that boundary-space. What system-in-the-mind gets created either side of the boundary, can influence and in turn is influenced by perceptions of the role of the translator – as conqueror, lover, hero, traitor. In the conference experience sometimes translation was requested or volunteered, whereas on other occasions meaning was seen to be grasped without translation. This suggests that meaning can transcend the language boundary without mediation of translation, and that the role of translator/translation is perhaps influenced by the systems psychodynamics as much as by linguistic needs, especially as one explores what other than linguistic meaning gets exchanged across the boundary.

Paper for OPUS Conference, November 2006, co-authored with Phil Swann

Dynamics of Local – Global Relationships in a Multinational Company

This paper highlights the dynamics between a global project team and two local sites, all taking part in a global change process in the manufacturing division of a multinational company (MNC).
The original research (2004) studied how a Dutch and a US site responded to the opportunity to participate in shaping a global project, one site being co-operative, the other showing signs of resistance. It focused on three questions: What degree of participation was expected by people in various roles and at various levels in each location? What was resisted? What factors impacted different responses to these questions? It showed that different organisations in the mind of the global project team, and each site, accounted for a significant part of the differences in response, as did, to a lesser extent, local site circumstances and patterns of social stratification.
The paper extrapolates some reflections and hypotheses about local-global relations in MNCs, based on the original research and on more recent work with the same organisation. Analysis and reflections will focus on:

• Impact of perceived sources of authority on organisation in the mind – why one site seems to have shifted from seeing itself as a large player identifying with a global network to a victim feeling persecuted by the global leader;
• Role of the site manager as hinge in the system – how the site manager may be the role in which global and local expectations, as well as projections of omnipotence and feelings of powerlessness collide;
• Tension between global and local perceptions of task – is the paradox that effective contribution to a global task may require the acknowledgement of the need for local tasks that can be identified with, not the denial of them;
• Performance anxiety at a global level – are KPIs an effective way of monitoring site performance or do they serve as a defence against the globally experienced anxiety of not being able to influence the local performance that your superiors and shareholders hold you accountable for?

Paper for OPUS Conference, November 2007

primary energy in working communities

This paper in development is an exploration of the energy that moves and sustains organisations as working communities. It describes three interlocking spheres (or aspects) of ‘being an organisation’, that of primary task, primary spirit and primary knowing, and explores how each of these are continuously moving, interdependently. The paper offers a lens or working model for understanding the continuum of the energy of love and fear as applied to organizational life, and it starts to think about what may be needed to enable organizations, or other working communities, to develop from how they function now into who they also are, and what their context is needing them to be.

Making Sense of Instability

Making sense of instability – a case study of change in a large system, in Mind-ful Consulting, edited by Sue Whittle and Karen Izod and published by Karnac Books, March 2009

This story from the field of practice describes a process of change and organisation development that enabled the customer care centre of a utility company to recover from a situation of poor levels of customer satisfaction, a significant backlog in processing  bills, and regulator scrutiny. The instability, inherent in the crisis, and amplified through a number of interventions, opened up a potential space in which collaborative organizational design and leadership development became cornerstones of a turn around in performance. Bounding the instability (but not too much), containing the anxiety stirred up at various levels of the hierarchy and creating sense making opportunities within and between managerial levels appear as critical factors in consulting to large system change.