Mark Cole – författare

Why is it that leaders – in social, political, and (most importantly) organisational contexts – are seemingly unable to address meaningfully the wicked problems and complex challenges that we currently face? There’s enormous busyness around reconfiguring departments and adopting ‘transformational’ operating models, but in general plus ca change, plus la meme chose. Eyewatering amounts of treasure and time are spent in corporate life on leadership development, with people working hard to try and demonstrate that something useful has happened as a result. An entire pseudo-science has emerged to try and prove its worth, in part to justify the economic dividend that goes to those who make it to the upper levels of positional power. The fetishisation of leadership, especially strong leadership, fills our news outlets holding up carefully distorted images of great men (leadership is still deeply gendered) from across the worlds of politics, business, and sports. This book explores the persistently disappeared and unacknowledged constraints that inhibit leaders in every context. It argues that these constraints – defined in this volume in terms of five organisational paradoxes and six management myths – are found at large in society and are especially impactful in organisational life.By calling attention to, and exploring in rigorous detail, these paradoxes and myths, this book helps leaders, and the leadership systems they are part of, to wriggle free of the tacit assumptions that lock them into a cul-de-sac of simplistic prescription and heroic individualism. Once these mind-forged manacles are removed, new forms of leadership practice become possible, ones that are fit for purpose in engaging with a world facing systemic crisis and existential risk. This book is essential reading for leaders and managers at all levels looking for solutions to traditionally simplistic leadership practice and who want to affect systemic change. It will be beneficial to all those in the world of leadership development including business schools and HR departments.

Why is it that leaders – in social, political, and (most importantly) organisational contexts – are seemingly unable to address meaningfully the wicked problems and complex challenges that we currently face? There’s enormous busyness around reconfiguring departments and adopting ‘transformational’ operating models, but in general plus ca change, plus la meme chose. Eyewatering amounts of treasure and time are spent in corporate life on leadership development, with people working hard to try and demonstrate that something useful has happened as a result. An entire pseudo-science has emerged to try and prove its worth, in part to justify the economic dividend that goes to those who make it to the upper levels of positional power. The fetishisation of leadership, especially strong leadership, fills our news outlets holding up carefully distorted images of great men (leadership is still deeply gendered) from across the worlds of politics, business, and sports. This book explores the persistently disappeared and unacknowledged constraints that inhibit leaders in every context. It argues that these constraints – defined in this volume in terms of five organisational paradoxes and six management myths – are found at large in society and are especially impactful in organisational life.By calling attention to, and exploring in rigorous detail, these paradoxes and myths, this book helps leaders, and the leadership systems they are part of, to wriggle free of the tacit assumptions that lock them into a cul-de-sac of simplistic prescription and heroic individualism. Once these mind-forged manacles are removed, new forms of leadership practice become possible, ones that are fit for purpose in engaging with a world facing systemic crisis and existential risk. This book is essential reading for leaders and managers at all levels looking for solutions to traditionally simplistic leadership practice and who want to affect systemic change. It will be beneficial to all those in the world of leadership development including business schools and HR departments.

Silence always has something to say – it’s never neutral and speaks volumes if people are willing to hear. Our response to silence is often to dismiss or end it, to block it out with noise. Instead, silence needs to be taken seriously. This book explores the importance of understanding silence and shows how we can move from merely listening to truly hearing those around us.The interplay of voice and silence in organisational life is not straightforward. We can feel pressured to speak and compelled to keep our silence. Knowing how to read silence, to make sense of its generative and degenerative capacity, is a rarely developed skill among managers and leaders at all levels – who have been brought up to see silence as evidence of compliance or a weakness to be addressed. But it is a critical skill for managers and employees alike. Written by two experts in organisational development, this book explores different types of silence and their implications for organisational practice, digging into the theoretical roots and engaging with real stories and voices. It provides everyone at work with an understanding of the different meanings of silence and how to engage well with it. When to stay with it, when to join in with it, and when to be struck by what’s not being said and do something about it.The Great Unheard at Work is essential reading for corporate leaders, HR professionals in all sectors, business students, professionals, and anyone interested in leadership development.

Silence always has something to say – it’s never neutral and speaks volumes if people are willing to hear. Our response to silence is often to dismiss or end it, to block it out with noise. Instead, silence needs to be taken seriously. This book explores the importance of understanding silence and shows how we can move from merely listening to truly hearing those around us.The interplay of voice and silence in organisational life is not straightforward. We can feel pressured to speak and compelled to keep our silence. Knowing how to read silence, to make sense of its generative and degenerative capacity, is a rarely developed skill among managers and leaders at all levels – who have been brought up to see silence as evidence of compliance or a weakness to be addressed. But it is a critical skill for managers and employees alike. Written by two experts in organisational development, this book explores different types of silence and their implications for organisational practice, digging into the theoretical roots and engaging with real stories and voices. It provides everyone at work with an understanding of the different meanings of silence and how to engage well with it. When to stay with it, when to join in with it, and when to be struck by what’s not being said and do something about it.The Great Unheard at Work is essential reading for corporate leaders, HR professionals in all sectors, business students, professionals, and anyone interested in leadership development.

This thought-provoking and ground-breaking book offers a way for us all to consider our experience of being at work, and of the nature of working life. Written in an engaging and accessible style, it presents the practical means by which to apply central features of existentialism to make sense of how we relate to work and the workplace.These include topics such as freedom and choice, looking for purpose and making meaning, and authenticity. We spend a great deal of time at work, and being at work is often a challenge. Reference to the past in a corporate context tends to see it as a graveyard for errors and failures; the future is something articulated by senior leaders and the place to which we are expected to travel, in terms of their definition. The (specious) present is the place where we experience our being in the moment, the location where we do our work … but it is rarely acknowledged in the places where we work. This book offers new insights into how we can all meaningfully live our lives in the context of the world of work. To do this, it offers a personalised understanding of the existentialist way of philosophising. It looks to simplify complex concepts in order to offer the reader a different way of thinking about the time that they spend at work and how they might consider different and more positive ways of being in such an environment. It recognises that we spend a considerable amount of our life in the workplace – and so argues that we need to consider that and find ways in which to make that experience personally meaningful.Where other practices designed to help people to make sense of their actual experience are introspective, existentialism is reflexive and active. Similarly, where those other approaches are deeply individualistic, existentialism constantly reminds us that our choices are undertaken in relation to others … and that they have a collective implication. Whether you are keen to make sense of your experience of workplace – and what it means to be a human being in that context – or looking to explore how you embrace the challenges of being a leader in business, this book will offer you rich perspectives for sense making and ways of rethinking your presence at work.

This thought-provoking and ground-breaking book offers a way for us all to consider our experience of being at work, and of the nature of working life. Written in an engaging and accessible style, it presents the practical means by which to apply central features of existentialism to make sense of how we relate to work and the workplace.These include topics such as freedom and choice, looking for purpose and making meaning, and authenticity. We spend a great deal of time at work, and being at work is often a challenge. Reference to the past in a corporate context tends to see it as a graveyard for errors and failures; the future is something articulated by senior leaders and the place to which we are expected to travel, in terms of their definition. The (specious) present is the place where we experience our being in the moment, the location where we do our work … but it is rarely acknowledged in the places where we work. This book offers new insights into how we can all meaningfully live our lives in the context of the world of work. To do this, it offers a personalised understanding of the existentialist way of philosophising. It looks to simplify complex concepts in order to offer the reader a different way of thinking about the time that they spend at work and how they might consider different and more positive ways of being in such an environment. It recognises that we spend a considerable amount of our life in the workplace – and so argues that we need to consider that and find ways in which to make that experience personally meaningful.Where other practices designed to help people to make sense of their actual experience are introspective, existentialism is reflexive and active. Similarly, where those other approaches are deeply individualistic, existentialism constantly reminds us that our choices are undertaken in relation to others … and that they have a collective implication. Whether you are keen to make sense of your experience of workplace – and what it means to be a human being in that context – or looking to explore how you embrace the challenges of being a leader in business, this book will offer you rich perspectives for sense making and ways of rethinking your presence at work.

Contemporary organisation development (OD) in practice draws on sophisticated theory and tools to advance organisational change, using a range of concepts and techniques including positive psychology, appreciation, and active engagement with the workforce. OD is considered to be humanistic and, as a result, progressive. Mark Cole's original and thought-provoking treatise points at a hole at the heart of OD practice: it fails to consider the role of power in the workplace – and the result is disempowering.Drawing from critical theory as a radical means to redefine practice, Mark Cole exposes this paradox and reveals the significant limitations and negative impacts of current OD practice. We need to replace the idea of the organisation with a focus on active human organising to enable individuals within systems to effect change from the grassroots up: this concept is Radical OD. Essential reading for students, practitioners, and academics of OD; the wider HR community, and all with an interest in developing their understanding of organisational life, this ground-breaking manifesto offers unique and challenging insight into the corporate presence of OD – and challenges the willing reader to reimagine the focus and intent of this work.