Organisational reviews and development
Our approach
Our claim is that we are good generalists, bringing to a range of commissions within specialist areas a spirit of curiosity and enquiry, sharply honed analytical skills, a good deal of experience of working with organisations large and small across sectors, a capacity to provoke dialogue, upon which we depend, and a history of sound judgement.
We aim to counter the tendency to encase talking and thinking about organisations within a specialised, quasi-technical jargon designed to reduce complex questions of ethics and actions to reductive notions of managerial technique. Hence 'Common Knowledge'.
Communities
Our starting point is that organisations are communities of decision-makers; that decision-making is always, ultimately, about making judgements. Judgement, by definition, is never certain, but subject to question and potential revision.
Best practice
Under this understanding 'best practice' is not reducible to a series of standardised, replicable technical moves of the type highlighted in any number of practice guides suggestive of the Blue Peter approach: here's one we made earlier
. Rather, best practice resides in an organisation's capacity to articulate the connection between actions and the values and understandings to which it claims adherence. The expression of values and understandings is always local, particular and nuanced. Technical aspects are secondary.
Reinventing wheels
This approach does not require of organisations the endless reinvention of wheels. Rather, it is to notice that whilst all wheels have in common the quality of roundness, the wheels of a hansom cab, for example, will be dysfunctional if fitted to a mini-cooper. There is no escape from making judgements about particulars.
Organisational strength
The strength of an organisation lies in its capacity to be self-critical, to play with and challenge ideas, to embrace uncertainty, to take risks, admit mistakes, and work to remedy them.
To discuss questions raised by this page please contact CommonKnowledge@btinternet.com or phone 0207 627 2272
