Being the awkward voice

I'm following tweets from the IIA conference: they have had some very interesting speakers and I'm sorry to have missed it all but @Truenfair is doing a brilliant job of tweeting the essence of what's being said.

There seems to be a common theme around the need for senior management to be challenged and thus for IA to pick up this role. This resonates with the long-promoted idea that NEDs should offer constructive challenge. All well and good but before the notions of groupthink and the Abilene paradox were so widely promoted we all seemed to believe that consensus was a pretty good thing and worth striving for. I'm starting to feel a bit sorry for all the executives suffering this bombardment of constructive challenge.

Those of us who are natural challengers (yes, that's me) are not always sufficiently skilled in the practice of challenge to use this predisposition in a way that benefits our employers and organisations. It is all too easy to cross the line between constructive opposition and destructive mischief-making. If, after regular challenge, you are marked down as the stroppy one, people will begin to assume that you challenge everything without good reason and your potentially valuable contributions may be ignored. Shaking off the label is very difficult: I learned to change my behaviour in meetings and, possibly more importantly, to pay attention to my facial expressions and body language.

What I most wanted throughout my career was to be properly managed. (The word management is greatly scorned in higher education, unless of course you work in a business school where it is taught, often by people who have never done it.) Over the years I worked for two deans who did manage me and I will always be grateful for the way that they helped me to progress but I've worked for many other people who just found me a great nuisance. I needed a manager who would see how useful my critical approach could be and would help me choose the topics and the arenas in which they could be most helpful.  I gradually developed sufficient understanding of the political environment of the university to be able to do this for myself but by then I think it was a lost cause as many people thought they could guess what I was going to say before I even spoke. Frustration with this led to the increasing temptation to be difficult just for the sake of it - a good signal that I was ready to retire.

I have sat on many interview panels. Sometimes I have seen good candidates rejected because they did not fully meet the criteria for appointment but where the hidden agenda was the sense that they would be difficult to manage, posing a risk to the group. But surely managing those people to bring out the best in them, for the organisation and for their own personal development, is just what management is about? (Managing the challenger: suddenly I see a consultancy opportunity opening up.. Or maybe an airport book..)

There are some points in organisational progress where challenge is really important - and where this disruptive innovation I keep hearing about can be really valuable. There are other points where people just need some calm space, possibly to reflect and regroup, and where challenge, however constructive, may not be positive. If challengers - NEDs, IAs, any sort - are constantly on the case and see this as their main role they may engender a standard response which negates the value of the challenge at the time when it is most needed.