,
33 tweets,
10 min read
Read on Twitter
Here's one of the most important images in the development of contemporary organizational culture, the Mouton-Blake Managerial Grid. 1/ 
It's from "Breakthrough in Organization Development," a 1964 @HarvardBiz article by Jane Mouton and Robert Blake and two junior colleagues: hbr.org/1964/11/breakt… 2/
Robert Blake is a fascinating figure. After earning his PhD at UT Austin in '47, he went to London on a Fulbright and worked at the Tavistock Clinic. There he learned about NTL, which was developing the T-group methodology to study group dynamics. 3/
Blake spent the '50s and early '60s teaching psychology at UT Austin, working with T-groups at NTL, and consulting to industry. It was a boom era for "labor relations" and "industrial psychology," with corporations and universities teaming up to improve management practices. 4/
I find this era so fascinating in part because T-groups have had such a big impact on my own growth and development as a coach and a person. I've written about the history of T-groups here: edbatista.com/2018/06/a-brie… 5/
Jane Mouton was a former student of Blake's who later joined him as a a psychology professor at UT Austin. Mouton was also involved with T-groups through NTL and was one of the few women facilitators in that era. In the early '60s they teamed up to consult to Exxon. 6/
Blake and Mouton met with such success in industry that they formed a consulting firm and then resigned from the UT faculty in 1964, as @HarvardBiz published "Breakthrough in Organization Development." 7/
Blake and Mouton's work culminated in their 1966 book, "The Managerial Grid: Leadership Styles for Achieving Production Through People." This was one of the high-water marks of the application of humanistic psychology to management practices. amazon.com/gp/product/B00… 8/
Things changed a lot in the late '60s and '70s. Inherent contradictions in humanistic psychology combined with larger cultural currents, resulting in the excesses of the "human potential" movement. But also, humanistic institutions "died of success" as Theory Y took hold. 9/
Back to Blake and Mouton: Although he was the senior figure in the partnership, it's known as the Mouton-Blake grid, presumably because the graphic concept was her idea. Here's a version I created for a post in 2007: 10/
Blake (born 1918) and Mouton (born 1930) apparently had a very successful partnership, which I find heartening given the sexism of the era: gridinternational.com/ourroots.html 11/
Sadly, Mouton died at age 57. Given that she was facilitating NTL T-groups filled with old-school businessmen in the 1950s as a woman in her 20s, she must have been a truly formidable person. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Mout… 12/
Robert Blake lived much longer, retiring in 1997 at age 79, dying in 2004 at age 86. Although Blake and Mouton are no longer widely-known, he lived to see their ideas become deeply integrated into contemporary management practices, to the point that they're taken for granted. 13/
In this sense, Blake and (to a lesser extent) Mouton pose a stark contrast to Douglas McGregor, the originator of Theory Y. His work absolutely permeates contemporary management, but, dying in 1964, he never saw how influential it would become. 14/ amazon.com/Human-Side-Ent…
Theory Y is at the heart of the Mouton-Blake grid--the idea that "Concern for People" could be as important as "Concern for Production." It's striking to realize that this was such a novel and powerful idea in the '50s and '60s. 15/
It's even more striking to try to imagine contemporary organizations--particularly those that employ knowledge workers--even conceiving of an approach to management in which "Concern for People" wasn't paramount. 16/
I'm not suggesting that every firm in every industry in every part of the world operates this way. But as an executive coach in San Francisco working primarily with technology CEOs, I'm immersed in a world defined by the ideas of McGregor, Blake and Mouton (among others.) 17/
I'm also not suggesting that the predominance of Theory Y and "Concern for People" has eliminated the challenges leaders face with regard to "labor relations." Of course not. In fact, such issue are one of the most prevalent themes in my coaching practice. 18/
So back to the Mouton-Blake grid. "Concern for Production" and "Concern for People" are too old-school and large-scale to be effective in my work helping contemporary leaders manage knowledge workers. Instead, I find "Accountability" and "Empathy" to be more useful. 19/
I frequently draw a version of this graphic in a coaching session. My goal is to convey that "holding people accountable" and "empathizing with people" are not mutually exclusive approaches to management. Here's a discussion from 2017: edbatista.com/2017/06/work-h… 20/
Of course, this is easy to grasp conceptually, and hellishly difficult to put into practice. Theory Y emerged over 60 years ago, but humans have probably been operating on Theory X for over 10,000 years (dating to the first evidence of inter-group conflict). 21/
So we have many deeply embedded mental models for a high-accountability, low-empathy culture and leadership style. Particularly under pressure, leaders readily revert to this approach, which Mouton and Blake called "Produce-or-Perish," and which I call a "Bootcamp."
Taken to extremes, this generates the same problems encountered in the industrial era, from the Haymarket Riots in 1886 to the Battle of the Overpass in 1937. McGregor, Blake, Mouton and their humanistic peers were reacting against this dysfunction. 23/ edbatista.com/2006/01/organi…
The leaders I work with can't possibly go to such extremes, of course, nor would their employees respond with violence. But we must understand the violent history of labor-management relations to understand the origins of Theory Y and why "Concern with People" matters. 24/
And yet it's also essential to avoid over-correcting. In some organizations, Theory Y and "Concern for People" have become so predominant that a high-empathy, low-accountability culture has emerged--what Mouton and Blake called a "Country Club" and what I call a "Daycare." 25/
There are two core problems here. First, at a conceptual level, leaders often think about "accountability" and "empathy" along a single scale, rather than in Mouton and Blake's elegant 2x2. They imagine that they can EITHER hold people accountable OR empathize with them. 26/
Second, even when a leader adopts a mindset of accountability AND empathy, this is very difficult to put into practice. It takes a tremendous amount of mindfulness, emotion regulation, foresight and effort. It may be some of the hardest work a leader has to do. 27/
A third problem: Even a leader who's adopted this mindset and is willing to do the work must do so within the confines of a pre-existing culture. It's hard to express empathy in a Bootcamp; it's even harder to hold people accountable in a Daycare. 28/
And it's not impossible. So what can be done? Consider your current leadership style and mindset. Consider the specific behaviors you employ to hold people accountable WHILE ALSO empathizing with them. Consider the culture you're operating in. And maybe get a coach :-) 29/
This was fun--I'm so grateful that I get to do research like this in my work as a coach. Thank-you to my @StanfordGSB colleague Andrea Corney, who taught me about the Thomas-Kilmann conflict modes back in 2007, which led to my initial interest in Jane Mouton and Robert Blake. 30/
One postscript: Here's Robert Blake's obituary from 2004: wcfish.tributes.com/obituary/show/…. We owe him so much. And if you're interested in the history of "human resource development," track down his 1995 article, "Memories of HRD" in "Training & Development. 31//
@threadreaderapp unroll
One more PS: I do McGregor a grave disservice by connecting the hearty adoption of Theory Y to Mouton-Blake’s “country club” culture, i.e. “Daycare.” McGregor called that the “soft” version of Theory X, and my sloppy language only highlights the importance of his insights. 32/
