Human Resources: Thought Leaders, January 4, 2007

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Thought Leader: Dr. Robert Marshak, "Covert Processes at Work"

It's always interesting to look beneath the surface and see what is really going on in an organization. Bob Marshak has been working in this area for a long time; he has more than 30 years' experience working for the private and public sectors. He is a scholar and resident at the American University at Washington and has spent a lifetime observing, participating and dealing with covert processes.

DC: Bob, why don't you take us through the main idea?

RM: I have worked in organizations for many years, mostly as an internal and external consultant, dealing with some version of change. What I found is that what's really going on is often not what is on the table and what people are talking about. So the bottom line is that frequently it's the unseen or unspoken or unaddressed dynamics that are
blocking or limiting individuals, teams and organizations--especially during change. The ability to notice things that might be going on, regardless of your role, is what the book is about. A lot of it is just how to notice what most people don't say and how do you see what is not there?

DC: This is where I think finance people get absorbed with the rules of accounting; marketing people all are very focused at what the customers want but it's the HR people who are looking at the internal dynamics and while all managers should be aware of covert processes, it's the HR people who by the nature of their profession are the ones whose duty it
is to be most alert to these kinds of things.

RM: I think that's totally true David and it's useful in many different kinds of ways. One of the hard things is that frequently these are the kinds of things that a lot of managers wish would go away. They just want HR people to deal with this stuff and that in itself is one of the covert processes of organizations, which is the messy human side of things. Both overt and covert are often thrown to HR professionals, because managers just want to deal with the rational technical things.

Covert things usually have very negative connotations and there are three major reasons why things are covert: fear in an individual (or a team or in the culture) of revealing things that are considered inappropriate or illegitimate because if you express them they will be punished. Secondly, people hide their valuables as much as they hide their vulnerabilities and their vices. So often, we miss out in
organizations on things that are people's highest aspirations because if they express them, they are afraid they would be ridiculed and therefore they keep them secret. Thirdly, there are the blind spots and blocks that we have, kind of our tacit assumptions about things.
We are assuming something or we have a paradigm and therefore we don't see something as an option.

DC: What is interesting is that there are actually several different things going on that make things covert, it's not just a single cause.

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David Creelman is CEO of Creelman Research and a well-known writer, research and speaker on critical issues in human capital management. David’s previous work includes Chief of Content and Research for HR.com, in addition to working as a management consultant in Canada and Malaysia, most notably with the Hay Group.

David holds an MBA from the University of Western Ontario and has also taught Rewards and Performance Measures at the University of Malaya executive MBA program. David’s clients include think tanks, consultants, academics and organizations from around the globe. His current focus, in collaboration with Dave Ulrich, is on what organizations should report about human capital intangibles to the financial markets (see www.rbl.net "What the Fortune 50 Tells Wall Street").

David Creelman can be reached by email at creelmanresearch[at]gmail.com

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