The Organizational Underground: Organizational Coaching and Organization Development Outside the Formal Organization

At another level, coaches and consultants can encourage community-based engagements, by bringing people together from different sectors of the organizational underground to share diverse perspectives and solve community-based problems. One of our coaching/consulting colleagues, for instance, has brought together members of the police force in a major US city with members of the organizational underground in her community to address the challenges facing the homeless people in this city. Using coaching and consulting skills, our colleague brought the police officers and undergrounders together with men and women who are living on the street, to solve the problems faced by these street-people. Members of the organizational underground not only gained a comparative perspective on their own “good fortune,” they also were of significant benefit to the homeless (and members of the police force) in helping to solve this pressing problem in their community.

Could either Larry or Susan become engaged in a community project, with the encouragement and guidance of their coach? Even more broadly, could Larry or Susan’s coach have brought them together with other members of the organizational underground to work collaboratively on a major community project? Is it enough that Larry’s coach encourages him to become involved in a community non-profit organization—wouldn’t it have been even better to encourage Larry to join with others like himself who miss organizational life and the joint accomplishment of something important? Isn’t part of the challenge one of restoring the sense of shared purpose that is lost when one loses a job or is forced to piece together short-term, part-time and fragmented work assignments? Can’t community engagements help to fill this vacuum? And isn’t “service-learning” a process that benefits not only the college student but also an alienated member of the organizational underground?

Public policy

The two responses we just described both begin with the assumption that our society will remain untouched by the challenges associated with the growing organizational underground. Both strategies, in that sense, are politically conservative – or some would say “realistic.” Most professional coaches position themselves in a neutral position when it comes to public policy and the “ugly” world of politics. Yet, isn’t there room for “political coaching?” Just as Warner Burke (1987) made a strong case many years ago for abusing organization development practitioners of the notion that they are value-free in their work with clients, so we might argue that organizational coaches need not be neutral in their work with men and women of the organizational underground. They can rightfully envision and help support efforts to change the public policies that contribute to the expansion of this underground or at least do little to ameliorate this condition.

We propose that there are several ways in which organizational coaches might get involved with the reformulation of public policy. For those who are knowledgeable about financial matters or taxation, we would suggest that coaches help advocates make the case for new tax codes. Unemployment and underemployment incur major societal costs. There are not only the direct costs associated with unemployment benefits and public payment of medical care for the uninsured; there are also many indirect and long-term costs associated with substance abuse and mental illness (especially depression) that ensue from the alienation of those in the organizational underground. What about the profound societal costs produced by anger and learned helplessness (an external locus of control, per Seligman, 1991) among those who are alienated? While it seems that a corporation “saves money” when it lays off workers, in fact, the costs are transferred from the corporation to society and tax payers. Should there be corporate penalties for “cavalier” (volatile) employment policies and practices. Should there be tax breaks for corporations that engage in thoughtful and long-term planning with regard to employment—providing a stable workforce and consistent employment practices? How might organizational coaches use their organizational expertise to make a convincing case with regard to these corporate/societal tradeoffs?