Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

communication is more or less coincidental when regarding the greater part of my
assignments.
In my work – apart from the support in the office I give regarding finance and control,
and human resources-policy – I combine advisory work with doing odd jobs for the
executive board, nowadays complemented with my PhD-research. The odd jobs
mostly have sensitivity: they are new, have impact on who we are and what we do, are
on behalf of the executive board and implicate the whole UAS. Alternatively sometimes
I represent the board, sometimes I manage a project, and sometimes I give an
– unasked - opinion about a subject at hand.
Managing the identity programme is an example of doing an odd job. Due to a discussion
I had started in 2008 about the importance of paying attention to the historicity
of our identity in relation with the midterm strategy we were designing, identity had
become an issue. An identity-management programme was started. September 2009
I became the programme manager of this branding project, because the head of the
office of communication – initially the programme manager - fell sick for a long time.
However, from the beginning my position towards this programme was ambivalent. I
am convinced that sharing values is an important condition of having productive
working relations. Moreover, working before in a different faculty I had experienced
that sharing values can give an enormous boost for development and problem solving
(Smeijsters and Sporken, 2004). Yet I am well aware of the sacrosanctity which a
personal identity ‘has’ for each of us. I find a branding programme which aims at
changing identities ‘from the outside’ rather unfeasible. So – as mentioned before -
from the beginning somehow my acting also aimed at forestalling an in my view
unproductive social systems change-approach. The paradox became that I managed a
programme which for me in its objectives was unadvisable but by being there I aimed
at the possibilities to discuss co-creative ways of interacting in the UAS. Thus my
ambivalence about the programme did not preclude me from becoming its manager.
In the same line as my co-creativism never hindered generating attainable results.
A colourless chameleon?
Obviously I am perceived as versatile enough to manage this programme, despite my
own hesitations or my ideological principles which are well known to my superiors. Or
maybe I must see things the other way around because co-creativism is not egocentric
according to its own definition and maybe therefore I was the perfect guy to do
such a job. Well chosen by my superior: focussed on the process, committed to deliver,
experienced enough to coordinate sensitive projects, not afraid to do new things and
not competing on power.
Given the characteristics of an advisory position (Block, 1996) I find myself in the role
between an internal and external adviser. The odd jobs I do are more or less funda-
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