Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

teams. Given the touchy character of identity the people involved also realized it
would be necessary to take some time.
In conclusion I think most of the people involved in designing and coordinating the
identity programme never intended to enforce a corporate identity, but there may
have been dreams about it. However, who else than the joker – no I, no egocentric, no
fundamentalist and no framer - could co-creatively have managed a programme with
that much sensitivities, and undefined but necessary outcomes? In its results the
programme turned out to be a pragmatic mixture of a brand-architecture, an acknowledgement
of the core-values, approachable members of the board who are
self-critical on their exemplary role and a preparedness to use the core-values as a
basis for policy. Conceptually incompatible perspectives still led to acceptable practical
politics.
4.9 Reflections in hindsight
The most impressive experience in writing this narrative was that at that time I became
aware in a tangible way that as a person I am participating in self-organizing
processes. Participating meaning that in interaction with others something is constituted
and held upright, but that I am not the independent shrewd planner, the ventriloquist
or the framer. What I am is construed in what in a cooperation of people
evolves. Based on literature from a complex responsive process origin and through the
profound reflexive activities in the learning group I started to understand and experience
something new about the power of conversation and self-organization. I thought
to understand what it means to be co-creative or a social-constructionist. However,
to understand and to realize that even these orientations are inside instead of outside
social interactions was the hard lesson to learn. To learn that even my seemingly
emancipatory orientations are part of the same micro-political games as any other
orientation was quite revealing. I felt being decentred. There is no outside from interaction
and to really understand and to experience the consequences of this point of
departure was enervating. I experienced that to understand the consequences will be
a road with pitfalls.
Reflecting on my position in the UAS from the inside of social interactions brought a
surprising outcome. The subject of the organizational joker or fool emerged. Is it
possible that I hold the position of the organizational fool? Reflecting upon what
happened and on what I did in the interactions regarding the internal branding programme,
it became challenging to reflect upon my role as adviser from a very different
perspective. A most interesting question became not what I think I am doing but what
I am doing. Is what I do to connect to discussions about the presence of an organizational
fool? It is a question which is to be answered with regard to what is happening in
the UAS in the case an organizational fool is needed somehow.
4. Sense making in and of the internal branding project | 113