Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

4.3 Emerging themes of reflection
The writing of the narrative, the discussing of and the reflecting on the narrative in the
learning group, and reading literature which appeared to be relevant, enabled me to
discern several themes with regard to the micro-political efforts in the coordination
team.
Looking back at the deliberations and the shifts I could say that we managed to reach
satisfying results for ourselves and for the members of the board. The programme
could be continued. The members of the board were satisfied and identified with the
conclusions and recommendations. The members of the coordination team reached an
agreement and work could be done.
In my reflections my musings on how things evolved in the internal programme play a
role in the background. The development of this programme up till now shows that we
never realized what we planned for the programme. Things always developed in
another way than planned. I suppose that as members of the coordination team we
share the experience that this happens all the time and that we learned to adapt to
what really happened. In practice we designed plans for about a year, things developed
in their own way and once in a while the team redesigned its plans according to the
developments. Sometimes I wonder if the UAS is spending a lot of time (and money)
producing paper work with unknown results. Although the evaluation showed that
there is a high familiarity with the core values, for me it is unclear to what extent this
can be explained by the efforts within the branding programme. I ponder sometimes
realizing that to evaluate a programme suggests the importance of a programme, but
in no way proves the causal impact of the programme on the evaluated results. Moreover,
in this case the differences between the employees and managers with regard to
the core values may even indicate that there is no causal relation between the programme
and the familiarity with the core values.
A first major theme of reflection is my position as an adviser to the board. As described
between the first draft of the report and the final conclusions and recommendations a
lot of work was done. A great deal of the work consisted of shifting meaning. The
shifting was done by the members of the coordination team by (re)interpreting concepts,
definitions and arguments, and (re)ordering the sequence of them with the
purpose of producing a meaningful advice to the members of the board. I asked myself
what is the impact of my job in this ‘producing a meaningful advice’ to the board? And
how is this impact evolving out of the work I do? Generally speaking I assume that
advising should have noticeable impact on policy, on the behaviour of those who are
advised and on what happens next. However, the development of the branding programme
and the results of the evaluation evoke a critical reflection on the kind of
work I do. What am I doing in my job as adviser?
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