The language of organizational change

I’ve recently been learning some basic German, by using Michel Thomas’s "natural" method of language learning. The "no writing and no revision" approach is particularly appealing (!) and appears to be working – at least to my satisfaction. But what relevance does this have to informal coalitions and organizational change?

Well, nothing directly. But stick with me!

Thomas spends very little time on vocabulary during this foundation course. Instead, he places most emphasis on the process of sentence formation and how this is affected, in particular, by verb usage. By adopting this approach, those learning the language are quickly able to put together relatively complicated sentences. As Thomas puts it,

"Once you understand the verbs, you understand the language. The rest is just vocabulary."

Although Thomas would no doubt have agreed that this is an over-simplification, the basic point holds true. Verbs, broadly speaking, relate to ‘process’ (the ‘doing’). And the ways in which these are used define the pattern of the language. Other aspects of vocabulary add in the ‘content’ – the who, what, when, where, how and why etc of the doing.

And so to organizational change. I would similarly argue that once people understand the underlying dynamics of organizations, they understand change. The rest is just content.

The corollary of this would be that you can’t understand change if you don’t understand these process and patterning dynamics – however well the content might be defined, understood and programmed.

So paying attention to the underlying dynamics of organization, and engaging with these in an aware and insightful way, is what change leadership is all about.

Comments

[Holger Nauheimer]

Hi Chris, guten Morgen.
Good to hear from you again. I read about your new article on Twitter. Do you twitter? I am @hauheimer. Enjoy your German language experience.