informal coalitions

Ten widely held assumptions about organizational change

Set out below are ten widely held assumptions about the nature and leadership of organizational change. These present a neatly packaged view of managers’ ability to plan, organize, and control the process, in ways that promise to deliver the sought-after outcomes with confidence and predictability.

This is an attractive proposition for managers, whose performance is likely to be assessed, in large part, on their ability to deal with the challenges of change.

Attractive. But illusory.

Unhelpfully, these assumptions bear little relationship to the complex social reality (or “wiggliness”) of organization that managers experience every day. Alongside each of these ten assumptions, I’ve therefore offered an alternative perspective. These are based on a wiggly world view of organizational dynamics. And on the “muddling through” nature of real-world management practice.

Mastery, mystery, and muddling through - 1

In a recent article, the Financial Times' political columnist, Janan Ganesh, argues that Theresa May's government is "stronger for its weakness".  In agreeing with this, Deborah Rowland comments briefly (here) that the accompanying uncertainty and 'not knowing', arising from the lack of a Commons majority, is likely to demand more collective decision-making and result in more creative solutions. She uses Keats's notion of "negative capability" to illustrate her point.

I very much support her view that strength can come from the capacity to survive and thrive in conditions of 'unknowability'. Indeed, the need and ability to do so flows directly from the complex social dynamics of human interaction, in which 'not knowing' is the norm, not the exception.

Sadly, Deborah then ends her post with a disappointingly dismissive reference to "muddling through", when talking about the required leadership response to these conditions. On this point, I disagree fundamentally. And it is this aspect of organizational dynamics and leadership practice that I want to say more about here.

Playing skilfully into the moment

Guest blog by Majken Askeland¹

Why are we looking for alternative ways of understanding change in organizations? Because we are noticing that what we are doing is not working well enough. The big question then becomes – why is it not working and what can we do differently? This has been explored thoroughly from many different angles for a long time.

Ralph Stacey and his fellow researchers and students at the Doctor of Management Program (DMan) at the University of Hertfordshire have explored this question over a period of more than twenty years. In this, they use complexity theories from science as an analogy for understanding how change actually occurs in organizations.

What is complexity and leadership about and why is it important in understanding change in organizations?

As a DMan student, I have investigated this for quite some time. And to me an experience I had a year ago helped me make sense of this question. I will share it with you because of a conversation I had this weekend at the Complexity and Management Conference just south of London. I was talking at the time with Chris Rodgers. His response to my sharing this experience was enthusiasm and delight; much like my own original experience. He encouraged me to put it down in writing and has later worked with me on the article. 

The story goes…

10 much-needed shifts in the way we think and talk about leadership

We all know how organizations work. We’ve read the books and magazines, seen the research, and attended the courses. If we’re looking for ways to change, develop, restructure, merge, demerge, turnaround, or otherwise transform the organization for the better, we are spoilt for choice. These - always “new” - ways of working are all neatly packaged, politics-free, and presented as common-sense responses to the challenges that we face. Provided that everyone follows the prescribed programmes, systems, and procedures, we’re assured that the outcomes we’re looking for will come to fruition. Sorted!

Trouble is, this well-ordered, fully aligned view of organization and management practice, with its unfailingly positive results, bears little relationship to the world that managers experience every day.

The straight-line, ‘do this and you’ll get that’ idealizations are far removed from the wiggly reality. Despite this, it’s the former that continue to dominate the ways in which management is spoken about and judged in formal organizational arenas and wider society.

This does nobody any favours – other than, perhaps, those who design, package and sell the supposed ‘solutions’. In particular, it creates unrealistic expectations of what managers can sensibly achieve. This increases pressure on them to conform to this fantasized view of organization and contaminates their day-to-day practice.

Most importantly, it inevitably distorts the ways in which they account formally for their actions. The resulting reports then serve to reinforce the assumptions of scientific rationality, predictability, and control on which the popular rhetoric – if not the reality - of organizational management and leadership practice is based. And so the fantasy continues.

Writing management wrongs

 

The autumn 2015 edition of Professional Manager contains a great article by Adrian Furnham, entitled “Write a business bestseller”. In it he identifies 11 essential ingredients of what he describes as “a management blockbuster”.

Whilst setting out this recipe for success in the literary world, he neatly exposes the gaps between the simplistic view of organization that such books typically present and the complex reality that managers experience day in, day out. He does this so subtly, though, that I can see many readers eagerly following his ‘advice’ in pursuit of their “dream of being a management guru”.

In essence, Furnham cleverly advances the same argument that I was trying to make more matter-of-factly in my recent post entitled, “10 examples of language that denies the real-world complexity of organization and management”.  On the face of it, he is offering some advice to budding authors. In actuality he is deriding the naïve ‘if you do this, you’ll get that’ prescriptions that prevent more meaningful engagement with the dynamics of organization and a more practical understanding of management practice. 

Assigning complexity to the 'too difficult' box

A friend recently wondered whether,

"... a 'systems view' of organization might be easier for managers to go along with, feeling that they can pull ‘levers’, or follow seven steps. And whether a complexity view is too difficult for them to contemplate in terms of what they are supposed to ‘achieve’.

She further speculated on whether the technologies involved in organizational network mapping, sociometric badging¹, and the like might make the complex reality more obvious to people.

I agreed that managers might well find a systems view of organization easy to contemplate, given that it encourages them to think in terms of abstract entities, which they can (supposedly) act upon 'as a whole', to bring about the results that they are looking for. But we both recognized that this is an illusion - misleadingly built on assumptions of scientific rationality, predictability, and control. I suggested instead that the main barrier to progress is the ease with which this narrative is so readily taken up by people whenever they are called upon to account formally for their own or others' practice. It is the constant repetition of this narrative that makes such approaches appear natural and commonsensical, rather than unhelpful and contrived.

On financial regulation and the complex social dynamics of organization

A recent discussion in the Complexity in Organisations group on LinkedIn drew attention to comments made in June 2010 by the then head of the Financial Services Authority, Hector Sants. In a speech to members of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (reported here), he expressed his view that regulators should have their brief extended to include oversight of the cultures of those organizations that were subject to their regulation. According to Sants,

"Unacceptable culture within firms was a major contributor to the financial crisis and so regulators should play a greater role in judging how culture drives firms' behaviour and impacts on society as a whole, according to the chief executive of the Financial Services Authority (FSA)."

He made great play on the need for prudence in managers' decision-making, before concluding that,

"Determining an ethical framework is for society as a whole, not an unelected regulatory agency. However, it is, I believe, our role to police behaviour and expect firms to have the right culture which facilitates the delivery of the outcomes we expect."

For Sants’s prescription to make sense, though, the following statements would need to be true:

• The “prudence” or otherwise of a manager's decision is obvious at the instant that the decision is made.
• There is a direct causal link between managers' decisions and “societal outcomes”. 
• “Culture” is the product of a manager's intentions (i.e. something that they can design, build, and change at will).
• There is a direct causal link between an “unacceptable culture” and the “outcomes [that] that drives”.

So do these stack up?

War fighting, organization, and the dynamics of human interaction

In light of our conversations on the muddling through nature of real-world management practice, a senior client manager sent me a copy of the US Marines' "Warfighting" manual. A colleague of his from another part of the business had brought it to his attention, following their own chat about the way that we think and talk about organization and leadership.

As he said in his note, there are many passages in the document that ring very true with what we've been talking about for many years. 

Interestingly, too, the whole thing is written with a clear understanding of the socially complex and uncertain (i.e. wiggly) nature of the world. I also like the fact that the authors say that these principles apply just as much away from the front line as they do in the midst of battle.

The final paragraph of the "Nature of War" chapter gives a flavour of the congruence between the way in which the US Marines view the world and the complex social dynamics of organization, as discussed in this blog:

“Individual causes and their effects can rarely be isolated. Minor actions and random incidents can have disproportionately large—even decisive—effects. While dependent on the laws of science and the intuition and creativity of art, war takes its fundamental character from the dynamic of human interaction.”

 And, underpinning this view, is recognition that:

" War is fundamentally an interactive social process... Human beings interact with each other in ways that are fundamentally different from the way a scientist works with chemicals or formulas or the way an artist works with paints or musical notes."

 For war, read organization.

 

Hidden, messy and informal dynamics of ‘planned’ organizational change

According to conventional 'wisdom', change is initiated by senior managers in response to an external stimulus and/or to realize their ambitions for the business. The required changes are then defined in detail and delivered using one or more formal "change management" methodologies, tools, and techniques (of which there is no shortage!).

In reality, though, regardless of which approach might formally be adopted...  

change emerges in the ongoing social process of conversational interaction – not in the periodic issuing and step-by-step management of formal plans, programmes, and projects.

Taking organizational complexity seriously

"It’s not credible to say in one breath that the dynamics of organisation are complex and then, in the next, to suggest that the use of specific concepts, tools or techniques will enable managers to predict, choose or control what emerges."

This is the central theme of the argument that I shall put to participants at an evening Think Tank organized by London Metropolitan Business School's Centre for Progressive Leadership (CPL) on 1 July.

The event is intended to be highly interactive, with only a relatively short input from me to provoke the ensuing small-group conversations. And so I've produced a more in-depth statement in support of the view that we need to take organizational complexity seriously. This has just been published as a White Paper on the CPL's website.

The Abstract from the paper is reproduced below, followed by a link to the full text.