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The urgency of change
I think we all recognise that it is becoming increasingly important, in the current business climate, for leaders to acquire the knowledge, capabilities and experience required to guide organisations through uncertain, ambiguous and changing times.
We sometimes almost forget that organisations of various shapes and sizes have had to manage and adapt to change over the past hundreds, indeed thousands, of years. Those that failed to effectively address change, and this is true of nearly all organisations at some point in their evolution, simply ceased to exist. They either perished or were changed beyond recognition.
Despite this, it is only really in the last 30 years or so that change management has really emerged as a subject in its own right. Over this period, organisations have invested ever more time and resources in trying to respond to, practically manage and indeed profit from the ever increasing rate of change in their marketplace.
In this time, thousands of articles and hundreds of books have been written to guide the faithful; numerous prestigious academic careers have been built; a host of consultancies have set their stall out on the topic, either wholly or predominantly; and a confusing array of change agent type roles have been created within most large and medium sized organisations.
So what has been the result of this intense and sustained effort and investment over thirty years?
A review of published case studies and evaluations of major change projects, along with a scan of writings in the business press on the subject, makes salutary reading. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that most organisational change initiatives fail to deliver on their objectives and goals. Indeed, a number of the can demonstrably be seen to have undermined shareholder value.
Déjà vu
For those of us who have lived through a number of organisational change initiatives, and I suspect that is the majority of us, we are all too often left with a strange sense of déjà vu when the process has worked itself through. After all the restructuring, process change, redundancies, redeployments and assorted human distress, the new and improved organisation still feels depressingly familiar. Nothing or real substance seems to have changed. Indeed, there seems to be a strange, almost symbiotic, relationship between persistence and change. The French proverb: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”, resonates with our experience.
Most change initiatives are attempts to direct and shape the organisation in a given direction, through the use of plans, metrics, processes, milestones, accountabilities and project planning. They initiate system wide exercises of data gathering, diagnosis, action planning, intervention and evaluation aimed at aligning structure, process, strategy, people and culture.
There is nothing essentially wrong with such a programme management led approach, but unless it is applied in a light and flexible manner, it can and does have unintended consequences.
“The Mad Management Virus”
When attempting to master and control change, organisations are often subject to what Attwood (2003) calls “The Mad Management Virus”. Organisations so afflicted act on the belief that programmatic, top down approached always work. They design engineering systems type approaches, employing negative feedback and control; they set targets and rigorously inspect outcomes in the belief that this will result in speedier and greater improvements, with no unintended consequences.
In Attwood’s view, change is too often parachuted on top of the organisation, managed by carrot and stick, and supported by excessive paper based systems and processes. In essence, he argues, all of this is completely disconnected from the concrete world of doing and implementing.
Perhaps this is a slight characterisation of the real situation, designed to make a point. Nevertheless, I believe that a lot of us can all too clearly recognise what Attwood describes.
In trying to manage change, we are attempting to impose our will on the organisation and push it in a new and more desirable direction. In doing so, we ignore one immutable law of nature.
A simple illustration
To illustrate this, when I run seminars on change management I often invite a member of the audience to join me at the front of the room. I ask them to place their right hand out in front of them, palm facing out. I then place my right palm against theirs and push, at first gently and then with increasing effort. Invariably, my hapless victim pushes back. And when I increase my effort, they increase theirs. Undeterred by this setback, I ask them to put both their palms out. We then engage, red faced, in a two handed stand off, my partner pushing back with increased intensity as I redouble my efforts.
In so doing, we illustrate in an amusing and simple way an immutable law of nature. Effectively, when we try to push around people, animals, organisations, or the universe in general, they invariably push back.
Our first instinct is to push harder, thereby causing an equal and opposite reaction. If we are strong enough and determined enough, we can push through this resistance and impose our will. But at what cost to ourselves and the organisation?
There must surely be a better and more productive way of addressing organisational change.
Certainly, I believe in and have experienced more effective ways of delivering more sure and beneficial results, and I would like to describe these to you in the next article.
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