Stephen Billing’s Blog

Think of the experience of change. Not the difference between a current state and a desired state.

Change is constant. We know that – it’s no more than a bromide.

If you are thinking in terms of gap analysis – your desired state compared to your current state, then you are thinking of organisational change as the rather problematic transitory stage between the two states – desired vs actual.

If you think of change as being truly constant, then change is not a comparison between two states. It is a process that is going on all the time. This leads you to concentrate on the experience of the change. The experience of the change is the result of a complex set of interweavings of intentions of many players, ambiguity, power, politics, ambivalence, gossip, and many things over which you as a leader actually have no control – you don’t know the future.

In some ways, change is like my experience of speed, driving at Manfeild race track (that’s me in the picture). You don’t know the future and have to react immediately to what you sense around you. Will I make it around the hairpin?  Racing drivers are much better at sensing what’s going on around them in a speeding vehicle than I am. But what a buzz, and how my driving improved!

In the same way that I can improve my driving by sensing more of what is going on and making in-the-moment adjustments, change leaders can improve their ability to implement change by sensing better what is going on in the organisation and responding skilfully to their people.

Speed is measured in kilometers per hour or miles per hour, depending on where you live. Explaining change as the transition between a desired and a current state is like explaining speed as the movement between point A and point Z. It is like describing the static points (points B, C, D etc) that you reach as you move from point A to point Z. While this tells you about these static points it gives you no conception of the experience of speed. It doesn’t tell you about wondering if you have entered the corner too fast, nor about the joy of ‘drifting’ across the track as you come out of a corner at speed.

While a scientist or teacher might describe speed in terms of miles (or kilometres) per hour and the points that one passes through at a certain interval in time, this would not convey the experience of speed. In the same way, our thinking about change in terms of static points or states does not convey the experience of change. Like driving on the track, there is the anxiety of wondering how people will respond to the proposal, and the exuberance of an interaction in which an unexpected idea emerges.

So often we think of change as a journey and it is natural to think about the speed at which we move. However, unlike most of the real journeys we take in a car or on a plane, many times we do not really know the destination and our maps do not bear much resemblance to the real world.

As a leader of change, you have to think of the experience of change, and concentrate on what is going on around you, who is interacting with whom, what is going on your organisation, and how are you going to respond to these events, given your intention of implementing change.

Then, like the racing driver, with a richer understanding of the situation in your organisation, you will be better able to accelerate from the curves.

It is not that helpful to think of organisational change as a move from one equilibrium state to another.

To say that "Change is constant" is pretty much a meaningless bromide, a platitude. It is such a common saying that it has lost its meaning. Most people would agree with it and think nothing of it.

We say that change is constant without giving it another thought. But most of us think about our organisations as normally being in a state of equilibrium. And if your organisation is not in equilibrium, no doubt that is because it is in the process of moving from a current (equilibrium) state to a desired (new equilibrium) state.

If your change projects are based on a gap analysis, then you are thinking of your organisation as moving to a new equilibrium. Of course, we don’t think too much about this equilibrium way of thinking, because we take it so much for granted. So much so that it almost seems to be a default way of thinking.

But consider this for a moment. A state of equilibrium is a state where change is not happening, where stability is constant. By definition, in a state of equilibrium, change is not constant.

So if your people are talking about change in terms of a desired state and a current state, and how to move from one to another, they are inherently talking about moving from one equilibrium state to another. If they are also saying ‘change is constant,’ they are contradicting themselves.

Consider your own thoughts about this. Is your organisation currently in your desired state? No doubt it is not, because I am sure there are changes you want to make, things you want to improve. Are you thinking of how you can move from your current state to your desired state? Is the desired state some kind of resting place before working out what the next desired state is? I think most of us would say yes, this seems very natural.

This is a very seductive way of thinking that most of us take for granted. However, we also know from our own experience that change is constant. This just does not go with the idea of moving your organisation to a new state.

Organisations being in equilibrium is an analogy taken from chemistry, where a chemical reaction can be contained in a state of equilibrium, and in physics where opposing forces can cancel each other out, leading to equilibrium. These analogies have been imported directly into our thinking about organisations. Kurt Lewin is the acknowledged father of this way of thinking back in the 1950s, and his contribution to the field is undoubtedly significant.

But our organisations are not chemicals reacting in a test tube. And they are certainly not predictable mechanical forces of the kind that Newton described so well. Our organisations are made up of people who have consciousness, the ability to relate to each other and highly developed ability to learn and change as a result of those interactions.

This equilibrium thinking simply does not serve us well. Nor do the associated tools (I want to call it illusory baggage) – gap analysis, well documented steps and predictable change stages.

Related post – here.

Politics are a part of organisational life, including organisational change. The very decision to initiate a change project is the result of political processes. You can’t avoid it, so you may as well get good at it.

I have argued here that politics is an intrinsic part of organisational life, and change is one arena where the politics can be quite visible. Or not. If you think you can avoid organisational politics, then you are in a fantasy world.

Decisions to undertake organisational change are themselves the result of political patterns in the organisation.

Examples include decisions to undertake improvements to the employee engagement survey, or to start a lean six sigma project, or to invest in leadership training, or to restructure. These are all themselves the result of the interweaving of the intentions of important and powerful people in the organisation. Powerful people have all attempted to influence the decisions made, usually, I am sure, in service of what they see as the best interests of the organisation. 

Sometimes the influence attempts can be quite subtle. But I am sure that any experienced senior manager or consultant reading this will have seen this interweaving of intentions in action.

So as a leader of change, the fact that you are doing the project you are, and not some other project instead, is also the result of political processes. You may not have been aware of them, or you may have deliberately attempted to avoid being a part of them, but nevertheless they are operating. And you can not avoid being a part of the politics, even if you try, or even if you are not aware of the politics – they are occurring nevertheless, it’s just that it’s all taking place outside your awareness.

As a consultant, the decision to undertake a change project has usually been made prior to my involvement, but is still the result of political processes. As a good change leader, it pays to be good at the politics.

Patricia Benner’s work challenges leaders of change to consider and generate new responses to employees’ reactions to change. This is more effective than the commonly utilised grief cycle approach.

This is the fifth in a series of posts about how to view your employees’ responses to change as other than ‘resistance.’ It is based on Patricia Benner’s work described in her book The Primacy of Caring which in turn is based on Heidegger’s phenomenological approach. Phenomenology means that people can grasp a situation directly in terms of its meaning for the self. 

People grasp change situations in terms of what those situations mean for them.

Previous posts have covered Benner’s four aspects of our humanness through which we deal with change situations and the associated growth and loss:

• Embodied intelligence
• Background meaning
• Concern
• Situation

Benner’s contribution assists in redefining what is commonly known in managerial terms as resistance, or opposition to the change desired by management, an opposition that it is the leader’s job to overcome.

To me, Benner’s work challenges leaders of change to consider and generate new responses to the specific situation where the smooth operation of the participant’s background meaning, habitual bodily understanding and the individual’s concerns are breaking down.

This view is consistent with complex responsive process thinking which encourages paying attention to the micro-interaction of what is going on in the here and now.

John Shotter points out the importance of being open, of being willing to be struck by the novel moments in ordinary conversation. I think Benner’s suggestions help leaders to concentrate more on understanding the life situation of participants and to identify what is potentially new in a conversation.

This is a far cry from seeing employees as going through the stages of a grief cycle, and allows a far more personalised approach to situations of ‘resistance’ that might arise.

 People constitute their world and are constituted by it at the same time. Changed situations lead to breakdown of smooth functioning for your employees. Better to see this as an opportunity for reflection rather than an opportunity to ‘persuade’ them.

This is the fourth in a series of posts about Patricia Benner’s work described in her book The Primacy of Caring on how people deal with growth and loss as they are lived or experienced.

Benner proposes that there are four aspects of our humanness that enable us to grasp situations directly in terms of their meaning for the self:

• Embodied intelligence
• Background meaning
• Concern
• Situation

Earlier posts discussed embodied intelligence, background meaning and concern.

Benner calls the fourth attribute ’situation’, which denotes that people inhabit their world, rather than living in an environment. What I mean is that people are constituted by, at the same time as they form, their world. Not only do we create our own world, but it simultaneously creates us. Benner says that this point is often missed because we are so ingrained in an individualist view of the world where we are seen as autonomous individuals, who create the world we live in through our words and actions. Interdependence with other people takes a back seat – more on this here.

Over time, external situations change, and in response the individual also changes. For example, marriage, divorce, widowhood, unemployment, promotion and retirement are all examples Benner gives of how real world situations or contexts change and can impact upon life experience.

No amount of rehearsal or reflection can prepare one for these events because people cannot, in advance, reflectively encounter every taken-for-granted aspect of their being.

However, these changed contexts represent breakdowns in smooth functioning, which can prompt reflection. We can become aware of previously unnoticed background meanings, habitual body understanding and concerns.

This breakdown in smooth functioning is experienced as stressful, as any person involved in organisational change can testify. In situations of change, people’s concerns change and the habitual bodily understandings may not seem to work any more. Taken-for-granted aspects of one’s being may no longer work smoothly. And yet often, leaders respond with ‘persuasive’ messages, rather than attempts to understand what it means for employees whose habitual smooth functioning is breaking down.

Considering this, along with history in the form of background meaning can offer you as the leader of change, the potential for new responses to your employees’ ‘resistance.’ Something more relevant to your employees than a persuasive message.

These new responses you make to your employees have far more potential to trigger the actual organisational change you desire, more than all the programmed key messages and persuasive messages your PR team could dream up.

People understand the world in terms of their concerns. What threatens the concern threatens the person. Which is why people can react strongly to proposed change.

This is the third in a series of posts about Patricia Benner’s work described in her book The Primacy of Caring on how people deal with growth and loss as they are lived or experienced.

Benner proposes that humans grasp situations directly in terms of their meaning for the self. This ability to grasp the meaning of situations is made possible by four aspects of our humanness:

• Embodied intelligence
• Background meaning
• Concern
• Situation

Earlier posts discussed embodied intelligence and background meaning, which help life go smoothly without effortful conscious attending.

Embodied intelligence and background meaning explain how a person can be in the world.

Benner’s third attribute of concern explains why. We are involved in the world through a context, and things and people matter to us. Because they matter, we become very involved in the world. This concern accounts for why people do things, but is not about people being motivated by either internal needs fulfilment (e.g. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) or external prodding (carrot and stick) which are two common ways of seeing motivation.

Rather, through concern, each person is involved with the other and certain things matter more than others. In other words, some things have more meaning than others, and that meaning is given by one’s concerns.

Although concerns can change over time, rather than the person owning the concerns in a possession kind of way, the concerns are part of the person. In a sense they also define the person.

The person understands the world in the light of their concerns. This means that what threatens the concern threatens the person.

Benner prefers the term concerns rather than commitment because of the tendency to see commitment as a measurable scale from high to low. She prefers to use the term concern as a way of getting to the meaning of the concern in the person’s own terms. Instead of describing ‘commitment to the change’ or similar, which predetermines what the concern or commitment is, she suggests that we explore what the person is concerned about, in their own terms.

This is a helpful insight when it comes to thinking about resistance to change, and why people can sometimes react strongly to proposed change. Their concerns are part of their identity, and change that challenges people’s concerns is threatening to their identity.

This suggests that understanding the concerns of your people is important in change situations.

When expressed this way, it sounds like no more than a platitude. But this idea is different from listening to resistant employees with a view to working out how to change their minds, and the difference becomes clearer after considering the fourth of Benner’s attributes, which is the situation itself.

This is discussed in the next post.

People respond to change in ways that reflect their background meaning, not through generic grief cycles

This is the second in a series of posts about Patricia Benner’s work described in her book The Primacy of Caring on how people deal with growth and loss as they are lived or experienced. Much of the literature on change management considers these in terms of a grief cycle, but I think Benner has a much more nuanced and useful way of considering the response of your employees to change.

Benner proposes that humans grasp a situation directly in terms of its meaning for themselves, as opposed to going through a standard grief cycle. And that the ability to grasp the meaning of situations is made possible by four aspects of our humanness:

• Embodied intelligence
• Background meaning
• Concern
• Situation

An earlier post discussed embodied intelligence.

The second of Benner’s attributes of humanness is that we develop background meaning, a determination of what is real for us individually.

Background meaning is formed through the person’s experience of the world, through early encounters with family and then through wider connections with the outside world.

These experiences form our understanding of what is real, what is right, what is true in the world. Being a shared, public understanding of what is, it determines what counts as ‘right’ for that person.

Background meaning is not a thing in itself, but is a way of understanding the world. It is like a light – you don’t see the light itself, but you see what it illuminates. In a similar way, the background meaning itself is invisible but it illuminates your world and determines what you see and what you don’t see.

Because we are embodied intelligences, we take in cultural background meanings from birth. For example Caudill and Weinstein¹ found that Japanese babies and American babies became thoroughly Japanese or American by the ages of three or four months. The Japanese babies were physically passive and watchful of things and people around them. The American babies were physically active and constantly engaging vocally and physically with their mothers. The researchers attributed this to the culturally distinct interactive patterns of mother and child. The Japanese understand the newborn to be a separate, uncivilised being who needs to be brought into the family and made civilised. The Americans understand the baby to be a helpless dependent being who needs to be encouraged to be autonomous.

So, for an individual, background meaning is provided by the family, culture and sub-cultures to which that person belongs. It is taken up in individual ways in particular circumstances but always within the constraints of what is culturally acceptable.

The implication of this for you as a leader of change is that when you recognise that people will respond to change initiatives in accordance with their background meaning, you will be able to make sense of employees’ responses without being polarised into seeing these responses purely as ‘resistance.’

If you see employees as demonstrating ‘resistance’ then your only alternative is to try to deal with something opposing you – which leads only to attempts to either persuade (sell) or bypass those

If you consider the background meaning of your employees, it will allow you a wider range of ways of engaging with those employees rather than only as ‘resistant.’

Benner’s approach offers the option of exploring what the background meaning is that is leading the employees to have the response that looks like resistance.

The concept of background meaning may prompt you as a leader also to consider your own background meaning, and also what you know about the employees’ background meaning and how this might be influencing the ‘resistant’ response. Understanding the employees’ background meaning can help leaders to respond in ways that open up the possibility of change. The  alternative is to engage with employees as though they are resistant, and this leads to stand offs with little possibility of resolution.

1 Caudill W. and Weinstein H. 1969 Maternal Care and infant behaviour in Japan and America, Psychiatry, 32:12.

Benner’s approach is based on the phenomenologist philiosophy of Martin Heidegger.

In this guest post, we welcome experienced management consultant Russell Ness, who ponders on whether there is such a thing as leadership – does leadership actually exist?

The theory, practice and development of leadership are seriously flawed. The flaw is that there is no such “thing” as leadership. We have attributed a status to this concept and associated behavior, actions and attributes and it is these that have falsely provided some solidness.

However, when I really consider leadership, I struggle to articulate anything more than vague truisms and inspirational qualities. Many have tried to tie it down – the trouble is, there is no “it”. “It” does not exist. Billy Connelly said, “What you believe is true for you”. This seems to apply to the leadership movement. If you believe leadership is this or that, then it is true (but only for you).

We have studied those greats identified as effective or successful leaders. We have analysed what they do and what they seem to be. At best, all we can come up with is a view of what it is believed those individuals do and have. The key thing is that they are individuals, with no capacity to replicate themselves. The most reputable gurus seem to agree that leadership is in what we are, more than in what we do. And, what we are is a collection of unique memories, experiences, values and a non replicable self that can never permeate or be handed on to, or inserted into another. Logically, the most reliable way to gain what so called leaders have and do would be to be their offspring.

What about all the qualities and behaviours of great and effective leadership? For every quality and behavior, we can find an equal and opposite one that disproves the rule.

Adolf Hitler galvanized a nation to accept and commit unspeakable acts that still provoke outrage and ongoing academic focus. Bill Clinton was internationally lauded as great yet he lacked integrity, morality and fidelity, attributes commonly associated with effective leadership.

So, we then come to talk about leaders being of their time – situational. They emerge as circumstances suit their particular strengths and capabilities.

Churchill was apparently a man of his time. He swept into power when Britain needed a “bulldog” and was just as rapidly swept out when Britain appeared safe. His leadership seemed to have a context for success that the public recognized – however, they did not trust him to transfer that success to a more settled, less critical time.

Were Mao Tse Tung, Gandhi and Mandela also leaders of their time, situation and context, unsuited to a changed environment? They seemed to emerge, pushed to the fore by either a grateful and eager following or perhaps as a result of a vacuum.

Would they have been leaders in a different time and place? If not, we could assume that the leadership qualities of those leaders are not transferable.

Leadership is a figment and bereft of any substance. Individuals may emerge and succeed in a context due to their suitability for that particular circumstance. Their innate capability succeeds at that moment. However, we cannot ascribe a set of attributes and behaviours or capability as leadership and expect that the individual who aspires to the same will succeed in any other set of circumstances.

The natural aspect of leadership to address another time is that of “followership”.

Contributed by Russell Ness
 

One of the most common ways that people are finding this site and blog is through my earlier posts on Patricia Benner’s work on 5 stages of skill acquisition and their implications for leadership (here).

Other work of Benner’s is relevant to leaders initiating change in their organisations. In The Primacy of Caring, she explores the practice of professionals dealing with health and illness, growth and loss, as they are lived or experienced.

Her findings have relevance for leaders of change because people going through change situations are also dealing with growth and loss.

While it is common to think of grief in terms of a grief cycle (e.g. Kubler-Ross), Benner’s explanation of humans as self-interpreting beings suggests that the responses of participants come from their understanding of the situation, and that they respond as the situation demands and as it unfolds in time. It is not purely about a process such as a grief cycle.

This understanding of situation is important. Benner argues that humans have the capacity to grasp a situation directly in terms of its meaning for the self (not necessarily going through a grief cycle), and this ability is made possible by four aspects of our humanness:

• Embodied intelligence
• Background meaning
• Concern
• Situation

Firstly, people have embodied intelligence. This means that we grasp a situation quickly in a non-reflective way, as in our ability to recognise faces and also perform familiar tasks such as driving on ‘auto-pilot’ without conscious attending. Our embodied intelligence is what enables a racing car driver to assess a situation and take action much more quickly than conscious reflection would allow.

Embodied intelligence can also be seen as skilled spontaneity. This is the faculty that is responsible for the experience of driving to work in the morning and not remembering familiar aspects of the journey, such as changing gear, or stopping for a particular traffic light.

Leaders and facilitators of change can develop skilful ‘spontaneous’ ways of dealing with certain types of group situations, and not be able to explain them, because the explaining is like asking a concert pianist to explain how their fingers move across the keys – one of the key attributes of embodied intelligence is that it breaks down under conscious reflection.

A concert pianist having to explain how they play the piano would likely be halting and hesitant in explaining it, and would certainly perform the piece relatively poorly if they had to think about each finger on each key rather than ‘going with the flow’.

This embodied intelligence works best when it is not noticed. For example, in tennis, I have experienced someone commenting to me that my serve is going well, only to find that this made me think about my serve with the consequence that it broke down completely.

Embodied intelligence can also be thought of as ‘unconscious competence.’

Itis difficult to articulate, and Benner suggests that this difficulty in articulation is one reason why embodied intelligence has been undervalued in western society, compared to rational thinking.

It could be helpful for leaders to consider that both the leader’s gesture and the employee’s ‘resistant’ response will have an element of embodied intelligence, some element of skilled spontaneity that is habitual and learnt, and is outside of the individual’s awareness. 

The next posts will discuss Benner’s ideas about background meaning, concern and situation.

Have no truck with those who insist on seeing organisational change as a ‘journey.’

Continuing on from the previous post, it is very common to see change as a journey. So many times people talk about their ‘journey.’ It is such a common expression. Even competitors on Pop Idol in the semi finals are asked "what has the journey been like." They then talk about how ‘amazing’ it has been.  

If organisational change is seen as being a transition from the current state to the desired state, then change must necessarily be a journey, the journey from where we are now to where we want to be. This is based on the idea that there is a destination that is known and it is like we are on a boat trip (the leader is the skipper) between Nowheresville (where we are now), to Successville (where we want to be).  

The analogy of organisational change being a journey is extremely limited though, to the point where I do not think it has much usefulness at all.

Like you could ring a charter boat company and ask for a boat to take you from Nowheresville to Successville (whether or not you think you would enjoy the process). Unlike a boat trip, senior managers in organisations, even the best ones, generally cannot say where point A (Nowheresville) and point B (Successville) are.

Point B, the destination, is analagous to ‘where we want to get to.’ Most organisations say they know where they want to get to – if they did not, the shareholders would probably desert them. So there is a game going on, a conflict between getting daily business done and providing sufficiently convincing information about progress so that the shareholders and other stakeholders will continue to support it and allow it to carry on operations.  The journey metaphor implies that organisations know where they want to go, to the point that they can specify it on a map.

When you think about it, it is surely not possible for any manager to specify a future state of the organisation as though it were a point on a map. It is hard enough to get agreement on a specification of where your organisation is now.

If you don’t believe that, ask ten of your managers to specify the current state of the organisation – you will get ten different answers. Ask three board members. Ask three consultants who are experts in your industry to conduct an analysis and specify for you your current state. Again you will get completely different reports. Each of the ten managers’ answers or three consultants’ reports or board members’ points of view will reflect their own individual biases, professional backgrounds and perceptions. In fact, by the time you could specify the current state, it would have changed.

So the first problem with the journey analogy for organisations is that unlike getting in the boat to go somewhere, managers do not really know where they are now, and they cannot really specify where they want to go.

The second problem with the "change as a journey" metaphor is that it assumes that you can map out the journey with the points you pass through on the way. It’s one thing to say that "We will get revenue of $15M by the end of the year and will have reached $12M by August." Try saying "We will have a culture that is open and trusting by November." Does this mean that by August we will have a culture that is 75% open and trusting?

Project planning is a discipline that relies on visualising the end result and then working backwards to identify milestones and actions that will be required to achieve that end result. This is a very useful planning technique – one that I myself continue to use with good success with my clients.

And I am a firm believer that any organisational change initiative needs a well thought out plan to coordinate the efforts of the many who will inevitably be involved. In fact my ability to plan complex projects that is one of the things my clients hire me for. And yet, although it is helpful to plan in this way, it is not really possible to outline in a deterministic way a plan that is like a map covering all the interim destinations.

To summarise, it is useful to make a plan for your change initiative that includes interim milestones. But know that the metaphor of organisational change as a journey is greatly limited.

Organisations are not in in one equilibrium state (current port), moving to another desired state (destination port).  Rather they are the result of the interweaving of multiple intentions of those involved in the organisation. The plans, including the detailed project plans of the change project manager, represent the intentions of the change project manager and team. What eventuates will be the result of these interweaving intentions. It will not be a journey from point A to point B via points X, Y and Z. No matter how inviting that trip on the ocean may sound.