Stephen Billing’s Blog

Change is not a transition from the current state to some desired future state. Any state you might choose is arbitrary. Change is an ongoing ceaseless process that never stops at some equilibrium state.

In the western world we have developed a language and way of thinking that gives precedence to substance and static things. This tradition of thinking has predisposed us to thinking of organisations as primarily stable, permanent and unchanging.

We see organisations as being primarily in equilibrium and change as being the slightly irksome transitory phase when the organisation moves from one state of equilibrium to another, a state that requires ‘managing.’

Kurt Lewin’s classic ‘unfreeze, change, refreeze’ dictum expresses the essence of this way of thinking. To implement organisational change, you unfreeze what you currently have by shaking it up, you apply change processes and then you embed the changes into the new equilibrium. Lewin’s ideas in the 1950s were very influential for decades and have become part of received wisdom, so it still affects the way many people today view organisational change today.

Robert Chia in his article "A ‘Rhizomic’ Model of Organizational Change and Transformation: Perspective from a Metaphysics of Change," published in the British Journal of Management in 1999 (unfortunately subscription only) traces this way of thinking back to Parmenides, through Aristotle and credits this way of thinking for the scientific and technological achievements of western society since Ancient Greece. So we must acknowledge the great benefit this way of thinking has had in our society.

Nevertheless, the view that organisations seek equilibrium is a view, it is not necessarily ‘the truth.’

One alternative view is based on the thinking of Heraclitus, who was the mentor of Parmenides. In this view, change is seen as enduring, and the current and desired states we perceive are seen as snapshots we create in an attempt to simplify and make sense of the world.

So rather than an equilibrium state being normal and a transition to that state as a temporary situation needing to be managed in the form of change management, we can see the state of organisation as being an artificial simplification, and a temporary snapshot.

The state of organisation is then the exception. Organisation is a temporary moment in a process of continuous ongoing changing.  Change is not then a temporary transition between different states of organisation.

Organisations are constantly changing through incessant processes of interaction between human beings, and are not moving towards a state of equilibrium. In other words, the change you are trying to implement now is not an end in itself, it is part of a neverending process of changing that has no beginning and no end. Whatever goal you choose and whatever you see as the starting point are arbitrarily chosen points in a neverending flow of interactions and change in your organisation.

Different perspective, eh?

Your change efforts are inherently political, whether you intend them to be or not

The poor regard in which politics is held, and the view that it is bad to engage in politics are both indicative of a way of thinking in which it is implicit that people can either choose to engage in politics and therefore be labelled “bad” or they can choose not to engage in politics and be “good”.

Politics are also commonly seen as part of conflict, uncertainty and situations where the formal channels break down or are not effective.

However, I think that politics are an inevitable aspect of the social nature of being human and working in organisations.

I often hear people say "I don’t get involved in the politics." While this seems like an admirable aspiration, all humans are involved in politics because we all have intentions that we are trying to manifest in our organisational lives. The results of what happens in your organisation is a result of the interweaving of all the different intentions of the many people who are involved in the organisation. 

Hidden in the view of politics as the result of conflict, uncertainty and lack of effective formal communication channels, is the implication that people would not need to engage in political behaviour if there were no conflict, if the environment were predictable or if formal means of resolution were working effectively.

Like it or not, conflict, uncertainty and formal channels that break down are a part of human existence in organisations. It ain’t going to go away. Everything is political (or interpreted in a political way), including the actions of people who are not interested in organisational politics, or who think they are not being political.

Over at Informal Coalitions, Chris Rodgers has picked up on my criticism of leaders concentrating on a ‘vision.’

I like his suggestion that instead of spending effort on vision, leaders should reflect "on how their own words and actions (including their silence and inaction) are being perceived, interpreted and acted upon by their staff."

His blog is the only other blog I have found on change that reflects an understanding of the thinking that is the basis for my own explorations in organisations – complex responsive processes.

Perhaps that is why his is the only ‘change’ site currently on my blog roll (see right hand column).

Use your sports analaogies sparingly and with good thought for how they apply to your organisational setting.

Sports analogies are very common in business life. After all, organisations have teams, and businesses are trying to ‘win’ and so it seems very natural to look to the sports field for analogies of organisational life. As a keen tennis player I am very attuned to elements of competition and winning – I am proud that I won these cups in a tennis tournament!

I think the popularity of sports analogies is also fostered by peak team experiences that people might have in sports teams. When management trainers are promoting teamwork they often ask people to think of peak team experiences they have had, with a view to attempting to transfer these peak experiences from other domains to the business domain.

The prospect is appealing, of people being able to have in their business life this same kind of transcendental experience that can come from being on a winning sports team – the relationships and camaraderie, the feeling of being winners, the emotional support, the focus on an end result and so on.

This is regardless of whether or not in the business domain, the people working together are actually a team or not.

An analogy is a comparison between one domain and another. Sports analogies compare sports experience with business experience. So they are useful to the degree to which sports and business are similar.

It is often taken for granted that these similarities are obvious. But it would be useful to remember three key limitations of sports analogies when used in business settings.

1. Are you dealing with a team or with a committee? I am grateful to Alan Weiss for this idea. If you have a team, everybody wins or no-one wins. In other words, the team’s performance is what matters more than the performance of the individuals. If you have a committee, one person can win, e.g. the top sales person or the GM Operations, while others lose, i.e. the other salespeople or the GM Marketing. If you have a committee in operation, the sports analogies are little more than empty rhetoric, especially those about team spirit.
    
2. Is your team mainly driven by short term goals? Sports have short term goals which assume high levels of intensity and importance (i.e. win this current game). Most corporate settings do not have this same degree of short term intensity. Instead they are complex and the relationship between cause and effect is obscure. Often people cannot see how their individual efforts contribute and so more sophisticated approaches are required.
    
3. Are the elements of competition and results strong? In sports, competition is the whole point and the results are evident immediately according to the scoreboard. Even in competitive industries, many of the people in your organisation never get to meet the competitors, and the evidence of the results of their work is usually not as strong as in a sports team.

Sports analogies are commonly used in organisational settings in a taken for granted way. Have a good think about how you use sports analogies in your organisational situation. In addition to the points about their validity and limitations above, there are lots of people in your organisation who hate sports, for whom competition is anathema.

Indiscriminate sports analogies will alienate those people, not include them.

It’s time to stop thinking of resistance as a force opposing the change you want to see

Lewin’s force field analysis is behind much of the work on organisational change, sometimes in a taken-for-granted way. Lewin, a major thinker in organisational development and organisational change in the 50s, borrowed from physics in thinking of resistance as a restraining force in the direction of the status quo.

This view has led managers to see their intentions as one force, opposed by the intentions of others in the organisation, especially those who are less powerful.

While this view originally represented a significant movement in thinking about change, it has reinforced a focus on the ‘forces’ that lead managers and employees away from supporting the change desired by the senior managers.

Watson points out that senior managers often perceive resistance as negative since they see employees who resist as disobedient.

Managers end up treating their subordinates as obstacles to change because of this way of thinking about change as taking place in this field of opposing forces, as Piderit says.

The label of resistance is then used to dismiss valid employee concerns about proposed changes. Instead of seeing negative responses to change proposals simply as negative, it pays to look behind what you interpret as the resistance, to see what the valid concerns are behind the negative response.

I have found that it helps to assume that the concerns of those in the organisation are valid, and to work to incorporate them into the change proposal.

What do you think?

How managers can initiate change without capital investment

In 2009, how can you create organisational change without a huge financial investment?

The key is for managers to understand the concept of interdependence in which we move away from the notion of the self as autonomous individual. Instead we have an organisation, and indeed a society, of interdependent people whose individiual selves are consitituted through their interaction with each other. In this way of thinking, individual change cannot then be separated from change in the groups to which the individual belongs. Likewise, organisational change cannot be separated from change in the individuals themselves

This means that managers in organisations must understand that they cannot change their organisations while remaining the same as an individual. Through the process of going through organisational change, managers as individuals will change, as will those that work for them.

The interactions between managers and their staff will change, and this will constitute change in those individuals, as well as change in the organisation.

So the first step for the manager seeking to create change in their organisation is to reflect on the interactions in which the manager is participating, and consider how those interactions themselves might change. The key to the change you are seeking lies undoubtedly in what is not discussable in your teams – you can bet it will be being discussed informally. For example, whether or not staff bring up their good ideas at meetings, or ask questions to make sure they understand what is going on in your organisation.

A good question to ask yourself  as the manager is "What are we talking about in our teams, and what are we not talking about?"  If it would be helpful, ask a trusted member of the team, or your own manager. Use the insight you gain from this to start talking with your whole team about what was formerly undiscussable. While this might not be easy, you will see amazing results. And it won’t cost you a single dollar of capital expenditure.

Lots of change management rhetoric exhorts managers to have a clear vision of the future. But what if you don’t have a clear vision? Having been a strong aficionado of visions in the past, I have come to see that you can still move forward successfully with change initiatives, even without a clear vision.

In fact, being the contrary person that I am, I contend that a clearly articulated vision is not important, and can actually get in the way of the change you want to achieve. You do not need a clear vision to lead and implement change effectively.

My perspective is that first of all, as a leader of change, it is important to be comfortable with NOT knowing ‘the vision’. Second, it is important to be clear about your intentions at the present time, and to listen for the intentions of those around you. Your listening to those around you who have different intentions, different backgrounds or come from different disciplines will surely lead to a new, spontaneous or unexpected outcome, one that leads you all forward. 

The change projects I’m now involved in are much more complex than those in my early days when I was discovering the concept of vision and working to articulate the vision clearly. Nowadays no one seems to be clear about what the vision is – that’s one of the key reasons I get hired. My clients are, however, able to articulate in some way what it is that they want to change. But this is not in the form of a vision. And spending time ‘word smithing,’ trying to turn it into a vision is a waste of time. 

Any vision is only an intention by a manager or a project team. Furthermore it is often their intention for what someone else will do, such as front line staff.  Managers in change projects, and middle-level line managers often find themselves in the unenviable position of having to wrestle with telling front line staff how senior managers want them to change.  

If you don’t do this by communicating a vision, what should you communicate? 

The results of any change initiative are actually the outcome of the interweaving of intentions of those driving the change and those who they are trying to change, according to Norbert Elias. So as a leader or facilitator of change, all you can communicate is what your intentions are. Then it pays to listen carefully to the responses, and make your own response. 

I began to despair a little when I first started to understand that we are a lot less in control than change management rhetoric would have us believe. But our actions as leaders and facilitators of change are still important and make a difference. 

Don’t waste time on "vision". Tell people what your intentions are, what you want to achieve. And then observe and listen closely to their responses. Your change efforts will be much more effective. 

What do you think?  

*Elias N, (1994) The Civilizing Process, Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.