Change

CHANGE INFLUENCERS

?Dr Merv Wilkinson

Catalyst of Change Consulting Group, Canberra, Australia.

?A CHANGE AGENT’S CHRONICLE OF ORGANISATIONAL PRACTICE

?Newsletter 2,? April, 2024

In the 1940s, 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's decades ago, key researchers and writers/consultants studied organisations deeply; as social scientists and organisational change makers they began to study people, cultures and structures and wrote about the theory and practice of learning, including cultural learning in organisations. They introduced “Culture”, organisational culture, as a concept.

It was in the late 1970s when I began to take a passionate interest in these pioneers of organisational practice and thought. Not merely, "cultures" was a concept of research and discussion. These consultants began speaking and working on the structures of institutions and how to change them. Organisational structures, the architectural frameworks of institutions are the shadow side of the culture-structure pairing. Often one is tangible, whilst the other fluid and both are intersectoral and linked.

Change thinking for organisations was pioneered in my own professional consulting journey by consultants and researchers like Chris Argyris, and Donald Schoen, the organisational psychologists who made us all think about our consulting theories and practices and how to make a real difference in organisations, not merely painting brighter colours over old, and tinkering at the edges.

Educational change agents like Phillip Schmuck and Phillip Runkel, Michael Fullan, Ed Hargraeves, Peter Senge, (USA) and others such as the “Action Research” gurus Stephen Kemmis, McTaggart, Ortrun Zuber – Skerritt, others like Bob Parker et al in “Action Science”, Reg Revans in Action Learning, and people like Queenslander academics and consultancy theory and practice, deep action research thinkers and practitioners such as Bob Dick, Alf Lizzio, Tim Dalmau and so many others; giant thinkers and practitioners in their fields; they all impacted our thinking about our practices in the field of organisational development; for me, myself from Canberra to Brisbane, Port Moresby, Milne Bay, Kokoda, North Queensland, Boston, Harvard, New York, New Orleans and beyond.

Native wisdom from the villages I grew up in, ancient tribal elders’ philosophy and wisdom about the contexts and environments, the reefs, the oceans and winds and creatures with which we coexisted, were platforms of knowledge and understandings for myself as an aspiring future transformational, change agent. I added these Western thinkers to my original ancestors' wisdom of change.

Then there was the greatest influencer; in my books, a giant of organisational culture and leadership, Professor Ed Schein from MIT, Boston. He influenced us all. He influenced the world. Of course there were many others.

My purpose for mentioning these organisational change agents is to underline the importance of deeper thinking for better consulting and management and leadership of real change practices for our current change agents; to be much more attuned to, and to be aware of the deep research about putting our thoughts into real change agentry practices in institutions; to make a real change, a deeper difference, based on evidence and research, not just superficial reactive, glossy, feel good activities… “five minute solutions” as someone called them;?that seem to be the cultural vernacular in contemporary organisational circles...quick symptoms activities not real causal analysis and solution finding.

Social media, for example; email, Facebook, Instagram, even Linked In, marketing spiels and communication techs can only be useful and effective and impactful to change things if we think through the evidence as to what these things change…attitudes; quick fixes, prejudicial mediocrity, trending fashions….what really changes things; is it just what helps careers or looks good for external and internal stakeholders, or advertises how supposedly good we are....?

How many leaders, for example, actually enable the powerful cultural differentiator of circle groups to happen in reality, empowering staff, installing regular democratically governed yarning circles about culture and structure with specialists facilitating the conversations, getting deep into the peoples’ psyches? Our Indigenous First Nations people throughout the world have used these conversational cultural protocols for thousands of years to build community wisdom. These days, it seems to me, not many use deep cultural change elements like conversational circles that are regulated and expertly implemented for certain cultural findings and diagnoses; at least not as a basic analytical deep tool. That is just one example, there are many more…

Collecting information and deep cultural data seems to be “done” by superficial means, upon people, not with them and alongside them; often talking at them rather than listening to, hearing and speaking with them. It is linked to the old world we inherited of hierarchical paradigms of thinking, of command philosophies and undemocratic, caste-ridden?institutions. Colonialism prejudgements? and biases are still spectre spots in our minds that permeate our everyday thinking and actions subconsciously in institutions.

Back to the foundational institutional change practice thinkers…

In their later book: I think it was Organisational Learning 2 around 1996 Chris Argyris and Donald Schoen elaborated upon their theories of change and from memory- happy to be corrected, it was said or written at the time that most organisations had not moved to Model 02 and were still in the Model 01 doldrums, of?not changing their practices, in spite of all the hullabaloo, smoke and fire and shouting and screaming from the roof tops; nothing, no real cultural change was occurring.

Food for consulting thought! I take this to be no real transformative change to assumptions, values as well as the obvious artefacts and behaviours.?They could have been describing what is happening or not happening in cultural change today across so many institutions.

Most of our institutions do not really change deeply, in terms of real transformation. Most just shine up their boots, put on new clothes and pretend to change.

Sadly, there are powerful, consultant organisations who mean well but are really sometimes just charlotans who sell their "snake oil" and "solution" wares to leaders and managers of institutions who know no better, but wanting to "look good" and not "rock the conservative boat" and “keep their slates clean” for their next career move… etcetera...to perpetuate the status quo. So we "change in order to stay the same", we put up a new flag, but the culture remains toxic, we change the deck chairs, but the ship continues sinking; our policies are tinkered, little bits and pieces are chipped off or added, but the deep psyches remain.

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Institutions have a lot to answer for.

Leaders have a lot to answer for.

Boards of governors, managers, consultants, politicians, media, television and social media commentators all contribute, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally; pandering to their audiences, sprouting vernacular putdowns and fueling this institutional; disease of "status quo"...of "this is the way we have done this always".

Actually, these status quo, non-fluid behaviors, are metaphorically growing institutional barnacles on the keels of their organisational ships; unknowingly feeding a "cancer" of stasis and eventual extinction on institutions.

If we value innovation, creativity, flexibility, excitement and change we will be a "wake-up" to these activities. We will speak out. We will call people out.

Today as I reflect upon the organisational change thinkers and champions of the past in?an even more complex contemporary world of organisations; I wonder how we are thinking through the practices of institutional stasis and change??

What is our change status quo? Is it water? Is it rock? Why? Is it fluid? Is it flexible?

Where would our institutions be positioned upon any change indicator or KPI measure on change?

Argyris’s “two column analysis” is still informative for me in my work today…as I try to bring deeper, broader, evidence-based research know-how into the diagnoses of the cultures and structures of organisations in which I am privileged to add some value.

I am happy to converse with leaders, managers who are interested in these concepts about how to make a real difference as we go about working in institutions to really transform these entities for the purpose of "human goodness" and collective achievement.

Remember, as consultants, as change agents part of our work is to serve our clients, to be of service to them, and start where they are at situationally; but an important element of our work too, is to educate, to leave them in a better, more enlightened place about understanding and leading their structures and cultures, about transforming these people and places with whom and where we spend so much of our lives; so they are stronger and smarter and more effective to change their own institutional futures, themselves.

Maybe then and only then, we may start to see real cultural diagnoses and real cultural and structural consulting for effective change!

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