Changing the Way We Look at Change

How is change different from no-change? Change management from organization development? Organization leadership from change leadership? Is there a difference? I'm tempted to argue: Whatever sells, right? Academic, theoretical distinctions do exist. I won't go into them here. The question is, do these have much meaning for management practitioners or the executive mind? Does it make a difference in the practical work lives of middle managers, employees, contractors, scrum masters, or anyone else in the supply chain? From what I've seen, every manager I've talked to has a different understanding of what these terms mean. This is because, in the business, government, and non-profit worlds, we adopt popular definitions of change and how to deal with it. We use them as forms of linguistic short-hand and frequently, inter-changeably. We have strong opinions of our favorites - I happen to like change leadership - but opinions are only opinions. You may like OD, change management, or transformational change.

Flooding the market with ambiguous terms in order get our share of lucrative profits is counter-productive. There has got to be a way to build some sanity into this conceptual confusion. Here are a few ideas from my newest book, on what change might really be:

Change might mean that over time, nothing remains the same. This is the story of our planet and the universe. Reality, past, present, and future, is ever-changing. Life is a flow... inorganic matter combines, breaks-away, and recombines, under the right conditions.

When we substitute one thing for another, that is also change. It is what some organizations attempt to parlay as transformation (the real thing). Substitution means we change a few props (maybe the language in a shared vision), we arrange the organizational stage to create a new context ("all managers through 360 degree feedback by January 1, 2020!") We want to get the audience to join us in a shared fantasy that will take us all out of present time and convince us that this is the way the world is. Change is a mechanism, and we are going to master and manage it. We are going to drive change down through the organization. Alternatively, 360 degree feedback could easily be a waste of money depending on the organization's readiness for change, the cultural value placed on learning and development, and finally on how it is rolled-out and delivered.

Sometimes, when we feel most risk averse, we want our managers and senior leaders to become progressive in the style of our least progressive leaders. No one cares to admit that the old emperor is simply wearing a new set of clothes, or none at all. To put it in language we all understand: "You can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse." Let's be frank. We are being entertained. The play's the thing!

Managers use impression management and prop manipulation because it is much easier than leading people through changes that involve shifting the culture. Culture is values, assumptions, and behaviors. As anyone who has tried to change it knows, it ain't easy! Multiple stakeholders always need to work together in new ways to make it happen! They need to follow counter-cultural work methods with innovative principles like self-management and the use of guiding frameworks and participative methodologies. Leaders need to be prepared to shift horses in midstream as they experiment to learn what is and is not working in their organizations . This is very difficult to do as well. From my experience, strategy is a breeze compared to implementation of change programs. You can't insist that people change, without helping them to do so. Command and control is a relic for some organizations, but in many, it still dominates. People are what matter, and they are the engine of change. If you treat them like replaceable objects, they will respond accordingly. If you treat them like "talent", they may like the pay and promotional opportunities, but they won't reveal the power that they are ready to unleash for a just cause.

Short of actually investing in people who are capable of contributing to the reinvention of their workplaces, it is easier to create the facade of change. This is the promise that marketing, advertising, and dreams are made of. There may be a place for it, but don't imagine that our hearts and minds are much affected. In practice, it works something like Lincoln's: "You can fool all of the people some of the time." Overused, changes of the substitutional form that do not significantly impact cultural assumptions, behaviors, and organizational dynamics will finally evolve into Lincoln's final rejoinder, "you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

Cyclic change is another type of change. Consider industry cycles. These are recurrent, predictable changes that occur within an industry. They cannot be directly controlled but can be reasonably well understood. Through knowledge and planning, a form of control will emerge. One such cycle is increased consumer spending over the holidays. Retail stores can normally depend on the cyclical change, but in the wake of the Great Recession, it does not seem to be immutable. There are reduced industry cycle times today. Technical innovations in computer chip size, complexity and cost, have dramatically reduced the cycle times for new products and services across many industries. Such changes in industry cycles create more urgency for information gathering, knowledge creation and planning, rapid iterations and agile product designs. In principle, this type of change can all be managed.

The human race is inventive. For every authentic, inspiring change leader, there is a dissembling one. Transformational change has upped the ante for all leaders. The forces of change accelerate and morph into new forms we have never seen before: (1) Globalism and the subsequent breakdown of knowledge and discipline categories, (2) the blurring of national and individual identities, (3) radical reactions to change, and (4) preventable death and destruction around the globe. These things all contribute to the inversion of a social reality that people once thought they could count on.

The proper response to these things might be, improv. I want to explore this in my next post!