Welcome to my blog. I have questions about the way we work and I put my thoughts here. I hope you have a nice stay!
A culture that fosters poor leadership, poor decision-making or poor behaviour will undermine the governance framework of the entity.
If we are in a period of rapid and disruptive change, then seeking to hold our ground against the hungry teeth of time using the tried and tested techniques of old may not be our best response.
The leaders of organisational change and reform must be Pitchmen. They must be constantly persuading the workforce to engage intellectually with the idea of change; but most importantly, they are seeking a voluntary commitment to a change in behaviour. This cannot be compelled; this must be won through strength of argument and persistent communication.
If we are in a period of profound political, economic, social and technological disruption in the way we work and organise then there is a need for a more sophisticated understanding of our organisations, improved monitoring of local and general conditions, and a forensic focus on better understanding the antecedents and consequences of an inherently uncertain event. It requires better quality data collection, predictive analytics, modelling and forecasting that enables informed pre-planning, adaptive response and informed communication.
We spend much our time talking about the mechanics of organisational change but very little discussing the deeper and more lasting concept of organisational reform. If managers are to successfully undertake organisational reform (and the evidence would suggest that it is not going well so far), then there is a need to understand why people behave the way they do—individually and collectively. The problem of social order in organisations is also the problem of reform.
While there are many interpretations of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner the one that fits best with my initial reading is one in which the Ancient Mariner shows us how people interpret the past, and the ways in which the past is in many ways unknowable.
All organisations are seeking to survive—to endure—consequently how effectively our organisations adapt to the twin demands of increasing and pressing customer expectation and building the necessary organisational and workforce capability for the long term success (however that might be defined).
All change is a battle between new and old ideologies. The battle is not rational or intellectual, but emotional.
In many organisations, I suspect there is a strong desire for ‘more innovation’ or ‘a culture of innovation’ but little progress is made on addressing ‘innovation’ as a practical business strategy. This approach to innovation is similar to Alice’s dilemma: ‘It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply arranged. The only difficulty was, she had not the smallest idea how to set about it.
Our discussions of change and reform are often plagued by well-worn and circular discussions of visions, aspirations, culture, leadership and values. What if, instead, we were focus on the way we are organised to deliver capability?
The pursuit of ‘balance’ seems to be an unstated objective of organisations. But what do we mean by a balanced organisation?
Change, adaptation, evolution, revolution, development, adjustment, shift, transition, innovation, modification, variation are all aspects of our daily lives, the lives of our families, and our relationships with others. We manage the twists and turns of these interactions dynamically. We work with the flow of daily life. It is only when it comes to managing organisations that change becomes a process in which we feel compelled to actively plan and guide others through a staged and linear sequence.
Our organisations are shaped to manage the immediate—to manage crisis. Our leadership and management culture continues to draw heavily on its heroic origins—the ‘Great Man’ theory. Afterwards we collectively bask in the glory of having taken action to avert crisis and we commiserate together when we are overwhelmed by forces greater than us. We revel in a good crisis. And, sometimes, in order to act, we manufacture a crisis. So, can we act without a crisis?
Most of the time our working lives are broadly predictable. Work would be intolerable and impossible without some degree of stability. Yet, we invest a lot of time in attempting to ‘manage change’. How is managing change different from day-to-day management? Reading the prescriptions offered in business magazines and journals, I struggle to see why this requires a unique bag of tools and skills. So, I wonder whether we are having the wrong conversation at the wrong level.
