Can our fixed views of organisation escape the hungry teeth of ages?
We approach organisational change with a perspective or view about how our organisations work. Our view is based in what we have been taught or learned from others, and it is informed by our direct experience of how things have been done in the past. Our views are important because they shape the choices we make, the methods we use and the information we value.
By most measures we are in a period of rapid societal change that is likely to have a profound impact on how firms are organised. How we think about, understand and respond to these changes will be central to success.
Donald Schön identified the inherent stability of organisations when he observed that they exhibit a trait he referred to as ‘dynamic conservatism’ or the tendency of organisations to 'fight to stay the same'.
What does this inherent resistance to change suggest about our philosophy of change and its management?
For me, it assumes the value of the organisation is embedded in an ideal view of form that persists through time. It is this form that we protect, and which, in Schön's view, we actively and aggressively fight to preserve. Our organisational past dominates our understanding of the future.
It suggests an approach to managing change where the final destination is known. We set off on the path to change with our gaze fixed on a predetermined future state. Most likely, a view that is not far removed from where we are today.
As the final destination is known, it assumes a purposeful and rational approach to planning and implementing change management. One where leaders and managers are not sculptors of an original work but rather involved in the necessary process of restoring the original.
This outlook on change and its management may also go some way to explaining why it is believed that 70% of organisational change initiatives fail. We may be using the wrong measure as the goal was not to change but rather to stay largely the same. The famous observation might be better phrased as 70% of organisational stability initiatives succeed.
Victor Segalen was a French naval doctor in the early 20th Century who, consistent with his time, is variously described as an ethnographer, archaeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic. Segalen observed that, 'nothing immobile can escape the hungry teeth of ages'. It is a view that nothing that sets stability as its goal can avoid degradation over time. It is natural and inevitable.
Taking this view might suggest that organisational change is more about yielding to time, deflecting where necessary, and letting go when required.
It suggests the organisational value resides in its constituent parts—its base components. It is these parts that are organised to take the required shape.
It suggests a view where the future form of the organisation inhabits the people because the focus is on the way people store and share knowledge, and their latent potential for action. It is immediate, fluid and responsive not fixed and structural.
It argues for an organisation that is not clogged and inhibited by the past that is embedded in culture. It suggests that a function of leading change is to help the organisation to forget as much as to learn.
Effectively responding to change requires leaders and managers to combine and re-combine information, knowledge and practice to make sense of an environment that is defined by uncertainty. The lens through which we view world around us shapes our actions. So, our philosophy of change is more important than the tools we have in our change management toolbox.
Today, our views on change and our methods of change management are grounded in strategic and rational view of the world. They are founded in a drive for coherence and stability. We seek alignment through incremental change. We construct a final destination in much the same way that a finish line is the destination for a sprinter. This approach can work to narrow our choices early, leaving little room for adaptation and emergence later.
Is our rational approach to change and change management wrong? No. However, I'm not convinced it leads to change as much as it drives toward a different form of the same. It dominates our perspective on change and limits the tools that are available to us, and that is a problem. The dominance of the rational approach may be a problem because it closes out other possibilities and stifles innovation.
The aim here is not to provide the answer but to explore the question. If we are in a period of rapid and disruptive change, then seeking to hold our ground against the hungry teeth of time by relying on techniques designed to maintain stability may not be our best response.
Time only runs in one direction.
[The views expressed here are the author’s and are not necessarily representative of those employing him, his family, or even those loosely acquainted with him.]
