Is the Focus on Managing Change Misplaced?

From LPRGroup

[edit] IS THE FOCUS ON "MANAGING CHANGE" MISPLACED?

[edit] A CONSULTANT'S PERSPECTIVE

by Peter Roche. See http://eaom.org/NewsLetter/Spring01/ManagingChange.htm

[edit] Be the Change You Want to See

Mahatma Gandhi is quoted as having said "Be the change you want to see in the world."

[edit] Manage Change?

He did not say, manage change, start a change program, appoint and train change agents, research, study and write about change. He said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." Moreover, lest we forget, he was responsible for bringing about significant change in the world - the collapse of the British Empire and independence for his own country. He is therefore, someone worth paying attention to.

The preoccupation in most large organizations for many years has been to "do" change. The dominant question appears to be "how to respond to and manage change?" The perspective, which is mostly held as fact, is that change is happening faster than ever before and there is more off it. In an effort to respond to change hundreds of millions of dollars have been, and are being, spent on change management programs.

Researchers, scholars and consultants - and even lay commentators - have created a vast collection of theories, explanatory principles, models and processes to 'deal with' change. Among the perspectives from all this study and practice is that most change programs don't work and, we are not much better at managing change than we have ever been.

My perspective is that the very fact of being focused on "managing change", has us set up for disappointment at best and wasted effort and resources for sure.

[edit] Articulate, then Forward the Design Purpose of the Organization

On the occasions when a prospective client has invited my firm to help them manage their proposed change program we always decline. We invite them instead, to consider a completely different 'set of concerns' around which to organize themselves and their organizations. After all, "managing change" is seldom, if ever, the design purpose of a business enterprise.

Far better to spend time thoughtfully articulating the 'design purpose' of the enterprise and the 'market-altering' future the leaders of the enterprise are committed to bring into existence. We don't reward leaders for what was going to happen anyway, or even, for responding well to the unexpected moves of competitors or the frequent changes in the market.

Leaders are the architects of their enterprises. The most successful leaders are also the architects of their industry and that part of society their industry affects. The focus of such leaders is on creating a particular future - a future that is not a mere extension of the past. A future that requires, new thinking, new organizing principles, new organizing models and new practices and new behaviors. In this paradigm, the future "pulls" the present to it. In the language of complexity science, it is an "attractor" for behavior in the present. It allows for a far higher level of "self-organization" than could be possible in a "managed" organization.

While change is necessary to realize the new future, it is not the focus of attention. The focus is market-altering results - change is a necessary means, not a desired end.

[edit] Questions Worth Engaging In

The questions that are worth engaging in for "future based leaders" are:

• How to formulate and implement strategies to realize a future that is not yet. A future that by definition appears to all logical analysis, "infeasible" given past performance?
• How to enroll and engage their various stakeholders in "taking on" the infeasible?
• What do day-to-day work practices look like in an organization that is committed to realizing an "infeasible" future?
• How to design the organizational architecture; systems, processes, procedure and protocols, in an organization that is committed to realizing "infeasible" outcomes.

[edit] Outcome versus Process

Gandhi caused lots of change. His focus however, was on outcomes more than process. Process was always "in the service of" outcomes and seldom, if ever, on process as on outcome in itself. I say that the preoccupation with "change" and "change management" as ends in themselves is part of why change efforts fail. Paradoxical as it sounds, much of the change that organizations want to see in the way they work and behave they cannot get by focusing on the way they work and behave. However, focusing on a future that requires a particular way of working and behaving - that is a different ball game.

Peter Roche is a founder and CEO of The London Perret Roche Group LLC, a management consulting firm dedicated to the development of extraordinary leadership and the systemic transformation of global enterprises.