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Fundamentals: Avoid Change Pathologies by Checking Your Foundations
Organizations engaged in continuous change paradoxically require a foundation of stability according to Tom Lawrence, Bruno Dyck, Sally Maitlis and Michael Mauws*. Managing continuous change is not the same as managing a project or change program - it is about developing a capacity which can deal with environmental shifts, new competitors and disruptive technologies.
They argue that organizations must provide the necessary conditions to develop four roles - evangelist, autocrat, architect and educators - who act as change champions (for an overview see We are the champions!). Getting this wrong leads to certain organizational pathologies - creativity without learning, Institutionalization without creativity, ideas without implementation and change without strategy.
Why? This is because the underlying structure of change consists of two key balancing points. One that falls between individuals and systems as instruments of change and the other between cognition and behavior as the target of change. Imbalances at these points lead to problems. Balancing individuals and systems is tricky. Your organization may put great emphasis on individuals and encourage the development of ideas.
However, the danger is that these ideas never really take off - investing in the systems to make them part of every day life simply doesn’t happen. Alternatively, your organization might have some fantastic systems - practices that may have even won awards - but these same systems may stifle individuals from challenging the status quo.
Combined with this balancing act is the need to focus on balancing thinking or doing. You may spend considerable time making sure your organization knows core values and beliefs - but then fail to demonstrate how these concepts are translated into action. Or maybe your organization is great at action - every day the attitude is one of “just do it” - but the danger that all the energy is expended in different directions with little sense of what’s important.
However daunting it may sound it is possible to avoid these problems. Diagnosing where your organization struggles when managing continuous change could unlock the change cycle. A good starting point might be to recognize whether your organization has the right balance of people - evangelists, autocrats, architects and educators. Developing all four types of change champions will be a healthy investment.
* For a fuller account read: The Underlying Structure of Continuous Change published in the MIT Sloan Management Review (Summer 2006, Vol. 47, 4)
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Tom Lawrence, our editor, is the Weyerhaeuser Professor of Change Management at SFU.Read Tom's Posts
Graham Dover is a Doctoral student in the Business Faculty at SFU. Read Graham's Posts