The Change Blog

Your organisation is best modelled as a system to help identify the value adding flows.

But it is not a system in the sense of a technical or IT system. So the management of it must be different…

Managing a technical system relies on deterministic thinking, cause and effect.

Managing a system that contain people must allow for development, human development. Leave that out and you will model your people as mere resources, packets of competence, to be moved around as you would a piece of machinery.

Adopt carefully the ideas produced by the thinking of manufacturing…

No! I say not!

The idea of managing change comes from a mechanical / IT perspective. That is, you make a plan that involves changing something, adding to it or removing part of it, and then you “manage the change”, which is no more than managing the project.

When it comes to organisational change, the “things” are people. And people don’t particularly enjoying being added to or having bits removed - or being removed themselves from the organisation…

People need development, otherwise they stagnate. And that means that any change needs to be brokered.

Thoughts?

I think not!

It seems to me that much change is undertaken simply to give the impression of progress.

You know, “if we’re seen to be doing something then we must be taking action”.

Trouble is, the action taken disrupts people’s lives: jobs are lost, instability is introduced into the organisation, people start looking out for themselves, customer service suffers. And another restructuring takes place…

It reminds me of the quote attributed to Petronius.

“We trained hard … but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”