Improvement Leaders Collaboratives

Residential Module

Organisational paradigms

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Understanding organisations

Exploring organisations, change and OD (organisation development)

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‘Change: you do not have to do this. Survival is not compulsory!’

W Edwards Deming

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How do you think about organisations?

Organisations are like…

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Mechanical

Complex

Social (organic)

3 organisational paradigms

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Predictable and planned: the use of project charts, documents, etc.

How does change happen in a mechanical system?

Cause and effect: we can predict what will happen next

Change happens within the organisational systems

Hierarchies are important to get things done (power is important)

Change managers need to be organised

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Networking is important

How does change happen in a social system?

Relationships are key to getting things done

Change happens within the communities that exist both inside and outside the organisation

Change managers need to be connected

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Change is unpredictable

How does change happen in a complex system?

Change in one part of the system will effect every other part

Change happens within every part of the system (micro and macro)

Change managers need to be comfortable with uncertainity

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Instead of slow moving flows, leaders find themselves hurtling down rapids. White Water Leadership is the new corporate necessity…to learn to move towards uncertainty rather than away from it

White, Hodgson and Crainer: The Future of Leadership –a White Water Revolution, 1996

White Water Leadership

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Complexity – what is it?

• Complexity does not mean complicated

• Complex systems are created from the interplay between many parts

• The more parts, the more complex

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Chaos Theory

• Chaos theory helps us understand the patterns that are formed when complex system operate

• First noticed in 1960 by Edward Lorenz when he was creating whether simulation modeling

• He noticed that small changes in a system can create massive changes in outcome

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Chaos Theory and the Strange Attractor

• At the heart of chaos theory sits the strange attractor

• The strange attractor is a simple set of rules that, if followed by the system, will create patterns of behaviour (fractals)

• Fractals allow us to predict a direction of travel (to a degree), but not the individual behaviour of any part of the system

• Changing these rules will create massive changes to a system

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Leadership, Complexity and Chaos

• If we can understand the organisational drivers, (the strange attractors), then we can make choices about what we want to change and how it might impact the system

• Every interaction, (conversation/behaviour), creates a potential change, (or maintains the status quo)

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Noticing complexity and chaos in your own organisations

• Where do you notice patterns of behaviour in your own organisation that are driven by simple rules?

• Can you identify the rules?

• What would it personally take to create change in these situations?

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Leadership, Complexity and Chaos(References)

• http://fractalfoundation.org/resources/what-is-chaos-theory/

• http://www.abarim-publications.com/ChaosTheoryIntroduction.html#.VTgCj4dAyCt

• Margaret WheatleyLeadership and the New Science