Organizational Change Tensions
How Creativity Can Emerge from Conflict
Productive Paradoxes in Leading Change
• Visible vs Invisible• Planned vs Emergent• Efficiency vs Effectiveness• Episodic change vs Continuous changing• Stability vs Turbulence• Incremental vs Revolutionary• Partial vs Holistic• Consulting vs Commanding• Changing Processes vs Changing People• Pain vs Progress• Requirement for Change vs Readiness to Change• Certainty vs Uncertainty
PARADOX
• When two properties that are in tension are both :– A large shrimp– A loose knot– An anticipated coincidence
• A paradox is an opportunity to imagine how two “apparently” contradictory ideas can be “united” in ways that provide both unusual insights and creative initiatives.
• The Chinese symbol for crisis is made up of two words. They are pronounced “wei ji” wei means “danger or peril” and ji means "opportunity or crucial point.“ So “wei + ji” equals danger + opportunity.
MA
YB
E
NO YES
NO YES
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Visible vs Invisible
• Organizational change often involves employing visible resources and actions to alter invisible attributes (motivation, desire for excellence, innovative ideas).
• Often that which is visible receives greater attention than it deserves while that which is invisible receives less attention than it deserves.
• Sometimes invisible results may be more profound than visible results.
• Organization change models seek to make the invisible, visible by hypothesizing how the invisible may work.
More Important
Less Important
Visible
Invisible
Input Process Output
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Planned vs Emergent
• Organizational change ALWAYS involves two stages: the anticipated outcomes + planned interventions AND the unanticipated outcomes + the unplanned interventions.
• Effective change requires both the power of intellect in planning change initiatives and the power of intuition in responding to change responses.
• “First stage” emergent outcomes may be negative – a key decision is whether to continue or to change our course of action – success can sometimes initially look like failure.
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Efficiency vs Effectiveness
• Organizational change wrestles with the
need to both achieve goals AND to do so
with the appropriate economy – almost
always there are some degrees of tradeoff.• Change management needs to take a “long”
view – the most efficient way to accomplish
something in the short run may create
results that make achieving effectiveness in
the long run more difficult.• Because “efficiency” involves many internally
controllable factors, while effectiveness
involves many externally uncontrollable
factors, organizations sometimes focus on
efficiency at the expense of effectiveness .
Effective Ineffective
Efficient Celebrate Investigate
Inefficient Investigate
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Episodic vs Continuous
• Organizational change involves
both focused targeted change
and change that helps increase
an organization’s capacity to
continuously adapt.• Organizations are always
changing – the issue is will
those changes be purposeful or
accidental and desired or
undesired.
Desirable outcomes
Undesirable outcomes
Purposeful change Celebrate Recalibrate
Accidental change Investigate
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Stability vs Turbulence
• Organizations and the people in them
essentially seek the security of stability –
through enforced rules and established
procedures organizations seek to provide the
predictability that both internal and external
stakeholders want.• For both people and their organizations to
thrive, they must be open to the very
turbulence that is both unpleasant and
resisted.• Balancing the desire for stability and the need
for change that causes turbulence requires
leadership that is both sensitive and insistent.
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Incremental vs Revolutionary
• Organizational change
involves both small, serial
changes and large impact
changes – there are
advantages and
disadvantages with both
evolutionary and revolutionary
changes.• The timing and force factors
are key variables change
leaders must carefully
recognize and diagnose.
Evolutionary change
Revolutionary change
Advantages
Disadvantages
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Partial vs Holistic
• Change managers should carefully
consider the breadth and depth of their
planned organizational changes. Both
partial changes of targeted processes
AND whole changes of entire systems
have their advantages and disadvantages.• There are some organizational conditions
when partial changes are the only
reasonable course of action due to various
individual, interpersonal and institutional
barriers. Even so, partial changes should
be conducted with the longer run goal of
changing the entire system if needed.
Partial change
Holistic change
Advantages
Disadvantages
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Consulting vs Commanding
• Change managers in many organizations
must play both the role of working WITH
(consulting) and working OVER
(commanding). Time and circumstances may
call for different roles at different stages in
the change process.• Commanding does not have to me “shoving
people around.” Commanding means to
clarify objectives, to make decisions, to
allocate resources.• Consulting means to invite people to think
through the changes that need to be made
and how they may be made in the best way.
Consulting takes time and energy but may
well increase commitment and
communication.
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Changing processes vs Changing people
• Process changes and people changes are always
interrelated. Changes in the WAY we do things
always impacts WHO does those things. And, of
course, those changes are not necessarily all
positive. Even apparently necessary process
changes may be hindered by misperceptions and
miscommunication.• It is easier to change processes than to change
people – the former deals with the logic of how
something is done, while the latter impacts
emotions and relationships.• The way we change processes (command vs
consulting, timing, resource provision) will impact
the receptiveness of people to the change.
PP
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Pain vs Progress
• The initial steps of any change may be very
painful– Individuals may be pressured and uncertain– Relationships may be strained or broken– Institutional momentum and inertia may result in
conflict and mistrust
• Effective change managers deal with the
inevitable pain of progress by admitting the
reality of the pain while pointing to the
eventual benefits of the progress.• Change managers cause pain in order to
bring about progress. The absence of pain is
not inherently beneficial nor is the presence
of pain inherently harmful.
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Requirement for change vs Readiness for change
• Change managers must often encourage
organizational members to change before
they are ready to change – that is the
need for change may not coincide with
the desire to change or the perceived
necessity to make that change.• Change leadership involves creating a
sense of urgency – a felt need to change.• It may take some time to create within an
organization both the capability to change
and the commitment to that change.
Productive Paradoxes in Change: Certainty vs Uncertainty
• Certainty and uncertainty arise from
multiple sources –– Availability of information– Familiarity with the issues– Previous success and failure– The unknowable and the unpredictable (black
swans)
• All change efforts involve degrees of
certainty and uncertainty - effective
change leaders seek to avoid the
arrogance of being overly certain and the
paralysis of being overly uncertain.
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