Can our fixed views of organisation escape the hungry teeth of ages?
“Nothing immobile can escape the hungry teeth of ages”.
Nothing that sets stability as its goal can avoid degradation over time. It is natural and inevitable.
We approach organisational change with a perspective or view about how our organisations work. Our view is based on what we have been taught or learned from others. And it is informed by our direct experience of how things have been done. Our views are important because they shape our choices, the methods we use and the information we value.
By most measures, we are in a period of rapid societal change that will likely impact how firms are organised profoundly. How we think about, understand and respond to these changes will be central to success.
Donald Schön identified the inherent stability of organisations when he observed that they exhibit a trait he referred to as ‘dynamic conservatism’ or the tendency of organisations to 'fight to stay the same'.
What does this inherent resistance to change suggest about our philosophy of change and its management?
For me, it assumes the organisation's value is embedded in an ideal view of form that persists through time. We protect this form, which, in Schön's view, we actively and aggressively fight to preserve. Our organisational past dominates our understanding of the future.
It suggests an approach to managing change where the final destination is known. We set off on the path to change with our gaze fixed on a predetermined future state. Most likely, it is a view that is not far removed from where we are today.
As the final destination is known, it assumes a purposeful and rational approach to planning and implementing change management—one where leaders and managers are not sculptors of original work but rather involved in restoring the original.
This outlook on change and its management may also go some way to explaining why it is believed that 70% of organisational change initiatives fail. We may be using the wrong measure, as the goal was not to change but to stay largely the same. The famous observation might be better phrased as 70% of organisational stability initiatives succeed.
Victor Segalen was a French naval doctor in the early 20th Century who, consistent with his time, is variously described as an ethnographer, archaeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art theorist, linguist and literary critic. Segalen observed that 'nothing immobile can escape the hungry teeth of ages'. It is a view that nothing that sets stability as its goal can avoid degradation over time. It is natural and inevitable.
This view might suggest that organisational change is more about yielding to time, deflecting where necessary, and letting go when required.
It suggests that organisational value resides in its constituent parts—its base components. It is these parts that are organised to take the required shape.
It suggests a view where the future form of the organisation inhabits the people because the focus is on how people store and share knowledge and their latent potential for action. It is immediate, fluid and responsive, not fixed and structural.
It argues for an organisation not clogged and inhibited by the past embedded in the culture. It suggests that a function of leading change is to help the organisation to forget as much as to learn.
Effectively responding to change requires leaders and managers to combine and re-combine information, knowledge and practice to make sense of an environment that is defined by uncertainty. The lens through which we view the world around us shapes our actions. So, our philosophy of change is more important than the tools we have in our change management toolbox.
Today, our views on change and change management methods are grounded in a strategic and rational view of the world. They are founded on a drive for coherence and stability. We seek alignment through incremental change. We construct a final destination in much the same way a finish line is a destination for a sprinter. This approach can work to narrow our choices early, leaving little room for adaptation and emergence later.
Should our rational approach to change and change management be corrected? No. However, it doesn't lead to change as much as it drives toward a different form of the same. It dominates our perspective on change and limits the tools that are available to us, and that is a problem. The dominance of the rational approach may be a problem because it closes out other possibilities and stifles innovation.
The aim here is not to provide the answer but to explore the question. If we are in a period of rapid and disruptive change, then seeking to hold our ground against the hungry teeth of time by relying on techniques designed to maintain stability may not be our best response.
Time only runs in one direction.
[The views expressed here are the author’s and are not necessarily representative of those employing him, his family, or even those loosely acquainted with him.]
