IS 788 [Process] Change Management

IS 788[Process] Change Management • Lecture: Change management: People issues in BPR (1 of 3) • Presentation and Discussion - Telecom Eireann IS 788 13.1

An Environment of Change • It’s not just the process changes we design – change is everywhere in today’s organization and the pace rapid. (cf. Tom Peters, “Thriving on Chaos”) • “We can expect more change to occur in our lifetimes than has occurred since the beginning of civilization over ten thousand years ago.” IS 788 13.1

Perpetual ‘white water’ (as in rapids) • Today's organizational environment presents “ a continual succession of surprising, novel, ill structured and messy events, which force themselves on a managers attention and which, as an ongoing kind of disruptive event, cannot be planned out of existence”. • How does anything get done in such circumstances (sometimes referred to as hyper-change)? IS 788 13.1

Olson and Eoyang’s approach: • The conceptual foundation is that of complex adaptive systems (CAS). • CAS are hierarchical - organizations are CAS and so are the many groups and teams that make up an organization. • They draw heavily from current studies in organizational and group behavior IS 788 13.1

Complex adaptive systems • Exhibit characteristics of independent organisms • The CAS approach depends much less than past organizational guidance paradigms on leadership (baaa) or management, coercive or benevolent. • It is relatively new but has the power to explain many phenomena that elude older paradigms (like how things really get done, cf. the example O&E, p. xxiii and why skunk works are so productive) IS 788 13.1

CAS attributes • Order emerges – it does not have to be imposed • The system has an irreversible history – that is, you can’t hit ‘rewind’ and take the system back to a prior state. Once it has experienced an event it is never the same. • CAS sometimes exhibit chaotic behavior (cf. Prigigogine) When operating ‘far from equilibrium’ small disturbance in CAS can lead to radical behavioral change. IS 788 13.1

CAS attributes • The fundamental units of a CAS are agents. Agents are semi-autonomous and self-maximizing. • This implies that it is imperative to ‘guide change’ bottom up with an initial stress on the individual actors. • This is in marked contrast to ‘managing change’ from a top-down, strategic level. IS 788 13.1

Take the test! • A measurement of world view IS 788 13.1

Test results: • A measurement of world view • Do you tend to see patterns and structure? • The structured approach is OK if “things are basically on track” but need an increased level of control. • Or, do you tend to see the dynamics (that can ultimately give rise to stable patterns)? IS 788 13.1

The CAS approachMachine vs. Organism • Machine (Newtonian) CAS Few variables Many variables Direction designed Direction emerges Leaders are experts Leaders facilitate Efficiency, reliability Effectiveness, adapt- ability to environment Direct people Empower people Uni-directional Reciprocal causality causality IS 788 13.1

The Machine Paradigm works: • When systems are closed (to the environment) • When things change slowly • Things are predictable • Organizational units are independent • ‘Machine’ change methods are: • Rational, top down, expert driven, planned • But 75% of such initiatives fail IS 788 13.1

The Machine paradigm • Not only assumes rigidity, it (sometimes subconsciously) promotes it • “Best practices” are sought and then enforced, frequently by embedding them in software • Contrast with Japanese continuous improvement paradigms (Toyota) IS 788 13.1

CAS organizations reinvent themselves on a daily basis through continuous, small changes. The change process is iterative and reciprocal. Agents influence behavior patterns and are themselves influenced by the new behaviors. IS 788 13.1

Conditions for self-organization • Three factors influence the placement, shape and power of the patterns that emerge in CAS • the CONTAINER – the CAS boundary • Agent DIFFERENCES • TRANSFORMING EXCHANGES (communication generalized and abstracted) IS 788 13.1

Constraints, binding agents into a unit Any or all of these are potentially alterable in the change ‘guidance’ plan IS 788 13.1

Significant differences • Occur between agents in a CAS • They determine roles and shape interactive behaviors • When changed inadvertently, the effects are frequently negative – as when automating a process minimizes the expertise differences between, say, junior and senior accounting personnel. IS 788 13.1

Transforming exchanges • Communications between CAS agents • OR – between the environment and the CAS • OR between other CAS in the wider organizational environment • Includes generalized resource flows such as money or information IS 788 13.1

The change intervention • No factor is independent. They are sometimes radically interdependent. • Thus, the long term prediction of the results of an intervention is extremely difficult • The change agent: • Assesses the three factors • Designs an ‘intervention’ • Observes to determine the next intervention IS 788 13.1

How does the CAS approach effect change planning? (Especially # 7) IS 788 13.1

The assessment process • All three self-organization factors can be over-constrained or under-constrained. • Overconstrained organizations: • suppress information (the mushroom effect) • ignore differences (force or only see similarities) • are rule-bound, constraining and ignoring novelty IS 788 13.1

Underconstrained organizations: • are unfocused • can’t identify relevant information • are inefficient and passive • are fragmented • Neither state is conducive to self-organization (adaptiveness) IS 788 13.1

During assessment each condition can be evaluated separately. IS 788 13.1

Easiest first • After assessment it is frequently obvious which of the three factors can be most easily altered. • Make the intervention • Observe how the other conditions shift as the system self-organizes • Note that this is a learning (trial and error) process, abhorrent by nature to many ‘machine paradigm’ managers IS 788 13.1

IS 788 [Process] Change Management