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.