Why is change so difficult to

achieve in higher education

settings?

Sue Dopson

Why is change so difficult to

achieve in higher education

settings?

Professor Sue Dopson, Saïd Business School

Tuesday 12 April 2016

Business Process Re-engineering

Continuous Improvement/Learning Organization

Empowerment

Workout

Visioning

Cycle Time/Speed

Benchmarking

One Minute Managing

Corporate Culture

Intrapreneuring

Just in Time/Kanban

Matrix

MBWA

Portfolio Management

Restructuring/Delayering

“Excellence”

Quality Circles/TQM

Wellness

Decentralisation

Value Chain

‘Theory Z’

Management by Objectives

Conglomeration

T-Group Training

‘Theory Z’

Brainstorming

Theory X and Theory Y

Satisfiers/Dissatisfiers

Managerial Grid

Decision Trees

1950 1960 1970 1980 1995 1990

Self Managing Teams

Core Competencies

Horizontal Organizations

Zero Base Budgeting

Strategic Business Units

Diversification

Experience Curve

Influe

nce In

dex

Richard Pascale

Change as an annual event

The Problem of Change

Ebbs, Flows and Residual Impact of Business

Fads, 1950 - 1995

Top ten critical change issues

1. An accepted need to change

2. A viable vision/alternative state

3. Change agents in place

4. Sponsorship from above

5. Realistic scale & pace of change

6. An integrated transition programme

7. A symbolic end to the status quo

8. A plan for likely resistance

9. Constant advocacy

10.A locally-owned benefits plan

The Problem of Change

Solving what kind of problem?

Sue Dopson

What would you do?

Thematic Clusters

Media

Social

Psychological

Economic

Food

Activity

Infrastructure

Developmental

Biological

Medical

Three Types of Problems

Critical problem - command/control:

Just do it (it doesn’t matter what you think)

Tame problem - management/technical:

Déjà vu (You’ve seen it before; you know what to do)

Wicked problem - leadership/adaptive:

Vu jàdé (You’ve never seen the problem before; you

need to get a collective view on what to do about it)

Critical Problems

Leadership Response: Command

Decisive action to remove the problem

Portrayed as self-evident crisis

General uncertainty; commander provides “answer”

No time for discussion or dissent

Coercion legitimized as necessary for public good

Readily associated with command

Tame Problems

Leadership Response: Management

Reducing complexity to solve the problem

Problem as a puzzle

• Complicated but unilinear solution

• Management can (and has) previously solved similar problems

• Manager’s role is to engage appropriate processes to solve problem

Examples: Solution

1. Heart surgery, complicated but achievable process

2. Mobile technology for farmers

3. Opening a new school

Heifetz: Technical leadership

Wicked Problems

Leadership Response: ambiguous mix of command &

management

Strategic issue to be addressed over long term

• Wicked problems are ambiguous and unique to the situation.

• It is impossible to write a well-defined problem statement – they can be

a symptom of another problem, for example.

• Choosing a solution to a wicked problem is a matter of judgment.

• Solutions to wicked problems generate unexpected consequences

which sometimes cannot be undone.

• Wicked problems do not have an exhaustive set of potential solutions.

• Wicked problems involve many stakeholders, who all have different

ideas about the problem, its causes, and solutions.

• Problem-solvers dealing with a wicked issue are held liable for the

consequences of any actions.

Flight 1549

3.24 pm cleared take-off from

La Guardia, climbing to

cleared altitude

1.25 seconds later,

double engine failure

54 seconds later climbing

through 3,200 ft, hit a flock

of Canada geese

Checklist to shut down

engines, establish a glide

and return to La Guardia

Where to ditch? La Guardia? X

Teterboro? X

Hudson River?

Checklist is from 35,000

ft not 3,200 ft!

Descending at 18ft per second, 3

minutes until impact…30 seconds to

decide what to do.

3.31 pm, 6-

minute flight

had ended

CRITICAL

TAME WICKED

CRITICAL

WICKED

Wicked Problems, Dumb Solutions

National Health Service… National Illness Service?

• 811,000 UK residents hospitalized from alcohol in 2008;

cost £2.7bn

• 96% of spending on treating illness

• Only 4% on keeping people well

Increasing

uncertainty about

solution to problem

TAME

WICKED

CRITICAL

COMMAND:

Provide Answer

MANAGE

Organize Process

LEAD:

Ask Questions

Increasing

requirement

for

collaborative

compliance/

resolution

Leadership Styles

Long-term development

of people

“This is where

we’re going & why”

“Watch me...

this is how you do it.”

Pace-Setting

Directing

Command

and Control

Visionary Coaching

Participative Affiliative “What do you

think?”

People first, task second

LEADERSHIP

STYLES

Schein’s three levels of culture

Visible but often

undecipherable

Greater level of

awareness

Taken for granted

invisible

Adapted from Organizational Culture and Leadership (p.14) by E.H. Schein.

Copyright 1985 Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, San Francisco.

Artifacts

Values

Assumptions

BAHR550-7 Culture

Espoused Values

Stories &

Myths

Symbols

Power

Structures

Control

Systems

Organizational

Structures

Rituals &

Routines

Johnson, 1988

The

Paradigm

Cultural Web

Old University

Dept of Health

NHS Science Labs

Genetics Prof

Epidemiology Prof

Social Science Institute

Ethics Prof

Genetics Prof

Pathology Prof

Lab Director

Cardiology Prof

Dept of Trade

& Industry

Genetics Prof

Research Institute

Genetics Prof

Science Medicine Social science Management / policy

Other GKPs

Lab Director

Civil servant

Health Secretary

Civil servant

Senior civil servant

Senior civil servant

OGKP (Conception: 2001)

Community Affiliations

Community Institutional Affiliation Epistemic Affiliation

Medical Scientists University Medicine

NHS Medical Scientists NHS Hospital Medicine

Research Scientists University Biomedicine

NHS Scientists NHS Labs Biomedicine

Social Scientists University Social Science

Policy Community DH (& various) Policy (various)

Commissioning NHS PCT Management

OGKP (end 2007)

Old University

DoH

NHS Science Labs

Network Director

Genetics Prof

Genetics Prof (PI WP2) Social Science

Institute

Prof Ethics

Genetics Prof

Pathology Prof

Lab Director Lab Director

Cardiology Prof (PI WP1)

Genetics Prof (OGKP Chair)

Commissioners

(SHA)

DTI

AGGR

Research Inst

Scientist (New PI WP3) Scientist

Genetics Prof (Old PI WP3)

Other University

Consultant Geneticist

Economist

Business

School

Commissioner

GIG - Patients

Innovation Unit

VCs

Primary Care

Sociologist

Misunder-

standing Other GKPs

Other Labs

Lawyer

Science Medicine Social science Management / policy

Confli

ct

Civil Servant

Executive Committee in bold GKP Supervisory Board underlined

Consultant

Geneticist

Epistemic Clash Research vs. NHS Labs

“The way we work in the research lab is try & get everything as fast as possible because it’s a competitive world … [we] need … visible productivity… to scrape over the surface for the big prize…The clinical genetics lab is incredibly compulsive & obsessive… do everything in duplicate & never get that wrong. That’s very reassuring, but the problem is that if you are compulsive & obsessive, it just takes too long.” Medical Scientist

“They [NHS scientists] feel they are providing a service & being careful & we [research scientists] are feckless people who wander in at 11 o’clock & go home at three & look for glory.” Research Scientist

NHS Labs reluctant to share information due to concerns about competition with other Labs

Epistemic Clash Science vs. Social Science

• Economist able to communicate with scientists (shared quantitative epistemology) & helped to prove SCD test as cost-effective (producing further funding)

• Sociologist’s work weird & of no benefit

• “Our world is very black & white so when a sociologist talks to me about barriers in networks it does not mean much to me.” Research Scientist

• “These weird sort of sociology people… we were just providing material for them to write interesting papers.” NHS Scientist

Change would be easy if not for resistance

Ignorance

Comparison

Disbelief

Personal Loss

Inadequacy

Anxiety

Power Loss

Contamination

Inhibition

Mistrust

Alienation

Exhaustion

Success

Failure to understand problem

Solution disliked, thinks alternative better

Feeling that the solution will not work

Unacceptable personal costs; investments in present

Insufficient rewards from change

Afraid of not coping in new situation

Erosion of influence/control

Distaste of new values/practices

Low willingness to change

Disquiet about motives for change

Low shared values/high alternative interests

Cannot face further changes at present

Lack of perceived need

5 Strategies for Change

Education

Incentives

Participation

Coersion

Experts

What to do: be flexible

Try a number of solutions:

• iterate

• recalibrate

• iterate

• recalibrate

What to do: small wins

“Some problems appear so large people give up. Go for

small wins.”

Karl Weick, Small Wins

What to do: stand on the balcony

What to do: Bricolage

Making creative and resourceful use of whatever materials

are at hand, regardless of their original purpose

Sir Geoffrey Vickers

Background

(a) Victoria Cross, Classics at Oxford, City Solicitor, Director of Economic Intelligence, Board of National Coal Board (800,000 employees)

(b) Para-academic, prolific writer, Visiting Professor at Lancaster University, aged 85

Approach ‘I have spent my life in practising the law and helping to administer

public and private affairs; and I have thus had opportunity to observe and take part in the making of policy. The more I have seen of this, the more insistent has been the challenge to understand it both as a mental activity and as a social process, for it seems strange and dangerous that something so familiar and apparently important should remain so obscure. My enquiry into it has led me further than I expected. I have had to question sciences in which I am not professionally qualified and sometimes to supply my own answers, when theirs seems so ambiguous, inconsistent or absent. I present the result with humility but without apology. Even the dogs may eat of the crumbs which fall from the rich man’s table; and in these days, when the rich in knowledge eat such specialized food at such separate tables, only the dogs have a chance of a balanced diet’.

Reflections