So I've been reading a lot of Quinn's (2008) Deep Change book because I am working on my leadership philosophy paper and his ideas are the ones I resonate with the most deeply. I've been reflecting on some of his ideas. Quinn tells a story that I would like to discuss:
Some years ago, I was invited to a meeting of senior officers at one of the military academies. The officer in charge talked at length about the moral decay in society. There seemed to be no focus to his discussion, and I could not figure out what problem was actually concerning these men. Eventually it was revealed that some of the students at the academy were cheating on their exams. The cadets were not following the academy's honor system. The officers' explanation for the cadets' behavior was corruption in society. They felt that by the time an eighteen-year-old arrived at the academy it was too late; the cadet was irredeemable.
After a long discussion about the corruption in society, I attempted to turn the topic around. I asked if anyone in the room had served in Vietnam. Most had. I asked if any of them had participated in the phenomenon known as the body count. (This was a measurement system used to determine how American forces were performing in the war. At the end of each battle, the number of enemy dead were counted, and the number was reported. As this process unfolded, vastly exaggerated numbers were routinely reported.)
From the atmosphere of discomfort in the room, it was clear that some had participated. Why, I asked, would an officer and a gentleman man (as opposed to an uncommissioned cadet) engage in such behavior? Answering my own question, I suggested that when an impossible objective is given to people in a large hierarchy and when it is accompanied by immense pressure to produce, the people in the organization will also experience growing pressure to engage in unethical behavior. An invisible form of corruption at the top, the exercise of authority without concern or demand without out support, results in a very visible form of corruption at the bottom.
I then suggested that perhaps the problem with the cadets did not take root "out there" in society. Maybe large numbers of students were cheating because the system demanded and taught them to cheat. Were the arrangement of classes, the design of assignments and workloads, and traditional military values like "cooperate and graduate" combining to teach, require, and reward cheating? Was the problem in the cadets alone, or was it in the relationship between the cadets and the authority figures who were condemning and externalizing the problem?
There was a long silence. Finally, the man in charge spoke. He turned to the man next to him and, as if I had never said a word, resumed the old discussion about the moral decay in society. For the rest of the day they ignored me-I simply did not exist.
When I read this story, I recognized myself in the author. This is exactly the sort of thing I would do. People are complaining. I see their hypocrisy. I point out said hypocrisy in a way that is almost impossible to refute, and people kind of hate me for it. My sister sometimes tries to make me see this as a character flaw. She says that God doesn't do this, that he is more diplomatic and gentle. She says that he woos us--not come crashing down with some ugly truth we are unable to face. I have a hard time accepting her perspective though. For one thing, Jesus wasn't very careful with people's feelings, especially regarding hypocrisy.
Of course I recognize the value of diplomacy. I think I am actually quite capable of being diplomatic. It's just that when I am being diplomatic, I am not being my most caring self. I am being passive and disengaged. It's kind of a brutal gift to have, though, this truth telling. People are much more likely to appreciate one if one has the gift of service. Maybe I should stop caring so much about how people react though. Quinn doesn't seem too concerned by the mental fallout that he left behind him. Is that loving? Where is the line between loving through telling the truth and loving through protecting someone ego? I'd be interested in your perspective.
Social Justice
Truth telling can be used in the service of social justice. Jesus did that. He called out the Pharisees for laying burdens on the people that they were unwilling to carry themselves. Quinn's conversation with the senior officers was also a challenge to the oppression and hypocrisy of leaders.
I think this is perhaps the place that I am the most called to use my gifting. I think in my context, the students are also villianized for the way that they respond to the academic culture. It is my job, at countless dining room tables, to be their advocate and defense attorney in front of teachers fresh from the States who are struggling with culture shock. I think my job is easier than Quinn's though. When people are surrounded by evidence that their paradigm isn't working, they are much more open to my kind of truth. Maybe that is yet another reason that I am grateful that God has put me where I am. It is easier to exercise my gift here, much easier than in our program at APU, for example. It's also harder to speak up in this way when the people concerned are in authority over me. That is really scary.
Friday, April 28, 2017
Monday, April 24, 2017
Medici Effect: Chapter 1
I have decided to jump around, now that I am no longer reading an anthology. Also, I need to write my Leading Change Philosophy Statement and exposing myself to a variety of ideas seems to be the way to get started. So this time around, I'm reading Johansson's Medici Effect.
Basically, Johansson says that in order to innovate, we must find the Intersection. This is the place where ideas from different fields converge and combine. In this place, creative, innovative ideas are born. The author begins by defining creativity and innovation, which I thought was very helpful. These words get thrown around a lot. Here in China, "innovation" is such a special word. It is kind of a Holy Grail for Chinese students, but it's been my observation that there's a lot of talk about how important it is and not much understanding of how to foster it.
Johansson also describes the difference between directional innovation and intersectional innovation. He points out that directional innovation is the more common kind. It is incremental and requires some mastery of a field in order to achieve. Beyond that, there is a lot of competition in that kind of innovation. By contrast, intersectional innovation does not require as much mastery in a field and it tends to happen in leaps and jumps, opening new fields to be explored, with a kind of serendipity.
Johansson writes with the kind of energy and optimism that I associate with a certain type of people--the kind of people who ignore obstacles and irritate people with other personalities in the process. I myself am cautiously optimistic. I feel like what he is describing is a very real phenomenon and that it is something that can be strategically pursued, but I don't think it is as straightforward as he is implying that it is in this first chapter. I may be judging him too quickly.
Here's the thing: I've always been one for the interdisciplinary approach. I changed my major seven times as an undergraduate because there were so many interesting things to learn and specializing made me bored. Despite this predilection to the Intersection, as Johansson describes it, I have not had any truly innovative breakthroughs in the way that he describes. I live at Sias because it is such a place, though, for the record.
I think his own explanation perfectly accounts for my own lack of innovation. He states that creativity is a matter of coming up with a new idea that others find valuable--and value is socially determined. I think I've come up with new ideas that others found valuable, but then they just co-opted them without necessarily acknowledging me as the source. My ideas may become "memes" (Have you ever encountered an idea that you came up with on your own spouted back to you a month or a year later by someone you never told it to? Who is to say whether it is my idea or someone else thought of it at the same time, but that happens to me all the time), but I certainly haven't created a new field or developed a following. That requires a certain kind of proprietary knowledge that I have not been able to lay claim to. Secondly, I've never been in much of a position to realize my ideas in a way that would count as "innovation." I think my classroom is the first of such opportunities, and my innovations are small and not recognized or copied by many people.
...So, I think there is more to really game-changing ideas than just "staying in the Intersection." I think there has to be some level of social capital, or one's ideas never really become a force of their own. They kind drip into the local culture and diffuse outward, creating small ripples of change, but nothing that could actually be measured. So, allowing that innovation is socially organized, I think it ought also to be acknowledged that the people who are fond of directional innovation just tend to be more socially organized, on the whole, than those who like to innovate intersectionally, and that gives them a huge advantage. It may seem like intersectional innovation has less competition, but it's merely a very different and more insidious kind of competition. It is the competition for attention and the competition for legitimacy, that intersectional innovation tends to lose.
Social Justice
And... that is where the social justice piece comes in. Having intersectional innovation that other people take seriously (and therefore counts as "creativity" by Johnasson's definition) is a privilege that not everyone has. That is a big part of my struggle. If you are not educated, if you are not an adult, if you are not a man, if you don't have money, if you don't have charm, if you don't speak the right language, no one listens to you, and it doesn't matter how wonderfully unique or useful your ideas might potentially be, you are a mad man shouting in the desert. Lots of books are written in the effort to make people who are not naturally creative, but who have money to buy books, be more creative. The sad part of it is that there are some many potentially creative people out there who no one will listen to because we've all been so thoroughly brainwashed by the system.
Ah well.
I also think there is a spiritual aspect to all of this. Maybe I will delve more into that another time.
Basically, Johansson says that in order to innovate, we must find the Intersection. This is the place where ideas from different fields converge and combine. In this place, creative, innovative ideas are born. The author begins by defining creativity and innovation, which I thought was very helpful. These words get thrown around a lot. Here in China, "innovation" is such a special word. It is kind of a Holy Grail for Chinese students, but it's been my observation that there's a lot of talk about how important it is and not much understanding of how to foster it.
Johansson also describes the difference between directional innovation and intersectional innovation. He points out that directional innovation is the more common kind. It is incremental and requires some mastery of a field in order to achieve. Beyond that, there is a lot of competition in that kind of innovation. By contrast, intersectional innovation does not require as much mastery in a field and it tends to happen in leaps and jumps, opening new fields to be explored, with a kind of serendipity.
Johansson writes with the kind of energy and optimism that I associate with a certain type of people--the kind of people who ignore obstacles and irritate people with other personalities in the process. I myself am cautiously optimistic. I feel like what he is describing is a very real phenomenon and that it is something that can be strategically pursued, but I don't think it is as straightforward as he is implying that it is in this first chapter. I may be judging him too quickly.
Here's the thing: I've always been one for the interdisciplinary approach. I changed my major seven times as an undergraduate because there were so many interesting things to learn and specializing made me bored. Despite this predilection to the Intersection, as Johansson describes it, I have not had any truly innovative breakthroughs in the way that he describes. I live at Sias because it is such a place, though, for the record.
I think his own explanation perfectly accounts for my own lack of innovation. He states that creativity is a matter of coming up with a new idea that others find valuable--and value is socially determined. I think I've come up with new ideas that others found valuable, but then they just co-opted them without necessarily acknowledging me as the source. My ideas may become "memes" (Have you ever encountered an idea that you came up with on your own spouted back to you a month or a year later by someone you never told it to? Who is to say whether it is my idea or someone else thought of it at the same time, but that happens to me all the time), but I certainly haven't created a new field or developed a following. That requires a certain kind of proprietary knowledge that I have not been able to lay claim to. Secondly, I've never been in much of a position to realize my ideas in a way that would count as "innovation." I think my classroom is the first of such opportunities, and my innovations are small and not recognized or copied by many people.
...So, I think there is more to really game-changing ideas than just "staying in the Intersection." I think there has to be some level of social capital, or one's ideas never really become a force of their own. They kind drip into the local culture and diffuse outward, creating small ripples of change, but nothing that could actually be measured. So, allowing that innovation is socially organized, I think it ought also to be acknowledged that the people who are fond of directional innovation just tend to be more socially organized, on the whole, than those who like to innovate intersectionally, and that gives them a huge advantage. It may seem like intersectional innovation has less competition, but it's merely a very different and more insidious kind of competition. It is the competition for attention and the competition for legitimacy, that intersectional innovation tends to lose.
Social Justice
And... that is where the social justice piece comes in. Having intersectional innovation that other people take seriously (and therefore counts as "creativity" by Johnasson's definition) is a privilege that not everyone has. That is a big part of my struggle. If you are not educated, if you are not an adult, if you are not a man, if you don't have money, if you don't have charm, if you don't speak the right language, no one listens to you, and it doesn't matter how wonderfully unique or useful your ideas might potentially be, you are a mad man shouting in the desert. Lots of books are written in the effort to make people who are not naturally creative, but who have money to buy books, be more creative. The sad part of it is that there are some many potentially creative people out there who no one will listen to because we've all been so thoroughly brainwashed by the system.
Ah well.
I also think there is a spiritual aspect to all of this. Maybe I will delve more into that another time.
Monday, April 17, 2017
Deep Change: Chapter 1
So I finished the Harvard Business Review articles and decided to move on to Quinn's Deep Change. Having only read the first chapter, I think I will like this book. Something that struck me rather forcibly about it is that Quinn is preaching Jesus' gospel without Jesus. He could have just as easily started his introduction with Jesus as he could have with Oscar Robertson. Basketball and racial equity are safer topics to allude to, I suppose. In one way that similarity is really amazing, because it shows the deep truth of what Jesus taught us. On the other hand, it's kind of sad because I don't believe that really truly deep change is accomplished by human effort. Ultimately, we have to allow God to change us.
I did highlight a lot of passages, for this first chapter, though, and I am going to copy some of them down. First one:
"We have always been embedded in a dilemma. We have always had to agonize over the choice between making deep change or accepting slow death."
This is the challenge Jesus gave us. God said in Deuteronomy, "I set before you life and death... Choose life." Some people really don't understand this concept, but it meshes well with what Quinn is saying, because the change God calls us to is also deep and agonizing. Quinn doesn't label this death as spiritual, but it might as well be.
"Our capacity to face uncertainty and function in times of stress and anxiety is linked with our self-confidence, and our level of confidence is linked with our sense of increasing integrity."
Quinn made this statement and I find it a bit mysterious. What is it about integrity that creates self-confidence? He doesn't really expand on this concept here, but I hope he does later in the book. This is an area that I'm wrestling with now. Where does my self-confidence come from? It is so easy to have false confidence. Again, from a Christian perspective, our only sure source of confidence is God, but He is big and mysterious. What can we really trust Him to do? If one doesn't have an almighty Father to place one's confidence in, what is the alternative?
There is an Indian movie called The 3 Idiots. It is a really interesting movie about educational culture and change in India that I recommend you watch sometime. The leader of change in the movie gets his confidence in kind of a hokey way, though. He says that when he was a child, the town watchman would cry out "All is well!" and everyone would feel safe, but one day they found out that the watchman was blind, yet through all those years, the town had felt safe because they believed the watchman when he said that all was well. The protagonist says, "Our hearts are easily scared, so we must always tell them, 'All is well.'" He models this behavior throughout the movie.
I can't quite buy that. Really? The courage for change comes from closing one's eyes, lying to oneself, and hoping for the best? And so I go back to this question of our source of confidence again. And I wonder how it relates to integrity. One, tentative idea in this regard is that we need to learn to value what God values. As we challenge the values we've absorbed from the world and replace them with God's values, we become more confident that God will protect our hearts. As the things that are the most important to Him become the most important to us, we have confidence that He will protect those things. I wonder if that is what Quinn means by integrity?
"The deep change effort distorts existing patterns of action and involves taking risks. Deep change means surrendering control."
Again, I wonder how it is possible to surrender control like this without knowing to whom one is surrendering the control...
Social Justice
"Facing an intense global economy, organizations and their members are having to reinvent themselves frequently. This is a top-down process. Pressure for change comes from the outside world, which forces the organization to reinvent itself. Organizational change then builds pressure for personal change. This sequence is assumed in nearly every discussion of organizational change strategy. The accuracy of this top-down model, however, blinds us to an equally accurate but seldom recognized model based on an opposing set of assumptions. It is a model of bottom-up change. It starts with an individual."
I really liked this comment because it reflects my reaction to many of the HBR articles. My intuitive idea is that change does not come from the top. Jesus is my model for change, the model that I think is truly sublime, if you will, and he didn't use John Kotter's eight steps. Jesus said, "Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it remain alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." He was referring to himself, of course, but he is our model in this way, and his model is bottom-up. His model begins by embracing "the least of these" and rejecting spiritual power structures that were not obedient to God--not actual governmental ones. I think this idea of seeds dying is echoed in the example that Quinn gives of Peck's reflections of a psychoanalyst:
"Of all the good and useful rules of psychotherapy that I have been taught, there are very few that I have not chosen to break at one time or another, not out of laziness and lack of discipline but rather in fear and trembling, because my patient's therapy seemed to require that, one way or another, I should step out of the safety of the prescribed analyst's role, be different and risk the unconventional. As I look back on every successful case I have had I can see that at some point or points in each case I had to lay myself on the line. The willingness of the therapist to suffer at such moments is perhaps the essence of therapy, and when perceived by the patient, as it usually is, it is always therapeutic."
Peck is reaffirming Jesus' words. "Unless a seed falls into the ground, it remains alone." God wants us to step away from the comfort of our religious rules to, not because of laziness or lack of self discipline but in fear and trembling because the situation and the people we have responsibility for require it. So often we want to break the rules for the former reasons rather than the latter, but it is our love for the "patient" that guides us.
I think this point is reiterated later by Quinn, but what really gives the concept power is the way Jesus modeled it. If one studies his life, one realizes how revolutionary he was--not in the way people expected, against the Roman government, but against the rules and regulations that even the righteous among them had come to accept. Jesus broke the boxes and suffered the risk needed to bring deep change to the world.
"Excellence, however, never lies within the boxes drawn in the past. To be excellent, the leaders have to step outside the safety net of the company's regulations, just as the therapist had to step outside the safety of the traditionally defined role. To bring deep change, people have to 'suffer' the risks. And to bring about deep change in others, people have to reinvent themselves."
At the end of the chapter, Quinn talks about people who have made deep change a habit. I would really like to learn more about the people because I think that this is such a difficult thing to do. I have experienced my share of deep change, I suppose, but I am still terrified of it. I have really been praying into this recently, that God would help me to challenge my sources of security that block me from being completely obedient to Him. Quinn says of this process, "After a while, terror turns to faith." I hope to get there, but I think it is one of those battles that one wins inches at a time. One might find that one has conquered the terror in one area only to turn and find it still reigning in another. However, the Scriptures do say, "The righteous man lives by faith."
I did highlight a lot of passages, for this first chapter, though, and I am going to copy some of them down. First one:
"We have always been embedded in a dilemma. We have always had to agonize over the choice between making deep change or accepting slow death."
This is the challenge Jesus gave us. God said in Deuteronomy, "I set before you life and death... Choose life." Some people really don't understand this concept, but it meshes well with what Quinn is saying, because the change God calls us to is also deep and agonizing. Quinn doesn't label this death as spiritual, but it might as well be.
"Our capacity to face uncertainty and function in times of stress and anxiety is linked with our self-confidence, and our level of confidence is linked with our sense of increasing integrity."
Quinn made this statement and I find it a bit mysterious. What is it about integrity that creates self-confidence? He doesn't really expand on this concept here, but I hope he does later in the book. This is an area that I'm wrestling with now. Where does my self-confidence come from? It is so easy to have false confidence. Again, from a Christian perspective, our only sure source of confidence is God, but He is big and mysterious. What can we really trust Him to do? If one doesn't have an almighty Father to place one's confidence in, what is the alternative?
There is an Indian movie called The 3 Idiots. It is a really interesting movie about educational culture and change in India that I recommend you watch sometime. The leader of change in the movie gets his confidence in kind of a hokey way, though. He says that when he was a child, the town watchman would cry out "All is well!" and everyone would feel safe, but one day they found out that the watchman was blind, yet through all those years, the town had felt safe because they believed the watchman when he said that all was well. The protagonist says, "Our hearts are easily scared, so we must always tell them, 'All is well.'" He models this behavior throughout the movie.
I can't quite buy that. Really? The courage for change comes from closing one's eyes, lying to oneself, and hoping for the best? And so I go back to this question of our source of confidence again. And I wonder how it relates to integrity. One, tentative idea in this regard is that we need to learn to value what God values. As we challenge the values we've absorbed from the world and replace them with God's values, we become more confident that God will protect our hearts. As the things that are the most important to Him become the most important to us, we have confidence that He will protect those things. I wonder if that is what Quinn means by integrity?
"The deep change effort distorts existing patterns of action and involves taking risks. Deep change means surrendering control."
Again, I wonder how it is possible to surrender control like this without knowing to whom one is surrendering the control...
Social Justice
"Facing an intense global economy, organizations and their members are having to reinvent themselves frequently. This is a top-down process. Pressure for change comes from the outside world, which forces the organization to reinvent itself. Organizational change then builds pressure for personal change. This sequence is assumed in nearly every discussion of organizational change strategy. The accuracy of this top-down model, however, blinds us to an equally accurate but seldom recognized model based on an opposing set of assumptions. It is a model of bottom-up change. It starts with an individual."
I really liked this comment because it reflects my reaction to many of the HBR articles. My intuitive idea is that change does not come from the top. Jesus is my model for change, the model that I think is truly sublime, if you will, and he didn't use John Kotter's eight steps. Jesus said, "Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it remain alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." He was referring to himself, of course, but he is our model in this way, and his model is bottom-up. His model begins by embracing "the least of these" and rejecting spiritual power structures that were not obedient to God--not actual governmental ones. I think this idea of seeds dying is echoed in the example that Quinn gives of Peck's reflections of a psychoanalyst:
"Of all the good and useful rules of psychotherapy that I have been taught, there are very few that I have not chosen to break at one time or another, not out of laziness and lack of discipline but rather in fear and trembling, because my patient's therapy seemed to require that, one way or another, I should step out of the safety of the prescribed analyst's role, be different and risk the unconventional. As I look back on every successful case I have had I can see that at some point or points in each case I had to lay myself on the line. The willingness of the therapist to suffer at such moments is perhaps the essence of therapy, and when perceived by the patient, as it usually is, it is always therapeutic."
Peck is reaffirming Jesus' words. "Unless a seed falls into the ground, it remains alone." God wants us to step away from the comfort of our religious rules to, not because of laziness or lack of self discipline but in fear and trembling because the situation and the people we have responsibility for require it. So often we want to break the rules for the former reasons rather than the latter, but it is our love for the "patient" that guides us.
I think this point is reiterated later by Quinn, but what really gives the concept power is the way Jesus modeled it. If one studies his life, one realizes how revolutionary he was--not in the way people expected, against the Roman government, but against the rules and regulations that even the righteous among them had come to accept. Jesus broke the boxes and suffered the risk needed to bring deep change to the world.
"Excellence, however, never lies within the boxes drawn in the past. To be excellent, the leaders have to step outside the safety net of the company's regulations, just as the therapist had to step outside the safety of the traditionally defined role. To bring deep change, people have to 'suffer' the risks. And to bring about deep change in others, people have to reinvent themselves."
At the end of the chapter, Quinn talks about people who have made deep change a habit. I would really like to learn more about the people because I think that this is such a difficult thing to do. I have experienced my share of deep change, I suppose, but I am still terrified of it. I have really been praying into this recently, that God would help me to challenge my sources of security that block me from being completely obedient to Him. Quinn says of this process, "After a while, terror turns to faith." I hope to get there, but I think it is one of those battles that one wins inches at a time. One might find that one has conquered the terror in one area only to turn and find it still reigning in another. However, the Scriptures do say, "The righteous man lives by faith."
Monday, April 10, 2017
HBR: Why Change Programs Don't Produce Change
I think this was my favorite article of this anthology, but that may just be because it is the last one. Beer, Elsenstat, and Spector argue against the top-down institution of "change programs" in favor of fostering a grass roots change. Some key elements of their idea include being task and production oriented (focusing on the question: what is the most effective way to accomplish objectives?) and leaning on the expertise of front-line people to answer that question. They say that upper management should examine their organization to see what departments are performing very well and then try to spread the change happening in that department to others in the organization.
I think these authors do the best job of any of the HBR authors in explaining the concept of utilizing the resources that are there in the company. It seems such a common approach to assume all that the lower levels can do is complain and all of the good ideas will come from consulting groups who have had about two months to learn about one's organization. In the change efforts that I have been a part of, I have found this attitude to be highly annoying. Even when upper management does ask for input in change initiatives, it's usually a matter of a meeting or a forum where the people who yell the loudest get heard and the management pick and choose what they want to actually listen to.
In the case of the conference center that I worked at during a change effort, they didn't ask the employees what they wanted. Strike that. They did ask us, and then they used our opinions as reasons to get rid of us. It was not a safe place to try to contribute. In the change effort at FHSU, the president asked all of us to share our concerns and then she ignored everything that my department had to say because she had decided that the business department had the only real potential for expansion. The business department, by the way, loved her and were very upset to see her go, but my department was made cynical and reluctant to participate in any other change effort.
There is a difference between asking employees for input and giving them ownership of a change effort. I think the giving of ownership is the greatest and least utilized kind of leadership out there. Managers don't know how to do it. They talk about it, sure. It's kind of a buzzword. But management generally doesn't really believe that their employees are as smart as they are, and in some instances probably even smarter. Again, that is a point of annoyance for me in this program here in China. Our top level of administration in the U.S. has no idea the kind of challenges we face, and those challenges are not easy to explain. They are not patient enough to listen to long, drawn-out explanations or (even better) expose themselves to the actual experience. Instead, they listen to whoever they know the best and talk with the most and make stupid wasteful choices for the program. I have mentioned this before, so I'll leave it at that.
Here's an interesting question: what if FHSU administration recognized the fact that the China program and their virtual college are actually the more successful models in their organization and used that fact as impetus to change their on-campus programs instead of just pouring money gained from the fiscally healthy programs into that financial sinkhole? As long as they continue to favor the Kansas campus, they are creating a push for our program to become modeled after that program, a model which is demonstrably unsustainable because it must be sustained through the exploitation of less privileged students. I know, I know. The collegiate ideal is at stake. Would FHSU even be a real college without its Student Union and state-of-the-art laboratories? We make do without them over here in China, but the would probably never survive in the U.S.
Social Justice
I think this article does the best job of any at presenting a really egalitarian approach to change that still maintains some structure. Sadly it just scrapes the surface and apparently it isn't that popular of a model because the article was first published in 1990 and none of the newer articles build off of it. Is is possible that giving away power is just not that popular of a thing to do?
People argue about "rights" and "equality" but the real bottom layer of any organization still tends to get crushed, even sometimes by the social justice advocates in defense of their liberal arts education ideals. Everyone must have certain privileges, and if it turns out that the system can't afford to deliver those privileges to everyone, we'll just find a way to get them for "our people," and screw the rest of them. Yeah, that's a little out of left field, I guess, but it is a thought I have about this faculty union in Kansas that insists on a "fair working wage" and all the rest the rest of it, which just means my students don't get the full benefit of their tuition because the money is needed to feed already wealthy programs and faculty in Kansas.
I think these authors do the best job of any of the HBR authors in explaining the concept of utilizing the resources that are there in the company. It seems such a common approach to assume all that the lower levels can do is complain and all of the good ideas will come from consulting groups who have had about two months to learn about one's organization. In the change efforts that I have been a part of, I have found this attitude to be highly annoying. Even when upper management does ask for input in change initiatives, it's usually a matter of a meeting or a forum where the people who yell the loudest get heard and the management pick and choose what they want to actually listen to.
In the case of the conference center that I worked at during a change effort, they didn't ask the employees what they wanted. Strike that. They did ask us, and then they used our opinions as reasons to get rid of us. It was not a safe place to try to contribute. In the change effort at FHSU, the president asked all of us to share our concerns and then she ignored everything that my department had to say because she had decided that the business department had the only real potential for expansion. The business department, by the way, loved her and were very upset to see her go, but my department was made cynical and reluctant to participate in any other change effort.
There is a difference between asking employees for input and giving them ownership of a change effort. I think the giving of ownership is the greatest and least utilized kind of leadership out there. Managers don't know how to do it. They talk about it, sure. It's kind of a buzzword. But management generally doesn't really believe that their employees are as smart as they are, and in some instances probably even smarter. Again, that is a point of annoyance for me in this program here in China. Our top level of administration in the U.S. has no idea the kind of challenges we face, and those challenges are not easy to explain. They are not patient enough to listen to long, drawn-out explanations or (even better) expose themselves to the actual experience. Instead, they listen to whoever they know the best and talk with the most and make stupid wasteful choices for the program. I have mentioned this before, so I'll leave it at that.
Here's an interesting question: what if FHSU administration recognized the fact that the China program and their virtual college are actually the more successful models in their organization and used that fact as impetus to change their on-campus programs instead of just pouring money gained from the fiscally healthy programs into that financial sinkhole? As long as they continue to favor the Kansas campus, they are creating a push for our program to become modeled after that program, a model which is demonstrably unsustainable because it must be sustained through the exploitation of less privileged students. I know, I know. The collegiate ideal is at stake. Would FHSU even be a real college without its Student Union and state-of-the-art laboratories? We make do without them over here in China, but the would probably never survive in the U.S.
Social Justice
I think this article does the best job of any at presenting a really egalitarian approach to change that still maintains some structure. Sadly it just scrapes the surface and apparently it isn't that popular of a model because the article was first published in 1990 and none of the newer articles build off of it. Is is possible that giving away power is just not that popular of a thing to do?
People argue about "rights" and "equality" but the real bottom layer of any organization still tends to get crushed, even sometimes by the social justice advocates in defense of their liberal arts education ideals. Everyone must have certain privileges, and if it turns out that the system can't afford to deliver those privileges to everyone, we'll just find a way to get them for "our people," and screw the rest of them. Yeah, that's a little out of left field, I guess, but it is a thought I have about this faculty union in Kansas that insists on a "fair working wage" and all the rest the rest of it, which just means my students don't get the full benefit of their tuition because the money is needed to feed already wealthy programs and faculty in Kansas.
Monday, April 3, 2017
HBR: The Hard Side of Change Management
Sirkin, Keenan, and Jackson explain their DICE Theory. They begin their article by noting all of the various ways that change can be approached and the fact that no one has found the final answer. Then they offer the final answer. They say that "[c]ompanies overemphasize the soft side of change.... [and] though these elements are critical for success, change projects can't get off the ground unless companies address the harder elements first." What is interesting to me about this argument is that it just seems to be a matter of shifting one's weight from one foot to the other: "All right: we've determined that change needs both soft and hard elements. Now let's spend all of our time discussing the hard elements." The next article will just argue the opposite: "companies tend to ignore the soft side..." and so on and so forth.
Having made that complaint, I do think the authors describe a very systematic process to examine a change initiative and if the company or system is open to such systematic scrutiny, their process must be very valuable. Their statement that their system reduced a twelve hour discussion into a 2 hour goal oriented analysis was especially compelling to me. Does every leadership have the capacity to focus like that? If they can't focus like that, does that mean their change initiative is doomed? Apparently, the DICE Theory had been developed and tested by the authors in their consulting company, which reminds me that Theory E change tends to use outside consulting more than Theory O change. Is it possible that this consulting agency is preaching to the crowd regarding the classic Theory E reasons for change? Again, I think their DICE Theory is very orderly, coherent, and effective within its sphere. It's just been my life experience that this sort of effectiveness is made possible by the limits of the sphere.
Being Restorative by strength, and therefore problem-oriented, I wish the authors had explained more clearly the limitations of their own system. They began their article by saying there was no final answer regarding the best way to affect change. Did they believe differently by the time they finish the article or did they just mean there was no final answer until now? The thing is, they've been using this theory for a while, so if they do think it is the final answer, they were a little disingenuous there at the beginning. I am looking for the final answer, and so there's a need to stamp out all of the problems, not just the one directly in front of us.
Social Justice
This article had very little to say about diversity and social justice. I think that is very consistent with the difference between "hard" and "soft" and Theory E and Theory O. These bottom line approaches generally don't address issues of power difference or diversity. For what it is worth, I don't think every article necessarily has to address these "soft" issues, but the article would have been more complete if the authors had addressed their theory in light of them, even briefly. The reason they didn't, one might suppose, could be because "[c]ompanies overemphasize the soft side of change." I don't know if that's really true. In all, I think HBR tends to focus more on the hard elements. Interestingly, the DICE Theory says you can't create change without buy-in from upper management which sort of implies that bottom up change is to some extent impossible. I wonder if that is true?
For a while now, I have been thinking of Jesus as an agent of change. He began a revolution, and I don't think he followed any of these models that HBR authors propose. Since Jesus came to earth to be the image of God for us, his version of being a change agent seems like it should trump all the rest. I wonder if anyone has written about that? Maybe after I finish this book, I will try to find one that addresses self-sacrificial change. Jesus said, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone." In what ways did Jesus revolutionize the world through his sacrifice? Another theme that is probably of a more "soft" nature that had not been discussed by any of these articles is the role that trust has in change. I see it all around me: the distrust that leads to lack of communication and under utilized resources. The distrust that leads to the undermining of a leader and a vision. That is another area of change that I would like to explore more.
Having made that complaint, I do think the authors describe a very systematic process to examine a change initiative and if the company or system is open to such systematic scrutiny, their process must be very valuable. Their statement that their system reduced a twelve hour discussion into a 2 hour goal oriented analysis was especially compelling to me. Does every leadership have the capacity to focus like that? If they can't focus like that, does that mean their change initiative is doomed? Apparently, the DICE Theory had been developed and tested by the authors in their consulting company, which reminds me that Theory E change tends to use outside consulting more than Theory O change. Is it possible that this consulting agency is preaching to the crowd regarding the classic Theory E reasons for change? Again, I think their DICE Theory is very orderly, coherent, and effective within its sphere. It's just been my life experience that this sort of effectiveness is made possible by the limits of the sphere.
Being Restorative by strength, and therefore problem-oriented, I wish the authors had explained more clearly the limitations of their own system. They began their article by saying there was no final answer regarding the best way to affect change. Did they believe differently by the time they finish the article or did they just mean there was no final answer until now? The thing is, they've been using this theory for a while, so if they do think it is the final answer, they were a little disingenuous there at the beginning. I am looking for the final answer, and so there's a need to stamp out all of the problems, not just the one directly in front of us.
Social Justice
This article had very little to say about diversity and social justice. I think that is very consistent with the difference between "hard" and "soft" and Theory E and Theory O. These bottom line approaches generally don't address issues of power difference or diversity. For what it is worth, I don't think every article necessarily has to address these "soft" issues, but the article would have been more complete if the authors had addressed their theory in light of them, even briefly. The reason they didn't, one might suppose, could be because "[c]ompanies overemphasize the soft side of change." I don't know if that's really true. In all, I think HBR tends to focus more on the hard elements. Interestingly, the DICE Theory says you can't create change without buy-in from upper management which sort of implies that bottom up change is to some extent impossible. I wonder if that is true?
For a while now, I have been thinking of Jesus as an agent of change. He began a revolution, and I don't think he followed any of these models that HBR authors propose. Since Jesus came to earth to be the image of God for us, his version of being a change agent seems like it should trump all the rest. I wonder if anyone has written about that? Maybe after I finish this book, I will try to find one that addresses self-sacrificial change. Jesus said, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone." In what ways did Jesus revolutionize the world through his sacrifice? Another theme that is probably of a more "soft" nature that had not been discussed by any of these articles is the role that trust has in change. I see it all around me: the distrust that leads to lack of communication and under utilized resources. The distrust that leads to the undermining of a leader and a vision. That is another area of change that I would like to explore more.
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