Executing On Change Without 'Blowing Up' Your Organisation

The 2013 winter edition of the MIT Sloan Management Review featured an article on 

'How to Change an Organisation Without Blowing It Up' which relates strongly to the key principles of executing on medium and long term strategic priorities in the midst of the keeping on top of short term objectives (otherwise known as the 'day job')

Too often, conventional approaches to organisational transformation resemble the Big Bang theory. Change occurs all at once, on a large scale and often in response to crisis. These approaches assume that people need to be jolted out of complacency to embrace new ideas and practices. To make that happen, senior management creates a sense of urgency or takes dramatic action to trigger change. Frequently, the jolt comes from a new CEO eager to put his or her stamp on the organization. Yet we know from a great deal of experience that Big Bang transformation attempts often fail, fostering employee discontent and producing mediocre solutions with little lasting impact.

 

But meaningful change need not happen this way. Instead of undertaking a risky, large-scale makeover, organisations can seed transformation by collectively uncovering “everyday disconnects” - the disparities between our expectations about how work is carried out and how it actually is. The discovery of such disconnects encourages people to think about how the work might be done differently. Continuously pursuing these smaller-scale changes - and then weaving them together - offers a practical middle path between large-scale transformation and small-scale pilot projects that run the risk of producing too little too late.

 

Researchers tend to overlook this option because few managers have employed it until recently, assuming they needed to take an all (Big Bang) or small (pilot projects sequestered away from the dominant organisational culture) approach to organisation change. That may have been more true in the past when organisation boundaries were less malleable, communication more difficult and people less mobile. However, today’s complex and connected global environment makes step-by-step transformation by managers inside most organisations a real possibility, if senior leaders recognise and help cultivate their employees’ collective capability to discover everyday disconnects. Organisations can practice uncovering these disconnects on a scale extensive enough to make a real difference, yet at a rate that keeps the effort focused and manageable within budgetary and time constraints.

The comment that "today’s complex and connected global environment makes step-by-step transformation by managers inside most organisations a real possibility" highlights a paradox we often encounter in that the 'good news' is people are more connected than ever before (so you can reach them with your message) and the 'bad news' is that people are more connected than ever before (so there are lots of messages reaching them). 

 

The recommendation then for a middle ground of 'continuously pursuing smaller-scale changes - and then weaving them together' sounds nice in theory but our experience is that many organiastions (large and small) can really struggle in reaching the front line with consistent messaging (that is clear and well received) and then 'weaving together' the outputs in a way that adds back up to deliver on the overall strategic priorities. 

 

These, in fact, are two key lessons that FranklinCovey have applied in developing the 4 Disciplines of Execution approach which has been refined over the past 8-10 years with 1000s of organisations and work groups around the world. Through this experience we've realised that it is possible to translate focused and compelling objectives down to the front line and then engage people in the contribution they can make towards them. It is also possible to do this in a way that allows people to meet their 'day job' commitments, so that instead of 'big bang', organisations can continuously transform through everyone uncovering, and addressing. everyday disconnects.