cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

Organizational change• practical first steps: project managers were advised to define theirplans for change early in the process and to communicate these in avariety of ways, to improve the level of buy-in from implementersand stakeholders.Nadler and Tushman, congruence model: political, organismNadler and Tushman’s congruence model takes a different approach tolooking at the factors influencing the success of the change process(Nadler and Tushman, 1997). This model aims to help us understandthe dynamics of what happens in an organization when we try tochange it.This model is based on the belief that organizations can be viewed assets of interacting sub-systems that scan and sense changes in theexternal environment. This model sits firmly in the open systemsschool of thought, which uses the organism metaphor to understandorganizational behaviour. However, the political backdrop is notignored; it appears as one of the sub-systems (informal organization –see below).This model views the organization as a system that draws inputs fromboth internal and external sources (strategy, resources, environment) andtransforms them into outputs (activities, behaviour and performance ofthe system at three levels: individual, group and total). The heart of themodel is the opportunity it offers to analyse the transformation process ina way that does not give prescriptive answers, but instead stimulatesthoughts on what needs to happen in a specific organizational context.David Nadler writes, ‘it’s important to view the congruence model as atool for organizing your thinking… rather than as a rigid template todissect, classify and compartmentalize what you observe. It’s a way ofmaking sense out of a constantly changing kaleidoscope of informationand impressions.’The model draws on the sociotechnical view of organizations that looksat managerial, strategic, technical and social aspects of organizations,emphasizing the assumption that everything relies on everything else.This means that the different elements of the total system have to bealigned to achieve high performance as a whole system. Therefore thehigher the congruence the higher the performance.119