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

Organizational changeno use at all. It clearly does if one is trying to understand, and even more,trying to design interactions of a repetitive kind to achieve kinds ofperformance that are known in advance’.Ralph Stacey and Patricia Shaw have both written about complexityand change. Managers, and particularly consultants, often find this difficultreading because on first viewing it appears to take away the rationalpowers we have traditionally endowed upon our managers, changeagents and consultants. Patricia Shaw says of the traditional view of theprocess consultant:I would say that [the] ideal of the reflective practitioner [who can surfacesubconscious needs so that groups of people can consciously create adirected form of change] is the one that mostly continues to grip our imaginationsand shape our aspirations to be effective and competent individualpractitioners engaged in lifelong learning. Instead, I have been asking whathappens when spontaneity, unpredictability and our capacity to be surprisedby ourselves are not explained away but kept at the very heart [of our work].In contrast, those working in hugely complex environments such as thehealth sector or government have told us that they find the ideas in thisarea to be a tremendous relief. The notion that change cannot bemanaged reflects their own experiences of trying to manage change; theoverwhelming feeling they have of constantly trying to push heavyweights uphill.But how can managers and consultants use these ideas in real situations?We have distilled some groundrules for those working withcomplex change processes, although the literature we have researchedstudiously avoids any type of prescription for action.In complex change, the leader’s role is to:• decide what business the organization is in, and stretch people’sthinking on how to get there;• ensure that there is a high level of connectivity between differentparts of the organization, encouraging feedback, optimizing informationflow, enabling learning;• focus people’s attention on important differences: between currentand desired performance, between style of working, between pastand present results.133