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

experiment with a development process that linked to service plans, teamplans and individual plans. This was successfully helping people toclarify key outcomes and contributions from individuals and teams, andthis approach promoted greater ownership of the service and thecouncil’s agenda.For the organization to embrace performance management more fully,it needed to begin to address a number of cultural issues that werehindering progress:• the lack of direction and multiple priorities;• the overwhelming feeling of organizational complexity;• the uncertainty of what the city council actually stood for;• the lack of understanding (in both senses of the word) between theconstituent parts of the organization;• the ‘political’ nature of many of the transactions and relationships;• the tendency towards a blame culture where valuing, appreciatingand recognizing the contribution of others was kept to a minimum;• the ‘closedness’ of the culture (inability to look outside for new ideas);• the lack of focus on developing people.More effective ways of workingCultural changeThere were many ways to improve council working, from making meetingsmore productive and less time-consuming, through to masteringthe complexities of matrix management and having effective informationmanagement systems. With the complexity of the council’s task,with demands coming from all directions at all levels, there needed tobe a clear (or as clear as possible) way of working a matrix structure tocope with the specialist, cross-cutting and geographical dimensions ofservice delivery.There was a real need to accelerate the business planning process, toensure a performance management system was delivered in a consistentway across the organization and to reduce conflict at the myriad ofboundaries within the organization.267