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

Complex changethis thinking to large complex organizations, this means that the traditionalrole of directors and senior managers, who together may aspireto directly influence local behaviour, is unlikely to have the desiredeffect, and may end up stifling creative and healthy change. It maybethat the essential cultural paradigm of the organization needs to shiftfrom within.AttractorsSystems in chaos appear to fallunder the influence of different‘attractors’. Lorenz (in Gleick,1987), the mathematician andmeteorologist, showed howcomplex systems can combineorder and disorder, and flipfrom one patterned state toanother as random, non-linear events trigger a sudden move from beingunder the influence of one attractor to that of another. See Figure 9.1 to seehow this might look in an organizational setting.To understand this at a conceptual level, imagine sitting in a homeoffice. At the desk in front of you there are papers, Post-its, pens, a laptopcomputer, photos of your family, a list of the things you have to do today.Outside the window you can clearly see trees blowing in the wind, asquirrel reaching for nuts on the bird table, the sun shining great stripesof light through the bushes onto the grass. In this scenario, you arecaught between two attractors. As one comes into focus, the other fadesaway. So it appears to be in complex systems; these attractors ultimatelydefine the way the system’s behaviour will unfold. In organizational lifeit is not possible to dictate what the attractors will be as these emergenaturally, but it is possible to try to understand the attractors that otherpeople in organizations are influenced by (eg their professions, tradeunions, a set of habits) and to try to create an attractor that offers truevalue for people.317