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SAMENVATTING BOEK OVOHoofdstuk 1 – Introduction
1.1 Introduction
Leading change is complex endeavour and requires understanding of coping with transition
Every leader of change or interventionist as we call it in this book will be confronted with innovators
and adapters as well as with defenders of the same change initiative.
Involving employees is essential for change effectiveness, but this means we need to face
contradictory human aspects.
In this chapter
- A short introduction of some of the main differences between a ‘positivist’ and a
‘postmodern’ worldview, followed by the introduction of the premises underlying a ‘social
constructionist’ perspective as being the main paradigm of this book.
- Three business cases, introducing the nature of the challenge of engaging people in change.
Augmenting the need to include the interventionist and his or her assumptions in the process
and therefore the need for a different change paradigm.
- The challenge of perceiving and conceiving change. Augmenting that change management is
an oxymoron and that organisational change is an intertwined process that takes place on an
individual level and at the same time on a more collaborative level.
- A leadership’s guide to varying complex contexts. Augmenting the importance of making
sense of the context of change by diagnosing the perceived complexity, interrelated human
patterns and their ‘current reality’.
- A framework with an overview of three different interrelated theoretical approaches: social
constructionism, systems thinking and complexity science
1.2 Introducing a social constructionist perspective on change
- Organization development (OD) integrate insights from management and business studies
and became a more interdisciplinary field, also known as organization development and
change (ODC)
- Assumptions are general frames of insight that determine how we understand the world and
how we translate that understanding into action. They can become so deeply ingrained that
they are accepted as the truth and function as a human being’s navigation system with which
we ‘see’ the world
- Social constructionism can be seen as a broad philosophy about relationships and the way
people co-construct their reality within these relationships. This perspective examine mainly
the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world as a means of change.
o Main perspective of this book
o Berger and Luckman are important
o Reality is not some objectifiable truth waiting to be uncovered; rather, they perceive
that there can be multiple realities at the same moment in time that compete for
truth and legitimacy.
, o shows us how meanings that are produced and reproduced on an ongoing basis
create structures that are both stable and yet open to change, as interactions evolve
over time.
o Fundamental role in language and communication
- People construct meaning among themselves to understand whats going on
- Changing people in their daily routine is best realized through direct participation and
involvemen
- Social surroundings are frame of reference
- Human learning and changing are related to quality of ways in which people interact.
- Co-inquiry is an abbreviation of ‘collaborative inquiry’, in which the participants work
together as co-researchers. The participants research a topic through their own experience
of it in order to understand their world, make sense of their life, develop new and creative
ways of looking at things and learn how to act to change things they might want to change
and find out how to do things.
1.3 Introducing the three main business cases in this book
1.3.1 The first case: A lot of sense but no impact in a labour union
- Decrease number of members and nothing changes for the better -> change
- But did not work together and different opinions about is it resistance or ownership. It
became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- It illustrates that organizational change is not simple, lineair and sequential process (top
down).
- It also illustrates that human perceptions play bigger role than most people believe. Must
obtain shared picture of current reality (=the here and now of a given situation; it refers to a
way of diagnosing. This process is to help all those involved gain an understanding of what is
going on in a situation they want to improve)
1.3.2 The second case: Being stuck in a business university
- Severe cutbacks in which half lost their jobs, but the remaining employees found it though to
manage the challenges and opportunities. It seems everyone knows the problem but found it
hard so collaborative dialogue session and large-group intervention to agree on specific
topics.
- Creating ‘a sense of urgency’ generally refers to communicating to members of the
organisation that it’s imperative to act promptly, decisively and without delay.
- “catch-22” refers to a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a
circumstance inherent in the problem. It is a paradoxical situation from which there is no
escape because it involves mutually conflicting or dependent conditions, for example, “How
am I supposed to gain experience if I am constantly not hired because I don’t have
experience?
1.3.3 The third case: The dance around the symbolic totem pole in healthcare organization
- Make merged healthcare organization more cost-efficient and effective, short hierarchical
lines. But didn’t work out in the end
- Board meetings were one way traffic from chair, but all kept mouth shut about
dissatisfaction
1.3.4 Some thematizing reflections: Dealing with dilemmas
- When organizational change, things become unclear, less safe and secure, all kinds of
tensions.
- Often dualism or polarization in terms of distrust and opposition (2 groups, us vs CEO…)
- In the cases people became defensive, not stimulate change. Distance themselves.
- Polarisation can lead to splitting (=a defence mechanism in which people have learned to
think in terms of all or nothing)
,Interlude 1.1 Intervening, sense making and sense giving
- Intervention = about relationships and interaction and can be seen as the act of inserting
one thing between others. Based on an expectation that a given intervention accomplishes a
change in the intended direction. = ‘a set of sequenced planned actions or events intended
to help an organisation increase its effectiveness’ = entering into an ongoing relationship
system, coming between or among persons, groups or objects for the purpose of helping
them
- ‘Sense making’ is part of decision-making and means sorting out the facts (as we perceive
them) and giving them relevance and meaning
- Sense giving = we need to insert our own agency and invite the commitment and help of
others.
- reframing = chang[ing] the conceptual/emotional setting/viewpoint in relation to which a
situation is experienced and placing it in another frame that fits the “facts” of the same
concrete situation equally well or even better, and thereby changes its entire meaning.
1.4 Introducing the management of (organizational) change
1.4.1 Introducing change management
- change management is presented as a temporary linear endeavour, based on a series of
‘planned’ cause-and-effect relationships in which an effect (the change) has a single cause
(intervention)
- It creates not comfortable feeling, because cost money, requires peoples time and capacity
- change activities need to be planned and plotted in a programme, preferable with a road
map, with elaborate phasing and a detailed action plan, not least because it provides a
suggestion of certainty and security about what is going to happen.
- INTERLUDE 1.2 following a wrong map and still getting there
o Bergbeklimmers got lost, found a map and eventually their way back but it was a
map of other mountains. It serves for sense making and sense of confidence
- Plans gives the feeling of control as predicted,
- Accepted truths- (un)realistic assumptions underlying the activity of managing change
1.4.2 Introducing change
- Change is an abstract, theoretical construct. In a more fundamental philosophical sense, it
has something to do with time (no change without progress in time), energy (no change
without any kind of movement), the same entity (no change as it is not the same entity),
perception (no change when we are not aware of it) and exchanging our impressions (no
change if we do not conceive or comprehend it by sharing our impressions with relevant
others).
- different assumptions and orientations are required at different times in the process
- To conceive is to form something in our mind or to develop an understanding of what we
perceive. this means that conceiving is about comprehending and is preceded by perceiving.
1.4.3 Introducing organizational change
- Emergence is about the perception of the new arising out of connections and contexts that
were not perceived just moments before. Emergence can be characterised by the following
key elements:
o It is based on internally generated patterns.
o There is an absence of centralised control.
o No single part coordinates the macro-level behaviour of the whole.
o It uses only local dynamics
- Organisational change is an interactional process that takes place on two levels: the
microprocess of individual learning, and second, the collaborative process of exchange of the
, ‘learnings’ between people who are
relevant for the change because of
their stake in (not) realising it. The
exchange process is conditional and at
the same time supportive of the
individual learning process, just as the
latter is conditional and supportive of
the collaborative exchange process.
- organisational change begins with a
status quo being disturbed, resulting
in emerging differences, disruptions, disturbances and dissonance being perceived but not
necessarily conceived.
1.5 Introducing paradox and complexity
1.5.1 Introducing paradox
- Paradox = ‘contradictory yet interrelated elements—elements that seem logical in isolation
but absurd and irrational when appearing simultaneously’. When we cannot make a choice
between two or more contradictions because all contradictory perspectives are acceptable
and present, the situation can easily become paradoxical. In fact, both opposites are related
to each other as a sort of interdependent whole.
- Understanding and/or addressing paradoxicality in a situation does not solve problems, but
can create potential for new possibilities.
- Exploring synergistic possibilities for coping (key to people maintaining well-being and
satisfactory performance) with enduring tesions
- Enabling participants to live an thrive with tensions
- Facilitating acceptance and active engagement
1.5.2 introducing complexity
- Complexity of context can vary. Simple context is stable and clear cause-effect. More
complicated perspective is related to paradox and complexity in environments.
- The law of requisite variety says that in order to deal properly with the diversity of problems
in a given context, an interventionist needs to have a repertoire of responses that is (at least)
as nuanced as the problems they face.
- Only complexity can handle complexity (birds in flock)
1.5.3 Dealing with paradox and complexity: the importance of systems thinking
- Systems thinking lies in a shift of mind: ‘seeing interrelationships rather than linear cause-
and-effect chains, and seeing processes of change rather than snapshots. Understanding
phenomenon within context
- It is associated with feedback = a process in which the effect or output of an action is
‘returned’ to modify the next action.
1.6 Looking further
1.6.1 introducting ‘change’ and ‘changing’
- Organisational change capacity is the organisation’s ability of analysing and realising change
on a number of change dimensions: analysing change as content (what it is that changes), as
process of interaction (how it changes in a series of interrelating elements of actions,
reactions and interactions) and as context (why change is needed)
1.6.2 introducing co-inquiry, dialogue and LGIs
- For people to embrace change, we need more than just a ‘stand-alone’ collaborative
dialogue session. As a way of intervening, co-inquiry is about encouraging people to espouse
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