🌿🧭🌳 OD107: A Mythology of Organizational Change
Curated resources on Strategy ∙ Org Design ∙ Org Development ∙ Adjacent fields
Starters
1 of 4 / Irrational Exuberance: Useful tradeoffs are multi-dimensional
A practice to evolve trade-off negotiation and decision-making in general is to add new relevant dimensions. Will Larson offers a few examples and recommendations like:
Go into each tradeoff discussion believing that there’s an additional dimension you can add that will greatly reduce the current tension in decision-making.
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2 of 4 / Lenny’s Newsletter: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy
Podcast with author Richard Rumelt, covering:
(00:00) Richard’s background
(04:29) What is a strategy?
(06:23) The essential components of a good strategy (the “kernel”)
(15:04) An example of good strategy
(16:55) Bad strategy
(25:17) The importance of focus and power
(28:19) Identifying and utilizing power
(34:38) Types of power
(41:13) Implementing power
(48:15) The importance of historical knowledge
(55:23) How to write an action agenda
(01:02:47) The crux
(01:10:40) Challenges to executing a strategy
(01:15:44) The need for a decider
(01:20:39) Strategy for startups
(01:26:04) Richard’s “value denials” exercise
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3 of 4 / European Org Design Forum: Book Club: The Social Brain
There are still a few free seats available for the session on Tuesday, February 6th that welcomes author Tracey Camilleri and fellow curious readers.
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4 of 4 / The Institutional Architecture Lab: A Guide to Designing New Institutions
This toolkit offers a framework for thinking about the design of new organizations — whether at the level of a region or city, a nation, or at a transnational level.
and
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Special
Ohana Meetup 2024
For everyone interested in the (r)evolution of the world of work, there’s a new edition of the wonderful Ohana Meetup coming up on March 22-23 🎉
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See the mood of the 2023 edition in Berlin:
See the 2023 session summaries
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And get your Ohana Supporter ticket here:
As a supporter, you can then easily upgrade to Ohana Party ticket (which offers you access to the event) until 1 month before the event or until there are seats available.
Main
A Mythology of Organizational Change
Here are 10 myths of organizational change, from Marvin Weisbord’s Productive Workplaces book:
I begin this 25th Anniversary edition with ten stories I no longer believe. I gathered them during fifty years of working with businesses, medical schools, social agencies, and communities. Myths are real and they shape your behavior.
Myth 1: Changes Are Sustainable
Sustainable change is an oxymoron. For years I believed I had a responsibility to "build in" follow-up mechanisms with organizations. (…) Alternative Story. I recommend seeing whether you can sustain new practices from one meeting to the next. Organizations change one meeting at a time.Myth 2: Training Will Fix It
In the 1970s I believed with multitudes of colleagues that training everybody transforms organizations. (…) Do not mistake training for organizational change. (…) Alternative Story. All people already have skills and knowledge they cannot use at work. They are blocked by job descriptions, their place in the pecking order (…)Myth 3: Profit Rules
If making money were a rational motivator, than everybody would do participative work redesign and Future Searches (Chapters Twenty and Twenty-Two). That's where the big gains lie. For many executives the bottom line is power and control. (…) Alternative Story. An organization builds infinitely more economic strength empowering people to cooperate in keeping costs down and productivity up.Myth 4: Fortune 500s Are Forever
The Fortune 500s ought to be good places for organizational innovation. Consultants love claiming them as clients. (…) Over time, many of us came to realize Fortune 500s were among the least auspicious places for OD. (…) Alternative Story. It's hard to make long-term improvements in firms that (a) are publicly traded, (b) pay quarterly dividends, and (c) churn executives at the top.Myth 5: Organizations Learn
Organizations don't learn. People learn. Organizations have Alzheimer's. They have a hard time retaining experience. I believe this holds too for the "double loop" (learning how to learn) and "triple loop" (learning how to learn how to learn) variety. (…) Alternative Story. I believe an organization's memory is no longer than the tenures of those in charge. I have spent years helping managers build great learning organizations that their successors took apart in months. I never met a new manager who said, "This place runs like a Swiss watch. I think I'll leave it alone." They all set out to improve what they inherit, even if they make things worse.Myth 6: Layoffs Improve Bottom Lines
Wall Street loves layoffs. Costs go down, and the stock's price goes up. Alas, the fix turns out worse than the problem. Rensis Likert (1967) called layoffs "liquidating human assets" - trading skills, experience, future capability, and competitive advantage for short-term cash. (…) Pfeffer cited study after study to bolster the case that layoffs incur hidden costs, hurt people, undermine the future, injure a company's reputation, diminish its capacity to act, and reduce shareholder returns over time. (…) Alternative Story. If I were in a cost crunch now, I would take the AECL Medical approach-involve everybody in rethinking markets, products, services, and systems. I would push for across-the-board pay cuts to keep everybody employed.Myth 7: Hard Data Motivates Skeptics
Pfeffer mobilizes persuasive data in his case against layoffs. I detect little impact on businesses. (…) Anybody who ever tried to influence skeptics with hard data knows how futile it is. If managers were rational, all companies would have employees designing their own work. Such involvement has been known for decades to produce gains of 20 to 40 percent in higher output and lower costs. Why "prove" that yet again in this book? (…) Alternative Story. There is a "shadow" side to the data myth. That is the fact that you can assemble statistics to prove whatever you please. You can find scientific studies for and against what you eat, how you heat your house, the way you get to work, and the toothbrush you use. (…) In the end, which data you choose to believe becomes an act of faith.Myth 8: Diagnosis Solves the Problem
Many organizations rely on experts to diagnose situations and prescribe changes. Diagnosis means finding gaps between what is and what should be. Some experts will tell you how to close the gaps; others leave it to you. There are economic fixes, technological fixes, and people fixes aimed at every human failing. (…) Alternative Story. Diagnosis, like "hard data," is a trap for the unwary. While the problems you turn up may be real, fixing them may not make an organization better. (…) The only proven strategy to workable implementation of anything is involving people in their own diagnosis and action planning.Myth 9: The Technology-Saves-Time Myth
Time is the world's least renewable resource. When it's gone, it's gone. The shadow side of technology is that it fragments time. The more "labor-saving" technology you have, the harder you work overall. You end up doing more than you used to, in shorter and shorter time frames, at the expense of anything else that matters. (…) Alternative Story. You cannot make a meeting longer without borrowing from whatever comes after. You cannot get back the days, weeks, or months spent on plans you can't implement. Many of us run from one fruitless meeting to another, month after month, when three solid days spent with those who matter most to our work could simplify everything.Myth 10: Meetings Undermine Work
The first thing I learned when I started consulting was the endemic cynicism people dump on meetings. Meeting jokes and cartoons abound. Q: "What's the best way to avoid working?" A: "Call a meeting!" One reason you have so many meetings is that a lot of them really do waste your time. (…) Alternative Story. Meetings are the best shot you will ever have at making an organization better. Meetings of the right kind, that is. I'm advocating purposeful meetings, interactive meetings, meetings that matter, meetings where people solve problems and influence decisions. (…) My last bit of advice, like my first bit, is to make every encounter worth the time you put in.
Food for thought & hope you enjoy exploring the whole book.
Dessert
1 of 2 / LBL Strategies: Military Origins of Strategy
(…) realize rich veins of knowledge and experience were there to be mined by studying military history.
2 of 2 / Infranodus: Cognitive Variability - Panarchic Thinking
We see thinking as an ecological process closely related to ecosystem (i.e. the context) and the resources (attention, data, knowledge). Moments of growth are followed by saturation and decline, which is an opportunity for optimization and reorganization.
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As the Sense & Change team, we’re working as Strategy & Org Design advisers and facilitators for leadership teams of mid and large 🇷🇴 Tech companies.
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Nice work! Great resource with useful insights.