the dance of change

The Danceof ChangeThe Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations

By Peter Senge, Art Kleiner,Charlotte Roberts, Richard Ross,George Roth, Bryan Smith

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The Dance of ChangeThe Challenges to Sustaining Momentum

in Learning Organizations

By Peter Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard Ross, George Roth, Bryan Smith

Published by Doubleday, 1999, ISBN 0385493223

2001 execubook inc.

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CONTENTS

Introduction .......................................................... 2

Generating Profound Change ................................. 3

The Challenges to Change:

Not Enough Time ........................................... 5

No Help ........................................................ 5

Not Relevant ................................................. 6

Walking the Talk ............................................ 7

Fear and Anxiety ........................................... 7

Assessment and Measurement ......................... 8

True Believers and Non-Believers ..................... 8

Governance .................................................. 9

Diffusion ..................................................... 10

Strategy and Purpose ................................... 10

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The Dance of Change By Peter Senge et al.

Introduction

Most change initiatives fail. Eventually they run into constraints

embedded in the culture of the organization or the prevailing sys-

tem of management and fail to reach their potential. When they

should bloom and prosper, they droop.

To understand the process of change, we must think less like

managers and more like biologists. Thats because the pattern of

growth for most change projects resembles the sigmoidal pat-

tern commonly found in biology initial acceleration, then a

slow, steady loss of potency over time. When growth stops pre-

maturely before the organism reaches its potential, its because

the growth has encountered constraints that are inevitable and

could not be avoided. Other members of the species will grow

more because they do not encounter the same constraints.

Managers in such situation might be compared to gardeners

standing over plants and begging them or ordering them to

grow. Sensible gardeners would not actually do that. They recog-

nize that seeds must have the potential to grow. And they con-

centrate on eliminating the constraints. Entreating people to try

harder, to become more committed or to be more passionate will

not have much lasting effect. The biological world teaches that

sustaining change requires understanding the reinforcing growth

processes and whats needed to catalyze them, then addressing

the limits that keep change from occurring.

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In other words, managers must understand the Dance of

Change, the inevitable interplay between growth processes and

limiting processes. Every movement is being inhibited as it

occurs, Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana has said. Managers

must recognize natures way, and work with it.

Generating Profound Change

The process starts with understanding how to generate change.

Initially, most of the action takes place in pilot groups. These

groups can vary in size from a handful to an entire business unit

of 1,000 people. They tend to be led by open-minded pragma-

tists who have innate curiosity and want to play with an inno-

vative notion.

The first basic choice facing the organization is whether the

change will be authority-driven or learning-driven.

Change driven by authority is more efficient to organize. Its

also often more effective in the short run and more immediately

comfortable for people in many organizations. Great results may

occur, with productivity and profitability soaring. Morale may

soar too, as employees recognize that things are getting better.

But eventually the initiative loses momentum because it

depends on being pushed. Interest flutters to other projects or

leaders leave and the process stalls.

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Learning initiatives, if properly constructed, are driven by

widespread commitment. They depend for success on repeated

opportunities for small actions that individuals can design, initi-

ate and implement themselves. First on a small scale, then with

increasingly large numbers of people and activities, participants

articulate goals, experiment with new initiatives, learn from their

successes and mistakes, and talk candidly about the results. That

builds commitment and action. It also draws in new people who

share similar values and aspirations. And since the change initia-

tive does not depend on one person, it can be self-perpetuating.

Important change initiatives often have the following

qualities:

They are connected with real work goals and processes.

They are connected with improving performance.

They involve people who have the power to take action to

achieve those goals.

They seek to balance action and reflection, connecting

inquiry and experimentation.

They afford people an increased amount of white space

opportunities to think and reflect without pressure to make

decisions.

They are intended to increase peoples capacity, individual-

ly and collectively.

They focus on learning, in settings that matter.

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The Challenges to Change

Eventually, however, all change initiatives run into limits to

growth. Change advocates must understand and strive to over-

come 10 challenges.

The first four arise in the opening phase of initiating change:

1. Not enough time. The core group will have difficulty finding

and allocating enough discretionary time for the project. In par-

ticular, as the change effort picks up steam, the time required to

participate will increase. If the teams time flexibility is low, time

can become a major constraint to progress.

To counter this problem, it can help to combine several change

initiatives that have a common goal, so time can be used more

efficiently, and also to schedule large chunks of time for focus and

concentration on the project. The organization must learn to trust

people to control their own use of time rather than expecting

them to conform, like a chain gang, to the speed of the boss.

Indeed, the organization must go so far as to value unstructured

time, by allowing people to have time to daydream. As well, the

busywork that people have accumulated in an era of downsizing

and greater technology must be eliminated and the group must

learn to say no to political gamesmanship.

2. No help. In many organizations even in an era of wide-

spread consulting the notion prevails that asking for help is a

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sign of incompetence. The innovators, isolated from help because

of that philosophy and their own pilot-project status, often dont

realize what they dont know until its too late.

To counter that, group change leaders must invest early in get-

ting help in the same way as they would seek opinion when

undertaking any other complex task, such as buying a computer

or initiating a home renovation project. The organization must

create capacity for coaching from people who have been there

and know how to listen, ask questions and offer assistance.

CEOs in change efforts and other leaders must find a

partner in whom they can safely confide and express emotional

tension, including misgivings about the effort. This safety valve

will allow them to move from anxiety and fear to a creative,

strategic sense of purpose. And the organization must change

prevailing attitudes about seeking help attitudes like those of

the CEO who said, Im too old for a mentor, or maybe too

young.

3. Not relevant. The innovators may fail to develop a com-

pelling business case for change, and that prevents significant

momentum from developing.

Someone with managerial accountability must make the case

in practical terms that the project can improve the work-

place. If this does not happen, people will correctly regard the ini-

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tiative as just adding more work to their already overfull plates.

As well, strategic awareness should be built among key leaders,

questions should be explicitly raised within the pilot group about

project relevancy, more information should be made available to

pilot group members, and efforts should be tightly linked to busi-

ness results.

4. Walking the talk. Mismatches between behaviour and

espoused values can shred trust, leaving little safety for the reflec-

tion that leads to authentic change.

Its important, therefore, to develop espoused aims and goals

that are credible. As well, leaders must realize that they can only

build the credibility of their organizational values and aims by

demonstration, not by articulation. They must also cultivate

patience under pressure, not losing their temper or returning to

authoritarian habits of old, and think carefully about their beliefs

about people. In turn, subordinates must cultivate patience

towards their bosses since they cant always change problems

immediately and know when to approach those bosses and tell

them to back off.

Three challenges arise in the next stage of sustaining trans-

formation:

5. Fear and anxiety. Although fear and anxiety are natural and

even healthy responses to change, they can undercut the effort.

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Participants may worry about whether they are equal to the tasks

ahead and whether they can trust the others involved.

To help, the organization should start small, building momen-

tum before confronting difficult issues, and avoiding frontal

assaults on major barriers. It should also do everything possible

to ensure that participation in the pilot group is a matter of

choice, not coercion. Bosses must set an example of openness and

ensure that in meetings diverse views are acknowledged.

Breakdowns should be used as opportunities for learning.

6. Assessment and measurement. The traditional methods of

measuring results in the organization may be inadequate for judg-

ing the success of the change project, particularly in its early days.

People must therefore appreciate the time delays that are

involved in major change and not judge its efficacy prematurely.

Change proponents must build partnerships with executive lead-

ers on assessing the assessment process, to ensure its fair, and

they must make a priority of assessment and the development of

new abilities to assess. The pioneers must also recognize that not

all assessment will be pleasant or indicative of progress.

Innovation involves mistakes. There will be many failures among

innovative change efforts.

7. True believers and non-believers. A siege mentality can grow in

the organization between those involved in the changes and those

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on the outside. The pilot group can feel unappreciated and mis-

understood as their enthusiasm grows for the project, yet they

may find themselves adrift from others or even pitted against

close colleagues who have become organizational enemies.

In response, change leaders must become bicultural able

to live in the world of their innovative subculture as well as the

mainstream culture of the larger organization. Mentors can be

useful, helping leaders of change to differentiate legitimate ques-

tions from irrational opposition. Care must be taken from the

start to build the pilot groups ability to engage the larger organ-

ization. And openness must be cultivated in the pilot group

members must be willing to challenge their own thinking and

orthodoxies.

Finally, three limits to growth inevitably arise in the final

stage of rethinking the organization to accommodate widespread

change:

8. Governance. As pilot groups expand their reach, governance

of the organization may have to be modified to allow those

groups to continue to flourish.

Its important that the pilot groups pay attention to bound-

aries and be strategic when crossing them. They must articulate

the case for broader change in terms of business results and

learn to internalize the pressures facing organizational leaders.

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Its also valuable to experiment with cross-functional, cross-

boundary teams, if the change leaders can get them sponsored

by the hierarchy.

9. Diffusion. Roadblocks will be met in the attempt to spread

the change to the entire organization and its partners.

The change team must value network leaders who can carry

the new ideas to other parts of the organization. They must study

the web of interaction within the company and identify groups

that can help to disseminate the change. Information about the

new innovations should be widely released and attention should

be paid to designing effective media for internal information

exchange.

10. Strategy and purpose. The new ideas about strategy and pur-

pose emerging from the pioneers must find a way to help the

organization reinvent itself in a changing world.

Its helpful to use scenario thinking to investigate blind spots

and signal unexpected events that could derail change. The

assumptions behind the current strategy must be exposed and

tested. Leaders must engage others continually in discussions

around organizational change and purpose.

Thirty years ago Gregory Bateson a biologist, anthropol-

ogist, psychologist and pioneering systems thinker said the

source of most of our problems is the difference between the

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way man thinks and the way nature works. By understand-

ing the forces surrounding change projects what propels

them and what hinders them managers are more likely to be

successful. e

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CoverTitle PageContentsIntroductionGenerating Profound ChangeThe Challenges to ChangeAbout execubooks

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