You can’t achieve change based on ideal behaviour, but you can change process and context
…you have to embed change in process, not depend on individual competence. You can’t achieve change based on ideal behaviour, but you can change process and context
Rather than trying to solve the problems of the world (or the organisation or whatever) by sitting around with a group of like minded people and creating pipe dreams about how things should be…you instead focus on what you can change in the here and now….
…if you want to change organisations, three basic principles:
- You don’t lecture management on how they are old fashioned in their thinking, instead you put them into situations and give them tools where old ways of thinking are not sustainable and they have to act differently. If they work it out for themselves its sustainable.
- You pick off areas where the pain threshold is the highest, for example (to pick up Agile themes) the interaction between approaches such as AGILE and the measurement and management practices of the HR function. You then create approaches that change the measurement and feedback mechanisms that work in parallel with existing methods. That new project management system (something I am working on to declare a commercial interest) can start to provide HR with better data on people and “competences” than their current systems so they choose to adopt it over time.
- Sell middle-bottom-up an idea originally put forward by Nonaka and one I respect. It’s not too difficult to get senior management to buy into an idea, but it will only happen if middle management are bought in and they are the hardest.
- Dave Snowden
(Source: cognitive-edge.com)
