top-down

Making large scale change happen

Monday, January 28th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

Making large scale change happen: a graphic listing the points made in the post
I recently came across some principles for “making large-scale change happen“. I think they’re worth sharing.

Here’s the text version:

  1. More focus on networks, communities, and informal power.
  2. Less formal change management; more choreography.
  3. More virtual connection.
  4. Identifying and working through super connectors.
  5. Young leaders at the heart of change.
  6. Less change programs; more change platforms.
  7. Less top-down; more bottom-up and inside-out, middle-led.
  8. More 30, 60, 90-day change cycles; less one or two-year change programs.

I like and agree with all of these principles. In particular:

Number 6. focuses on creating lasting process and culture that supports and normalizes change in an organization. This is a superior approach compared to the traditional lumbering change programs that are generally irrelevant long before they are “completed”.

Number 8. emphasizes the importance of small, quick experiments. The hardest problems organizations face are chaotic and complex (the Cynefin model). Therefore, they require novel and emergent practices: experiments to learn more about how the problem areas respond to action and probes.

I have one caveat. Number 3. “more virtual connection” is certainly appropriate if it adds to the repertoire and quality of connections or reduces access privilege. But be careful not to replace important face-to-face connection opportunities with virtual ones. Until we get the holodeck, virtual doesn’t provide the quality of connection and engagement that routinely occur at well-designed face-to-face events.

How do you facilitate change? In this occasional series, we explore various aspects of facilitating individual and group change.

Image attribution: The Horizons Team at National Health Service England

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Posted in Facilitating Change | No Comments »

How to change an organization’s culture

Monday, April 24th, 2017 by Adrian Segar

change an organization's culture. Image attribution: Animated gif excerpt from "Lawyers in Love" by Jackson BrowneIs it possible to transform a dysfunctional corporate culture like that of United Airlines into the employee engagement of Southwest? Or the indifferent customer service at Kmart into the customer-first approach of Wegmans?

After over thirty forty years (now) of working with organizations, I think it’s possible to change organizational culture. But it’s far from easy!

First, many organizations deny that there’s any problem with their culture. Getting leadership to think otherwise is an uphill or hopeless battle.

Second, if an organization does get to the point where “we want to change our culture”, there’s rarely an explicit consensus of what we “need” or “might” change.

Third, culture is an emergent property of the interactions between people in the organization, not a linear consequence of deeply buried assumptions to challenge and “treat” in isolation. Prescriptive, formulaic approaches to culture change, are therefore rarely if ever successful.

Finally, organizational culture self-perpetuates through a complex web of rules and relationships whose very interconnectedness resists change. Even if you have a clear idea of what you want to do, there are no uncoupled places to start.

So, what can we do?

For concise advice, I recommend Chris Corrigan‘s excellent article The myth of managed culture change. Read it!

In particular, this excerpt caught my eye:

“Culture is an emergent set of patterns that are formed from the interactions between people. These patterns cannot be reverse engineered. Once they exist you need to change the interactions between people if you want to change the patterns.”
—Chris Corrigan, The myth of managed culture change

This is why process tools like those shared in The Power of Participation are so important. Imposed, top-down culture change regimes attempt to force people to do things differently. Chris describes this process as “cruel and violent”. Participation process tools allow people to safely explore interacting in new ways. Organizations can then transform through the resulting emergent changes that such tools facilitate and support.

Image attribution: Animated gif excerpt from “Lawyers in Love” by Jackson Browne

Tags: , , , , , , , , | Posted in Facilitating Change | No Comments »

Leadership, management, and meetings

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 by Adrian Segar

leadership and management: Diagram of centralized, decentralized, and distributed networks from the classic paper by Paul Baran, "On Distributed Communications: MEMORANDUM: RM-3420-PR," AUGUST 1964, the Rand Corporation

“Leadership is about the role of the catalysts in organizations who influence and shape both strategy and execution, while management is the discipline that guides how large numbers of people efficiently accomplish complex work. Organizations need both catalysts and discipline.

…leaders are facilitators and their defining characteristic is their ability to enable connections that drive effective collaboration among large numbers of people. When leaders are facilitators, organizations adopt the disciplines of self-organized networks that are designed to leverage collective intelligence.

…the biggest challenge for traditional organizations will be whether or not they can reinvent both leadership and management and transform themselves from top-down hierarchies to peer-to-peer networks.”
—Forbes interview of Rod Collins, author of Leadership in a Wiki World: Leveraging Collective Knowledge To Make the Leap To Extraordinary Performance

Rod was the COE of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Employee Program with over $19 billion in annual revenues. I like how he distinguishes between leadership and management. Although he’s talking about organizations, his definitions apply beautifully to the roles of leadership and management at participant-driven meetings.

Replace “organizations” with “meetings” in the quotes above. Rod’s vision for the viable future of organizations becomes the same set of principles I’ve championed for effective, powerful conferences:

  • Supporting and encouraging conference participants to network & collaborate.
  • Using meeting designs that leverage the experience & expertise of the group.
  • Transforming meetings from top-down presentations to peer-initiated & led sessions.

Isn’t that interesting?

How do you see leadership and management roles play out in your meetings? What works, what doesn’t?

Image attribution: From the classic paper by Paul Baran, “On Distributed Communications: MEMORANDUM: RM-3420-PR,” AUGUST 1964, the Rand Corporation

Tags: , , , , | Posted in Event design, leadership | 1 Comment »

16 consequences of top-down conference process

Monday, January 4th, 2010 by Adrian Segar

Here are some consequences of concentrating on top-down (traditional) rather than bottom-up (non-traditional) conference process:

A photograph of two people looking up at a stenciled sign "WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?" on one of two high concrete walls. A camera, pointed at them, is mounted on the other wall. Consequences of top-down conference process

  1. Everyone gets assigned their role in advance.
  2. Top-down implies that some people have “the knowledge”; the rest don’t.
  3. There’s less opportunity to engage attendees who aren’t invested; they can zone out as they choose.
  4. Passive reception of knowledge is the dominant learning modality.
  5. There may be less stress for attendees, knowing that no personal contribution is expected.
  6. There are, at best, few expectations for attendees, apart from paying for the conference.
  7. Tradition coupled to prestige confirms legitimacy—” This is the way it’s done”.
  8. The conference confers status by association; you’re a professional in this field because professionals in this field go to this conference.
  9. Top-down imposes control of what’s going to happen: who speaks, who listens, who’s in, who’s out.
  10. Conference structure and content are fixed; they’re very difficult to change even if circumstances cry out for a different direction.
  11. The top-down model can put pressure on presenters, who may feel they need to be comprehensive, all-knowing, and coherent to justify the program committee’s choice of them as presenters.
  12. The power to create conference structure and session topics is confined to the conference program committee.
  13. Top-down supports and perpetuates cliques: the presenters versus the audience; the old hands and the in-crowd versus the newbies.
  14. Everyone knows what is supposed to happen, minimizing the fear of the unknown.
  15. The conference tends to mirror and/or reinforce perceived hierarchy or status in a profession or field—“Here are the experts”.
  16. Meeting and connecting with like-minded people during the formal conference program is largely a matter of chance or careful preparation.

Can you think of other consequences of top-down conference process? Share them in the comments below.

Image attribution: Flickr user flynnwynn/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Tags: , , | Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »