
U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno. Appointed by President Barack Obama, Gen. Odierno assumed his responsibilities as Chief of Staff on September 7, 2011. Early in 2011, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which required the defense and service secretaries to review policies "to determine whether changes are needed to ensure that female members have an equitable opportunity to compete and excel in the Armed Forces." Originally, the report was due on April 15, but the Department of Defense requested and received an extension through October, 2011. According to the Army Times, that report had not been delivered as of November 16. The Army Times reports that Gen. Odierno is "not real happy" with the current draft. Certainly there is room for concern about discrimination in the Army. Only 24 of the Army's 403 general officers (6%) are female, even though roughly 15 percent of the force is female. One can speculate that the draft report doesn't fully address the issue, and that the change the Army needs to make isn't fully welcome throughout the institution. If so, some of the factors that make change so difficult might be at work. In time, we'll certainly learn more about what is happening and why the report is delayed. Photo courtesy U.S. Naval War College.
When change is hard, we sometimes blame "resistors" — people who refuse to change. We say that they don't "get it" or that they're defending their current advantageous positions, or that they're fearful, or that a few troublemakers misled them. If we don't blame the resistors, we blame the planners of the change. They failed to account for various difficulties, or their plan was defective, or they had a good plan, but they failed to execute it.
Sometimes we blame both the planners and the resistors.
Certainly there are defective plans for change. Certainly there are people who are reluctant to change. But both of these analyses overlook three central features of change:
- People have human needs and human desires, and we must deal with people as people.
- Systems are complex. Our understanding of how they work and how their parts interrelate is probably imperfect.
- Changing systems sometimes requires following indirect paths. The shortest path isn't always effective.
Here are two examples of the application of these principles.
- We might be unaware of external constraints
- Difficulties can sometimes arise from external factors not directly related to the change itself. These factors can seem remote at first, until we actually experience them.
- For instance, trying to change a process the mastery of which is viewed as essential to high performance can create motivational problems, because people see their expertise as being questioned.
- The plan to change the process is effective from a process design point of view. And the people who were affected weren't resisting change — they're just applying their own understanding of what the organization values. Unless we deal with external constraints like these, change is hard.
- The desire for change has emotional foundations
- When we plan change, People have human needs and
human desires, and we must
deal with people as peoplewe tend to make plans that follow direct paths in process transformation space. But the space in which change actually takes place includes the feelings, knowledge, and attitudes of the people who must adapt. Direct orders to "adapt or else" do not work well at all. - People need more than orders to adapt. This is especially true of those whose work depends on knowledge, skill, and relationships. Understanding why we're making a particular change does help, but it isn't enough either. Desire to change — positive desire to adapt — comes about only when people identify with their work and with the organization.
- A plan to communicate to people what the new regime will be, without seeking their support, isn't defective in itself. As a communication plan, it might be perfectly valid. And the people who choose not to support the changes aren't actually resisting it — they simply don't identify with it. When active support for change is missing, change is hard.
We'll continue next time with a focus on the unexpected events associated with organizational change. Next in this series Top
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Related articles
More articles on Organizational Change:
Change How You Change
- In the past two years, your life has probably changed. Do you commute over the same route you did two
years ago? Same transportation? Same job? Same company? Same industry? Change is all around, and you're
probably pretty skilled at it. You can become even more skilled if you change how you change.
Beyond WIIFM
- Probably the most widely used tactic of persuasion, "What's In It For Me," or WIIFM, can be
toxic to an organization. There's a much healthier approach that provides a competitive advantage to
organizations that use it.
The Ties that Bind
- Changing anything in an organization reveals how it's connected to its people, to its processes, to
its facilities, and to the overall context. Usually, these connections reach out much further into the
organization than we imagine.
Deciding to Change: Choosing
- When organizations decide to change what they do, the change sometimes requires that they change how
they make decisions, too. That part of the change is sometimes overlooked, in part, because it affects
most the people who make decisions. What can we do about this?
Motivation and the Reification Error
- We commit the reification error when we assume, incorrectly, that we can treat abstract constructs as
if they were real objects. It's a common error when we try to motivate people.
See also Organizational Change and Emotions at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming February 8: Kerfuffles That Seem Like Something More
- Much of what we regard as political conflict is a series of squabbles commonly called kerfuffles. They captivate us while they're underway, but after a month or two they're forgotten. Why do they happen? Why do they persist? Available here and by RSS on February 8.
And on February 15: Four Razors for Organizational Behavior
- Deviant organizational behavior can harm the people and the organization. In choosing responses, we consider what drives the perpetrators. Considering Malice, Incompetence, Ignorance, and Greed, we can devise four guidelines for making these choices. Available here and by RSS on February 15.
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