Traditional Wisdom... LO8944

Martin Charles Raff (martin@vistaraff.win-uk.net)
Wed, 07 Aug 1996 13:35:52

>Replying to LO8870 --
>
>On 5 Aug 96 at 0:32, Brock Vodden wrote:
>> At 09:21 PM 8/3/96 +0000, Robert wrote:
>> >On 1 Aug 96 at 14:15, jpomo@gate.net wrote:
>> >> The choice as to good and how good or bad and how bad is
>> >> one which is made by the bosses.
>
>> I have worked in, and have been consultant to many organizations in
>> which the major problems were directly and totally attributable to
>> senior management.

Robert Bacal wrote:
>I'm not disputing that this occurs far too frequently; I am sure all of us
>that consult have seen this often. What I am disputing, or inquiring about
>is the notion that management is so powerful, and individual staff so
>vacuous that mangement's standards and values replace those that employees
>hold. Management can impede or help; that doesn't mean that employees
>accept management's low standards as their own standards, even though they
>may not be able to achieve their own higher standards.

Perhaps it might be helpful to those helping to facilitate change in
organisations to look at the issue from senior management's point of view.
I was the leader of a 6 year change effort involving 5000 people in our
organisation.

I fully agree that senior management must accept responsibility for the
state of the organisation they lead - being responsible is what they are
paid for. But if people want their leaders to change, blaming them for
lack of progress while not giving them any help to change is not going to
be of much practical use.

I believe that looking at the systemic pressures on the leaders can help
change agents and consultants work out how to actively help leaders to
change. (Any lasting change in organisations requires leaders to change
themselves.)

The main system issues that seem to me to be reelvant are:

Career Experience. The senior managers will have spent their career to
date operating successfully in the culture that now needs to change.
Asking managers to abandon the ways of managing that have got them to
their current positions and to try some new ones, particularly when there
are at present very few role models or examples of successful
transformation, must seem to them like a very high risk leap into the dark
- much safer to stick to the tried and teseted methods.

Pressure from Above. A lot is expected from senior managers by their
bosses or the shareholders. Any downturn (or lack of increase) in profits
etc. and they are immediately suspected of managing inadequately. In a
large organisation the situation will be commented on in the press. They
feel very exposed.

Pressure from Below. In a traditionally managed organisation the dependent
relationship of employee to boss puts great pressure on the boss. Bosses
cannot be seen, without loss of face, to make mistakes, to be unsure of
the best way forward or to be anxious about the prospects for success.
Dependency discourages risk taking (and learning) for boss as well as
employee.

Lack of Information. Traditionally senior managers are severely
handicapped by lack of information. They may have lots of management
figures and analyses, but they usually know very little about what is
happenimng on the front line of their organisations - what the shop floor
employees are experiencing, what they are concerned about, what insights
they have into the work processes, what problems are important to them and
what ideas for improvement they have. They frequently also know little of
what middle management really thinks/feels. Because of fear and, often,
mistrust of senior management this information would not be forhcoming in
a honest and comprehensive way even if senior managers asked for it. Yet
they will,when they think about it, be very aware that they are missing
this data and this will affect their confidence in facilitating major
change. And, if they do try to makes changes without this sort of data,
the changes will almost certainly be succesful only in the short term.

I know from my own experience that it is possible to influence senior
managers to change. It is often a slow process ( sometimes very slow) and
there needs to be much celebration of small steps forward. But it can be
done and I would urge change agents to believe that they, particularly,
can make a difference. They can do this by giving support and
encouragment to senior managers, by helping them to learn about new ways
of working - particularly by looking for examples of successful change.
They can also learn about and encourage the use of ways of involving
everybody in the system in planning change strategies. Real Time Strategic
Change, Future Search, and The Conference Model are some examples of
approaches which enable the whole system to have the data it needs for
planning change and then to go on to plan change in a way in a way that
gets the understanding and committment of all the people involved. (These
and other whole system approaches are discussed in a book by Bilie T Alban
and Barbara Benedict Bunker to be published by Jossey Bass in September
96.)

-- 

Martin Raff VISTA Consulting - for a better future martin@vistaraff.win-uk.net phone and fax: +44-1789 840418

-- 

Martin Raff VISTA Consulting - for a better future martin@vistaraff.win-uk.net phone and fax: +44-1789 840418

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