Why is Intentional Organizational Change so Hard?

Organizations are like biological organisms, both with encoded behaviors, both impacting and responding to changes in their environments.  Organisms and organizations alike survive and prosper or fail based on adaptations to their coding.  Organisms use DNA and RNA, organizations use explicit directives and repeated actions.  Further, while organisms and organizations must change to survive, they both exhibit resistance to "excessive" change. If too much change occurs per unit of time, internal coordination breaks down, causing  organisms and organizations to lose effectiveness in dealing with the environment, with consequences up to and including death.

Let’s assume for now that we have an organization that is not “changing excessively” (how do we know that?  A good matter for another discussion.)  So why are proposed changes hard?  Let’s start with the “hard” part -- how many times have you heard someone say something is "hard" and you thought to yourself that "hard" was simply be an excuse to avoid work or apologize for poor work?  If we remove value judgment, when we assess that organizational change is “hard” or “difficult” to execute, what we are saying is that we have not secured acceptance and endorsement of the proposed change from a critical mass of participants, together with their performance of all necessary actions to effect it.   You can claim there are three primary elements of intentional organization change:  1) a promise of benefits to the proposed change, together with 2) a set of requests  for necessary effective actions by a critical mass of participants, 3) promises to perform and fulfillment of the necessary effective actions for change by the critical mass of participants.

We can observe an overall breakdown in implementing organizational change as one or more breakdowns in the underlying primary elements:

Breakdowns in the promise of change:

·  Inadequate distribution/promotion (aka “selling”) of the proposition to enlist a critical mass of participants

·  Ambiguity, lack of specificity and/or low assessed value of benefits offered, causing a lack of endorsement of change by a critical mass of participants

Breakdowns in requesting and securing promises for effective action:

·  Requests for actions that prove to be ineffective or harmful to the organization

·  Participants’ fear of failure in performing actions required by propose change

Breakdowns in Participants’ taking necessary effective actions:

·  Critical mass of participants make necessary promises to act, but are not sincere about fulfilling their promises

·  Critical mass of participants promise, are sincere, but are not competent to fulfill the necessary actions

·  Participants promise and fulfill requested action but requested action proves to be ineffective or harmful to the organization

And just as importantly, breakdowns in organizational change can be due to changes in the environment that occur during the change process.  Organizations cannot “act in a vacuum” - proposed organizational change can fail if during the time the organization takes to design and implement change the environment changes in a way that diminishes or invalidates the benefits of the proposed change.

Using this framework, we can appreciate that intentional organizational change is a grand design project requiring numerous effective conversations concerning what is desirable, what is possible and how the work of change is fulfilled, and how its effects should be assessed.  How many organizational changes have you participated in that were designed versus "driven", and what were the consequences?   At work?  In local/regional/national/global politics?