Driving Effective Organizational Change
By Sergio Vergara.
Have you ever been part of a team-building session where agreements are reached that seem so clear and to which everyone appears so genuinely committed, yet are subsequently not put into practice? The premise of this article is that the learning processes that give rise to effective organizations and teams are not always easy to spot, as they tend to unfold across three distinct levels that nevertheless operate simultaneously. These are:
These three dimensions will be described in this article, with the aim of illustrating how they operate within an organization simultaneously yet in different ways, which is why a successful organizational intervention approach requires the ability to distinguish which issues or challenges correspond to which dimension and what the most effective ways are to address change, bearing in mind that in most situations we need to intervene not on one dimension at a time, but on two or all three dimensions simultaneously if we wish to bring about sustainable change.
I. The Individual Dimension
The first dimension is where the changes we seek to bring about depend on individuals themselves. This means that individuals who form part of a team, or who are involved in the dynamics of the organization, have greater or lesser potential for effective interaction, depending on their background, experience and personal skills. Working to improve this aspect requires addressing the lessons each person has learnt throughout their life, understanding their emotions, what the person is capable of doing on a day-to-day basis, and how this is reflected in their emotions, their body and their language. For a long time, the significance of and work with emotions was relegated to the realm of psychological therapy. However, in recent years, the discipline of coaching has provided a much deeper understanding of the significance of emotions, and of the relationship between the body, movement and language in bringing about change and transformation in people. Approaching the coaching process with a simultaneous systemic and organizational perspective (as detailed below) provides a much greater understanding of how individual issues impact group dynamics or specific areas and, depending on the hierarchical level or sphere of influence, the organization or the business itself.
Let’s look at this real-life example to illustrate what we are describing:
Pablo, Finance Manager at a large national company, is a man who has struggled since childhood to get ahead in the absence of parents or support networks, and who has achieved significant success in his life. In a way, without realising it and through adaptation, he learnt to earn his place through hard work, accepting challenges, never saying no to any demand or request made of him by the figures of authority he has encountered in his life. He learnt to ‘prove himself’ in order to earn the right to receive recognition and be valued. The years have passed and today he is a successful member of a management team who unconsciously acts in the same way he learnt: as if he had all the duties, but none of the rights. Not only does this happen in their life in general, but the same applies in particular to their fellow members of the executive team.
He acts in such a way that he feels responsible for reporting on and fulfilling everything that is asked of him, but he does not take the time to point out to the managers representing other areas of the company the problems they create within the business—problems in which they themselves are involved. For example, it could be the case that the sales department, in its focus on results, neglects important procedures and needs the finance department to highlight the impact this has on the business as a whole. By failing to do so, the role of Finance Manager held in this case by Pablo is less effective within the organization, as Pablo, constrained by his behaviour—of which he is unaware—fails to shed light on a dynamic that matters to the organization and affects results, and which could lead to a change—whether in the attitude of certain managers in other departments or by highlighting a broader or systemic issue—where the need to reformulate processes, indicators, service agreements or other aspects becomes apparent.
This example shows us how an individual’s perspective impacts the team and the business, as well as the enormous value of understanding emotions and individual learning processes as a way of contributing not only to personal development, but also to the development of teams and organizations. That value lies in understanding that the factors which limit or enhance a person’s potential for effective interaction ultimately affect the contribution they make in their role within the organization or business; and the higher up they are in the organizational structure or the greater their level of influence, the greater that impact can be. The field of individual work therefore requires working with each person and their history, it is a space that presents challenges for leaders who can make a significant contribution to the development and learning of their staff, as well as a space for coaching that leaders or other specialist professionals can provide. This work, however, requires an individual willingness to embrace change and learning.
However, within this same context, there are certain paradigms or approaches to the issue that limit the impact of the individual’s work on the organization or on teams. One of these is what I would call ‘the pisco sour effect’, which amounts to a fairly common paradigm of reducing emotional aspects and human issues to ‘let’s get together for dinner and a drink, and that will sort out all the people-related problems’. In this paradigm, the emotional aspect is reduced to expressions of anger, joy, or sadness, and is treated without a systemic view, without understanding the enormous difference between having a pleasant social time and being able to address daily conflicts with respect, or making decisions more effectively with everyone’s commitment. The problem is that, from this perspective, one fails to grasp that the real value of working on emotional spaces lies in the fact that the emotional and the human sides are part of the work; this is evident in the way two departments resolve conflicts and address issues between them, as well as in the way people commit to an initiative, in the way discussions are open, and in the respectful raising of the underlying issues affecting the organization.
A second approach that limits the scope for intervention at the individual level is the tendency to reduce any organizational phenomenon or issue linked to people to ‘an attitude problem’. How often have we heard the expression ‘but in the end, it all comes down to the people’? Obviously, individual commitment and willingness are fundamental to any organizational change. However, as we shall see in the sub-section on the teams and systems dimension, when several people within an organization or a team exhibit the same pattern of behaviour—which is sometimes dysfunctional, such as protecting themselves, withholding information or working in silos—we can conclude, if we analyse it with a broader perspective, that people are acting within a pattern of relationships, that is to say, in some way they are ‘playing a game’ dictated by the things they do (for example, protecting themselves or withholding information) in relation to what they expect others to do. In turn, those others feel that everyone else is doing the same and therefore protect themselves too. Usually, those in authority tend to be part of the same game without realising it. If the very people who are ‘playing the game’ cannot see the dynamic they are caught up in, they have no way of changing it effectively through individual attitude alone.
However, this perspective is often overlooked within organizations, which opt for team-based approaches to problem-solving, under the assumption that if they can foster openness and willingness among staff, everything will change. Yet all this fades away when they return to the reality of day-to-day life, where the systemic context is very different and where people begin to fall back into their old ways without realising it. This frustration has led many executives to stop believing in this type of intervention, either due to the lack of real impact or because of the extremely long timeframe required to bring about change in the organization based solely on individual attitude change and persistence. In fact, we find this shortcoming in many practitioners of coaching and even in some of today’s leadership gurus. We are not saying that it is not important for a leader to be inspiring, innovative, challenging, creative, etc. Nor that people do not need to reinvent themselves or challenge themselves. Clearly, all of this is important. But without the context of understanding the dynamics surrounding an individual and the way the system to which they belong behaves—and, as we shall see later, the impact that the business model itself has on relationship dynamics—we might believe that all change is merely individual, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of any change interventions that may be undertaken.
A successful approach requires recognising that these three dimensions—business, teams/systems and the individual—operate simultaneously, and being able to identify the most effective ways of addressing each dimension at the same time.
II. The Group Dimension
In this dimension, the concept of ‘group’ is understood in the sense of human systems, and systemic, group and organizational dynamics. The Group Dimension encompasses all the dynamics and challenges where the key is to understand how people behave in social groups and how to bring about change within groups; this implies that individual dynamics may occur within groups that affect the group and the organization, but which require different and simultaneous approaches. In a group dynamic, people fulfil roles that determine the space they occupy within the group. For example, returning to Pablo’s case, he plays multiple roles in his life depending on the system in which he operates. We find formal roles such as father, son, brother, cousin, uncle, husband, brother-in-law, citizen, boss, colleague, manager, team-mate, etc.
We also find informal roles; for example, when one partner in a couple is very strict with the children, the other tends to take on a complementary role—such as that of a ‘conciliatory’ parent—which is a way of fulfilling the formal role of a parent. In many change processes, leaders who wish to encourage a different way of behaving within their teams need to adjust the way they fulfil their informal role, but not change their formal role. For example, Pablo will not cease to be the Finance Manager, but if he wants to help bring about change in the company, he will have to shift from being a ‘service-oriented’ manager to a ‘motivating’ manager.
The roles we fulfil change depending on the system in which we operate and determine our interests. Just ask yourself whether your interests, behaviour and even the way you speak change when you’re talking to a manager at your company, your children or your group of friends. At the same time, just as is the case with individuals, groups are constantly learning. Understanding that learning is not synonymous with acquiring intellectual knowledge, but rather a deeply adaptive process—that is to say, in a way, both individuals and social groups find ways of relating to the reality around them that prove effective, and to the extent that these work, they tend to repeat them.
From an individual perspective, this is one of the aspects addressed in ontological coaching: helping people to recognise which life lessons have led them to ‘view’ life in a particular way, as a result of which they developed a way of relating to themselves, the world and its challenges that was once useful to them, but which now acts as a straitjacket that restricts them and limits their possibilities. The coach seeks to generate new learning or support the person in ‘unlearning’ old relationship patterns that are dysfunctional for them. In the case of groups, this process is somewhat more complex to observe, as the number of people involved is greater, which requires a greater capacity to take a step back and gain perspective. The focus is on understanding not what people do, but what they do in relation to what and whom, and in what way. Let’s take a systemic example from nature: perhaps you have once seen a tree that has grown in the shade of another, which was blocking its sunlight. The first tree found ways to survive; it sought to grow sideways to receive sunlight. This was an adaptive response, a survival strategy; however, we can see that whilst it managed to survive, the trunk grew crooked. Adaptive behaviours are part of life; they occur in nature and in human beings. It is inevitable that groups learn, just as it is inevitable that individuals learn. For that reason, as they work towards achieving results, teams learn new things. This learning is adaptive. Which leads to another conclusion: “Not everything teams learn, and not all adaptive learning, is necessarily healthy.” It may have been effective at one point, but when environmental conditions change, teams tend to maintain the same learned behaviours, which prove ineffective and sometimes harmful to the organization. In most situations, such learning is entirely unconscious; no one agreed with anyone else, people simply changed the way they performed their informal roles based on underlying assumptions about what works.
This adaptive behaviour on the part of groups and teams enables them to cope, amongst other things, with negative leadership and with organisational, national or economic crises that affect them. There is a wealth of literature describing and explaining systemic dynamics, ranging from clinical psychology to Peter Senge’s organizational approach. Many of these approaches focus on the work of the specialist in organizational intervention. This article suggests that, to the extent that the three dimensions (business, group and individual) can be understood and distinguished by the very people who form part of the organization, it is possible to return the work to those who need to do it and thus generate more sustainable changes. To add another element to our understanding of the phenomenon, let us introduce a couple of distinctions drawn from Ronald Heifetz’s leadership approach (Harvard, 1994). Let us note that a group or team within an organisation seeks certain outcomes. These outcomes are ‘deliverables’, that is, concrete results that the organization expects from the role this team fulfils. For example, in the case of a sales team, these are sales volumes or market share; in the case of a football team, the results relate to matches won and the number of goals scored. A second distinction is the process, that is to say, the way in which the team achieves those results.
In the case of a football team, it is “the way the game is played”; in other words, beyond whether matches are won or lost, it is about whether the players work together or tend to be individualistic. When we talk about adaptive learning, this learning takes place at the process level; in other words, as teams strive for results, they learn ways of playing the game that work. It is crucial that a manager wishing to exercise leadership is able to take a step back and observe what their team is learning in the process of achieving results, something that is often completely overlooked and seen as unnecessary, particularly when results are satisfactory. An example of this is the relationship pattern known as ‘monocephalic’, which behaves as shown in the image below.
This pattern involves a dynamic created by a leader—who could well be the founder of the company or organization—who shapes the business entirely in accordance with their own style and criteria. To the extent that the founder is skilled, the business model is successful and therefore grows, which is why those around the founder tend to act in line with their criteria. For his part, he gets involved in every detail, shaping the organization ‘in his own image’. Eventually, the team of employees learns to depend on the boss and to have a personal relationship with him. They also learn that, rather than seeking collaboration with their peers, what works is gaining the boss’s approval. When the operation is small or the business model has not yet become complex, this dynamic works very well, as decisions are made very quickly; all you need to do is consult the boss, who will promptly provide a technical solution that works. However, when the operation is very large, geographically dispersed, has become complex, or staff are demanding greater autonomy, the model begins to ‘fall apart’. Typical signs that this pattern of relationships is inadequate include: the boss feels isolated, thinking “nobody cares about what I care about”; employees, for their part, feel something like “I feel under-empowered here, I need more autonomy – why does everything have to go through the boss?”.
Without looking at the pattern of relationships, would it be possible to change it simply by appealing to personal attitude? Clearly, both the boss and the staff are part of the same game; it is not just the boss who is monocephalic– his subordinates have learnt to be just as monocephalicas he is and tend to maintain this dependency, and it is surely the same model they replicate with their own teams. In this second dimension, we see that a sustainable process of change requires looking at the dynamics of the group/system within which individuals are embedded and being able to recognise what belongs to the individual and what belongs to the group/system. The answer to this question is that if, within a group, we encounter issues experienced by one or very few people, then we could attribute this to the first dimension; consequently, it will be a challenge for the team leader in their role as a coach, or it will definitely be part of the work that the affected person will undertake with a trained coach. However, if we find that the issue described is not affecting one person, but several people within the team, then we are clearly dealing with a systemic pattern, the resolution of which requires, first and foremost, that we visualise ‘what’s the game’ we are all playing, and then visualise how we can change it.
III. The Business Dimension
The business model and corporate culture determine the third dimension, which affects individuals and teams.
Let’s take an example. Jorge is the manager of a plant within a multinational organization that has now changed its business model and operates regionally under a ‘cluster’ structure (i.e. groups of countries grouped by region). One day, a cluster manager calls Juan, the plant’s financial controller, who, in addition to reporting to Jorge, also reports to Regional Management. The Regional Manager, like all his counterparts, is putting pressure on his staff to implement the various initiatives defined by head office, which nowadays involve producing with quality, profitability, safety, a good working environment, strong leadership, passing various environmental and technical audits, demonstrating social responsibility, and achieving good results in the Great Place to Work survey. All this is obviously keeping the members of Jorge’s team very busy and under pressure. But the Regional Manager is not interested in all these issues, but mainly in those relating to the initiatives in his finance department. This is why, when Juan replies that he has not had time to gather the information, the Regional Manager feels annoyed and decides to speak directly to his boss, the CEO. A few hours later, Jorge receives a call from the Chief Executive, who reproaches him for failing to provide the requested information to the Regional Manager. The whole matter takes Jorge by surprise. He doesn’t even know what it’s about, because he never actually took part in the discussion between the plant controller and the Regional Manager. Feeling threatened by this situation, he takes it out on Juan, his controller, and decides to call him to reproach him for what he considers to be his poor attitude. Is this problem really down to people’s attitudes? Wasn’t Juan simply trying to prioritise the plant’s issues? Surely this problem does not only affect the controller, but also his colleagues who report to both the plant manager and regional management. If these frictions and conflicts occur from time to time, it is likely that people will act on an implicit assessment: ‘since I don’t have enough time to respond to so many things, who should I answer to?’ They may start to wonder who they should work for—the region or their line manager—depending on their assessment of who has the power to dismiss or promote them.
We can therefore conclude that if the impact of the dynamics generated by the business model, the impact of the culture and of systemic group dynamics are not taken into account, addressing individual attitudes alone is, in itself, wholly insufficient. Organizational change therefore occurs simultaneously at these three levels in a complementary manner.
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