NEXT PRACTICE INSTITUTE
The Work of Transformational Consulting by Mobius Senior Expert, Robert Gass
O
rganizations are complex systems. Most change efforts focus on only one element of the system. Perhaps we are seeking to reorganize reporting relationships, create more teamwork, build a new strategic plan, increase accountability, reorganize a department, install a new performance management system, or improve communication. The problem is that the piece of the organizational system we are trying to change is completely interconnected and interdependent with other parts of the system. All too often, we see well-intended changes that fail to achieve the desired results: •
n attempt to implement an improved A performance appraisal system gains little traction due to staff’s underlying lack of trust in management.
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strategic planning process yields poor results A due to an unresolved lack of alignment around the vision for the organization.
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structural reorganization gets stuck due to A competition among senior managers.
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epeated attempts to reconcile what seems like R interpersonal mistrust between several key staff fail due to an unaddressed lack of clarity in their roles and overlapping organizational mandates.
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n effort to improve accountability breaks down A due to a general lack of cultural competency leading to miscommunication, confused expectations, unintentional slights, and hurt feelings among different social groups.
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n initiative to build team spirit and cooperation A is undermined by failing to change the nature of work plans which continue to focus on individual performance.
Without a systemic approach, we often see what appears to be progress, perhaps even breakthroughs, only to watch the “changes” erode as things revert back to their original conditions. We have failed to address the organization as an interconnected, interdependent system. Dimensions of the organization are being left unattended. This is a failure to address organizations as interconnected, interdependent systems.
“Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches,
and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divinings, perhaps we could endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.
”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet
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