An Effective Methodology?
An effective methodology for managing cultural learning and change is
both sound, based on the requisite
philosophy of critical constructivism, and comprehensive, containing
the three key phases of reframing, restructuring and recreating.
Each phase is comprised of 3 essential steps:
Reframing Reframing the present; reframing
the present-future relationship; reframing the future. Restructuring Surfacing cultural beliefs;
assessing cultural beliefs; documenting the paradigm of the preferred future.
Recreating Experimental believing; success;
fine tuning.
Most cultural change initiatives fail for the lack of an effective
overarching methodology. Its absence reduces these undertakings
to little more than a melange of tactics, techniques and activities.
Since many of them are potentially powerful, such as visioning,
and/or threatening, such as the case for change, the failure
often leaves the organization worse off than if the initiative
had never been attempted. For example:
- An effective case for
change is designed to constructively damage the status quo
and create a sense of urgency before there is a desperate emergency.
Rather than a catalyst for cultural learning, this tactic
is too often the means for gaining behavioural compliance
with management specified actions.
- In reframing the present-future relationship, organization members
are provided with a road map for learning their way from
the here and now of the present crisis to the there and then
of a preferred future. This activity is typically neglected
and members have only the familiar road used in conventional
skill and knowledge learning, one totally inadequate for
navigating the subsequent steps in cultural learning and
change.
- Reframing the future through visioning is often a very successful
technique and generates a tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm.
However, without the negotiation of and agreement on the beliefs
required to realize the vision, the energy soon subsides.
The disconnected vision quicky becomes nothing more than
an empty pipe dream that breeds cynicism or a “hypocrisy
meters” that employees use to measure the formal leadership's failure to "walk
the talk".
- Experimental believing provides the opportunity for learners to
practice seeing the world through and thinking from the paradigm
of the preferred future. Divorced from the requisite methodology,
it deteriorates into an attempt at indoctrination.
- If not managed effectively, even an initial success in a cultural
change initiative can have an insidious outcome. Peter
Senge ( The Dance
of Change: The Challenges To Sustaining The Learning Organization,
1999) describes it as “They're acting like a cult”. This occurs when a
group or team that is part of a larger cultural change initiative
falls prey to arrogance and begins to divide the company into “believers” and “non-believers”.
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