Develop and articulate ideas for describing leading change in an organisation of your choice
For this week's activity, I will apply Michael Fullan's (2001) model of change to the organisation where I work - HKBU. Specifically, I will focus mainly on the fifth component of his model, coherence making. I believe that his discussion of this area has the most relevance in terms of ideas that might help HKBU advance as an organisation.
At the beginning of his chapter on coherence making, Fullan states that "the central tendency of dynamic, complex systems ... is to constantly generate overload and cause fragmentation" (pp. 107-108). However, this is not seen as a negative phenomenon, but one which effective leaders will exploit. In fact, Fullan argues that while coherence is necessary, persistent coherence is a dangerous thing as it stifles innovation.
There is arguably an important lesson to be learned here for HKBU. In my view, stability and order is highly valued in the organisational culture. The University is structured in a strict hierarchy, and in such systems Fullan believes that "it is easy to get away with superficial compliance or even subtle sabotage" (p. 118). A radical approach for HKBU based on Fullan's ideas would be to restructure into an interactive system where leaders give up traditional command and control, and to become context setters rather than authority figures with solutions.
Many of the ideas that Fullan puts forward in this chapter are based on the work of Pascale, Milleman, and Gioja (2000) who argue that the world is not chaotic, but instead is complex. This is aligned with the ideas of Peter Senge discussed in Week One, who also emphasised the complexity of organisations in his fifth discipline - systems thinking. We can see that there are certainly similarities across the different models, and that we need a working knowledge of all of them if we are to approach a complete understanding of our own organisations.
In this brief clip Richard Pascale again makes this point that innovators need to understand their organisations in order to be effective:
References:
Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Still two copies available through HKALL at the time of posting: http://hkall.hku.hk/record=b10301110
Pascale, R., Milleman, M., & Gioja, L. (2000). Surfing the edge of chaos. New York: Crown Book Publishing.
Loads of copies available, including at HKU Libraries:
http://hkall.hku.hk/record=b10202893
Chris:
ReplyDeleteI agree with your reading of Fullan's model here. When I first read his chapter on Coherence I was a little confused. It seemed illogical to me to introduce chaos into an organisation. But then I thought about innovative workplaces I've heard of and how they allow freedom to staff to explore ideas and individual agendas (Google for example, and smaller workplaces: A friend of my father owned an engineering company and allowed, well forced really, his staff to work one day a month on their own engineering project or research).
Companies are complex things. Some are constantly changing and others are more stable, but all need a degree of uncertainty to avoid complacency and foster innovation.
So I think Coherence is understanding how an organisation works and what it needs so you can keep it on its toes!
Yes, the idea of needing to be on the "edge of chaos" in order to be creative is an interesting one. It certainly spoke to me as the government-funded universities in HK strike me as quite complacent in the sense that they highly value stability. They may benefit from leaders that actively encourage a bit of (coherent)chaos!
ReplyDeleteTalking about the government-funded institutions, 'stability' has been highly appreciated over the past decades especially at the time closed to handover. That's political issue which should not be discussed here. Probably we found many leaders of these institutions to be those who get used to it. Unless severe forces which lead to restructuring or organizational reform, chaos (even a bit) are obviously not preferred...
ReplyDeleteAt my school we certainly have a lot of change and quite a bit of chaos as a result, but I do not know if it is really the right type as it tends to be pushed into the school as opposed to the school identifying a need and pulling it in. Coherence really requires understanding of organisational needs, ideally matched to where it wants to go/be in the future.
ReplyDeleteHi, Chris. in my organization the situation of coherence making is similar to yours.I believe it is hard for the leader to lead organization to get into perfect. Understanding is the most and chiefly thing the organization should learn. Not only understanding the structure , but also culture, form and other influence factors.
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