Deep Organizational Change Almost Always Requires a Burning Platform

Deep sustainable change in organizations almost always requires a burning platform and there are two kinds: reactive and proactive. The reactive kind is when managers wait until a situation has gone critical to seek help or try to alter destructive patterns-of-interaction. Alternatively, managers who adopt the proactive kind of burning platform realize that while the situation may not be critical right now, it probably will be if they allow destructive patterns-of-interaction to continue frustrating and undermining their work-group. Managers and their staff need to ask the question, “How bad are we hurting?” If the answer is, “Not that bad,” then things normally go on as they are, until the next organizational problem raises its ugly head – normally when they least expect it. So how do managers and staff members who see the world so differently come to see the world otherwise? Edgar Schein’s model for raising organizational awareness is a powerful tool for changing how managers and staff members see themselves, others, and the world around them.

• The first step is to use objective data from the organization’s actual performance to begin to cast doubt on an organization’s ways of doing business and cultural norms.

• The second step requires managers and staff members to begin to see themselves as being partly responsible for causing an organization’s performance problems and issues. Once this sense of personal responsibility sufficiently penetrates a person’s denial and defense routines, they begin to experience survival anxiety or guilt about the “truth” that they really need to help the organization change. In the final analysis, organizations are collective-cultural entities that are led, managed and changed one person at a time.

• As their awareness increases, the third step is for individuals to allow their contributions to the day-to-day problems in an organization to function as additional disconfirming evidence that further convinces them that things cannot continue the way they are. When the weight of evidence of these three steps combines, this becomes a powerful motivation for managers and staff members in an organization to change.

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Organizational Alignment Indicator™

Is your organization unable to change in the face of forces and threats from the business environment? Do you make key decisions that go unimplemented or get reversed? Are you struggling against overly complex systems that frustrate and undermine your attempts to create positive change? Does your organization’s culture act like an Invisible Bureaucracy™ that keeps you from achieving your goals and objectives? These are signs that your organization is not aligned to get the results you want. The Breckenridge Institute’s free Organizational Alignment Indicator™ will show you what this may be costing you in squandered time and energy – hidden costs that don’t appear on the Balance Sheet or Budget Statements.

Free Organizational Alignment Indicator™

Just click on the link above, complete the questions in 2-3 minutes, and your free Organizational Alignment Indicator™ report will be sent directly to you. This is the first step to making invisible bureaucracy visible and to helping your organization get the results it wants.

HBR Editor’s Blog

Every month, the senior editors of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) invite internationally recognized organizational theorists and practitioners to raise issues and answer questions about leadership and management issues on the HBR Editor’s Blog. This month, we provide Pinnacle readers with links to two important and interesting discussions (see below).

Sarah Green, Why Being Wrong Feels So Right (And What You Can Do About It)

Chris Meyer and Julia Kirby, The Noncorporate Organization

We encourage you to join the conversation on the HBR Editor’s Blog and voice your opinions, commentary, and insights on these and other important topics.

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Breckenridge Institute^®

If you would like information about the Breckenridge Institute’s research activities, portfolio of organizational assessment tools, portfolio of individual assessment tools, or consulting services, visit our website at www.breckenridgeinstitute.com. Also visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/markbodnarczuk.

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Better Results through Diagnosis™

“If someone asks us to change our way of thinking or perceiving, and that way is based on what we have learned in a group that we belong to, we will resist the change because we will not want to deviate from our group even if privately we think that the group is wrong.”

Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership

The Organizational Alignment Indicator™ (OAI™)

Every organization is perfectly aligned to get the results they get. Because the OAI™ can be used to baseline the alignment of an entire organization or a work-group, it is typically used by top managers, business owners, and middle-managers when they are anticipating or experiencing significant change due to substantial growth; reorganizations; a performance impasse; changes in leadership; change in strategic direction; decline in business performance; or mergers and acquisitions. The OAI™ can also be used as an effective alternative to 360-degree reviews because it allows you to evaluate a manager’s leadership and management skills, within the context of an organization’s structures, systems, and culture. The OAI™ will help you align your organization’s strategy, execution, and organizational culture to get the results you want. It will also show you what misaligned structures, systems, and culture may be costing you in squandered time and energy – valuable resources that become unavailable to help you achieve your goals and objectives.

DOWNLOAD SAMPLE REPORT

Contact the Breckenridge Institute® for details on how you can begin using this exciting new tool in your organization, or with your clients (info@breckenridgeinstitute.com).