Early beginnings
In the early 1980s, what started with
Dannemiller Tyson Associates’ effort to help Ford Motor Company shift its
management culture from a ‘Command and Control’ to a more ‘Participative’ one has
gained popularity in the last four decades for the impact and strategic value it
brings to organisations. During the transformation at Ford, it was called Large-group
interactive processes based on the need to bring larger groups of people together
to move quickly in the Organisation’s strategic direction. Later, in a similar
challenge with Boeing, the need to get large groups of people connected to
develop a common and accurate strategy was yet again identified. This was
called Real-Time Strategic Change at that time because of the idea that once a group
of the whole system realises that they have a common database and are able to
identify what piece of the puzzle they fit into; change has already begun. Addressing
the mindset of the whole is the bigger challenge than actually changing
processes across a whole system. It is the change in mindset that is slow,
tedious and wearing.
The applicability of the change
processes developed for a Ford and a Boeing was not only limited to them, but
it also helped understand the process issues, organisation design problems, regular
work issues in any organisation. This led to developing a methodology that
would not only help organisations move through organisation-wide change faster,
but also bring strategic conversations from the top to the day-to-day issues of
the employees in the whole system.
A shift in Change management
The traditional approaches of setting
up processes and then changing mindsets to fit into the processes were leading
to failed change efforts because systemic thinking calls for the need to
address mindsets and then accommodate processes in alignment to the mindset
shifts. Consider the situation of a child being fed forcefully, the child would
resist eating the cereal may the skies fall. Resistance here is demonstrated in
terms of crying and agitation. The behaviour of employee resistance is more
complex and passive. However, if the child is fed when the child realises that
it is hungry, they seem to eat peacefully. Creating a shift in mindset is similar
to creating hunger in the employees, they understand the need for everyone to
change in one direction. Now from a large system perspective, if the child is
hungry and is willing to eat, but they are also given the choice of food that
they like and then suddenly there are no qualms and tantrums about eating any longer.
Likewise, once the need is realised, then a participative process of
collectively developing a solution gives the employees who form ‘the parts of
the whole’ the accountability to ensure the change is successful.
Large System Interventions: A way forward
This new approach helped
organizations move faster and deeper into finding collective equilibrium for
successful change efforts. The Large group process began to be called
Whole-Scale because the power and wisdom of groups within the whole allowed the
organisation to visualise the whole system and change the whole system. The parts
of the whole were indeed emerging to contain larger potential than the whole
itself. When a microcosm of the whole is worked with, the potential of every
microcosm to think “whole” about their present realities and future needs become
critical to the strategic direction of the organisation. Large system change is
sometimes confused to be a process of driving change by having everyone come
together on a singular platform, but this is only one perspective of Large
system change. While there are tools like Future search, World café, Open
spaces that help facilitate large systemic changes for a larger number of
people, significant change can also be brought about without having the whole
system in one place at one time. Whole-Scale means that we are always operating
and thinking of the whole organization while the true microcosms of the
organization are at work. Large system interventions could be with thirty
people or 3,000 people, the principle of engaging the microcosm and seeing
“whole” remains constant.
What Ford realised four decades back has become the way of life
in many organisations today, while some are still progressing to transform to
be a systemic organisation, some others are struggling. In the era post fourth
Industrial revolutions, we are looking at an age where industries colliding into
one another’s space. No sector is privy to the industry that it operates in,
disruptions are as regular as the pace of product launch in technology
companies. The need for large systems to change quickly is imperative not just
for their success but for their very survival.
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