When the organization needs to be constantly responsive, there is a high degree of change. Therefore, as a leader, I need to carefully consider both my own motives for change and the response of employees and the organization in this constant process. Change management The world is not stable and predictable, but full of complex challenges and change. Therefore, positivist science alone cannot deliver the truth. In 2007, the financial crisis showed how old, well-estimated companies and banks collapsed, basically because they were living in a past management style of governance. Since February 2020, the world has been ruled by a new crisis: the coronavirus pandemic. It has affected life and work at all levels, including at Mission Africa, where all employees have been sent home on salary compensation twice because all our thrift stores were closed.
Psychotherapist Virginia Satir works with the traditional four-phase change model:
1) old status quo, 2) chaos, 3) practice and integration and 4) new status quo.
It is important to consider emotions in an emergent change project of holistic people. For example, some of my employees have taken sick leave during the repatriation, even though they should be at peace in their everyday lives. To understand what is happening here, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ “Stages of the five stages of Grief Cycle” is eyeopening. She researched what is at stake for the individual in the process of change with the five stages of grief that one goes through on the path to acceptance. Originally, the model was linear, but the latest grief research works more cyclically, where you can jump from one stage to another and back again. Change is positive development if I, as a leader, know how to make it sustainable and create added value. The observations show that it took a long time before my employees saw why I was talking about agility, Scrum, etc. It’s only in the last few months that I’ve experienced a solid buy-in from some of them, while others are still waiting to feel the practical benefits of the cultural shift. But I don’t want to force and push them to the well, but work on facilitating and showing the delicious water so that they go there and drink with ownership of the situation.
Employees will always think of themselves first: “What impact will the change have on my daily life?” The highest potential is achieved less by leading the change and more by leading my employees. Therefore, as a leader, I have a huge task in creating energy and joy in the change process by clearly explaining the meaning, purpose, start and end, and what we will achieve together with the change.
Crises bring unique opportunities to strengthen the resilience of the change management that is needed. Trust emerges when I practice employee ownership and empowerment rather than top-down management through the subsequent crises we’ve been through since. This is very much in line with theories from companies where the change strategy is primarily played out in the heads of top management. Here, employees don’t get ownership, and in 70% of cases, it ends up not being sustainable because the people in charge don’t have the ability to lead the change. Therefore, a management approach is for the leadership team to involve and listen to employees, and lead through the entire process: Plan, Test, Check/experience, and Act/transform/implement. Furthermore, we need to hold on to good habits for the future. We have a unique opportunity during and after Corona, and have repeatedly articulated the vision and goal so that employees could focus on their core tasks, rather than falling back into the groove of the everyday rhythm, where there is little room for innovation. To succeed with resilient change, I am very aware of the inner complexity of social constructionism, where the network is crucial. Therefore, we must emphasize the role of ambassador and collaboration.
Otto Scharmer’s Theory-U adds a new perspective. We must “lead from the future as it comes to us”. Scharmer wants to set the process free. We shouldn’t control it, but step aside, let go, and start somewhere new, where the solution emerges almost by itself. We truly needed this when the coronavirus pandemic swept the world and became a wild social and spiritual space where society has come together for a higher purpose and change management was on the agenda every minute.
We have created new digital social worlds and habits. New solutions and business models have been developed at record speed, where we could reflect on things for years before something might take off. I wrote to my employees that:
“We will miss a historic opportunity to learn about ourselves, each other, and our interactions with the world around us if we don’t dive into what we are learning. We need to use this experience to continue to break boundaries and do/remove things we’ve known for a long time we should do and remove, but haven’t had the courage or time to do anything about.
Some love times of change. Others are shaken by them. And there has to be room for that, because we all become more vulnerable, even if we want to show vigor. Both in times of crisis and in the “ordinary” everyday life of change, change will run out of steam if you only change one person. Lewin describes an infinite complexity where a myriad of parameters affect each other’s autopoiesis. Maturana and Varelas talk about ‘self-creation’. This is reminiscent of Laloux’s ecosystem, where we mutually influence each other, adapting and recreating ourselves along with our surroundings. As nature generates new energy from dead biomass, we find new ways outside the organization (thinking outside the box) or do new things inside the organization in a better way (thinking inside the box). Maybe we find a Blue Ocean that can take the organization to a new level, just like recycling was when we pioneered it 36 years ago.
Defense mechanisms
It’s so easy to say, “If we don’t change course, we’ll end up where we’re headed”. When we experience inertia to change, it’s often due to the enormously complex human brain creating piles of both destructively inappropriate and constructively appropriate defense mechanisms. It can be a challenge to empirically study emotions.
Change can be associated with strong emotions such as loss and humiliation. In Mission Africa, we are primarily challenged by the old hinterland of donors who have given money to the organization for many years and to some extent continue to support it.
Maurer has taught me to use dialog as a way out of chaos in a cyclical dimension of change. His three levels of change resistance have helped me with a practical approach on how to deal with resistance and create solid relationships through change. Because “there are no resistors. People resist in response to something – often a way a change is being led”. Yes, he is so right! I grasped his three levels in the following way:
1) “I don’t get it” occurs when there is a lack of information, disagreement, and a lack of vision for critical details. I observe this in my change management. Confidence in the responsive change only arises when I present the change using language that is targeted to my audience – my employees, board, and backers, where I explain “why the change is needed”. But especially recently, I’ve become aware of how much it matters that I use different language for different audiences and age groups because, for example, the board reacts differently to the information than employees.
2) “I don’t like it” is an emotional reaction to the change, based on fear of losing face, status, and control – maybe even their jobs. When I terminated a manager in late 2020, the rest of his department was shaking in their boots because what did the “organizational change” mean for their everyday lives and jobs? The dialog was important, but difficult because we went into fight-flight mode. Here I used Maurer’s dialog technique and had several conversations with the team about what the change would mean for them and that the change would be in their best interest. Their involvement in the process was important.
3) “I don’t like You” is not opposition to an idea (which they may love), but to the leader’s personality. Maybe it’s just a skepticism about the people I represent – e.g. the head office or the board, but it shouldn’t be ignored. I’ve felt it quite strongly myself after a few months in the organization, where my leadership team went behind my back and approached the chairman of the board directly because they wanted me removed. They were so uncomfortable with my leadership and I was in bombshell shock. After some reflection time and conversations with Bent Jakobsen as a coach, I realized that there was only one way: the Maurer way.
The last two levels of change resistance in Maurer’s model have been known for thousands of years. There is an additional level of resilience – a spiritual level. The Bible sometimes describes resistance as having a “heart of stone”. It gives a deeper aspect when you also realize that resistance can be caused by distrust in oneself! It can be due to failures, or disappointments, our natural trust is shattered and we become bitter, perhaps due to defeat, loneliness, etc.
It can also be a spiritual distrust of God. We become hard-hearted instead of “surrendering” in faith and trust. Some people become angry with God and experience a loss of freedom – less circulation in the heart of trust.
It is important to be aware of these defense mechanisms so that I can respond to them. Employees really need to see the meaning behind the changes. So working on meaning is essential.
Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument
OCAI is a model that uses a questionnaire to define how organizations move within the four areas of Clan, Adhockracy, Market and Hierarchy. All organizations lie in a mix between these four, with one dominant culture type. The values of the different types compete with each other, so they are in a kind of tension.
My dream is that we evolve towards the Klan sphere, where trust, commitment and loyalty show the cohesiveness of the organization. But it’s utopian to think we can be in this field alone, as different employees need different leadership styles to be in flow. For example, not everyone is equally good at self-management. Mission Africa works with long-term, sustainable partnerships where we walk the Emmaus walk together, and the Klan sphere is precisely “long term devolopment”.