Configuring Successful Change
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The document discusses the importance of managing change through a strategic approach that prioritizes understanding and addressing complexity rather than merely conforming to productivity metrics. It emphasizes that successful change relies on stakeholder perceptions of progress and the quality of design in communication and information. Reconciling different management perspectives is crucial for effective decision-making and ensuring that change initiatives produce practical value over time.
Configuring Successful Change
- 2. Working on the Future Conventional management is predisposed to direct progress. This is dominated by the intent to conform productivity to desired performance. While managing change is a goal-oriented effort, the value of change is in its adoption (new state), not in its completion (procedure). Business value in Change means that something practical has been replaced by something else equally or moreso practical. The lifespan of the new practicality is a huge part of its value, and the role of productivity is to raise the probability that the lifespan will begin as needed. But in managing change, productivity is not the basis of value; it is only a support mechanism for evolving current states into future states.
- 3. Future of Work Managing change for value requires emphasizing doing the right work over doing the work right. The intended outcome of a deliberate change is always deemed by the target stakeholder to be “progress” – and Performance management is still a key business effort in making change progress a reality. But performance management should not be the primary management orientation for managing change. Management focused on conforming productivity is challenged mainly by complexity, without being very good at solving it. Identifying and solving complexity should be the earliest stage of managing change. It is strategic design work that creates the potential for producing value. Design quality begins with information and ends with instructive communication.
- 4. CULTURE VALUES EXPECTATIONS DEMAND RATIONALES REQUIREMENTS IMPACTS INFORMATION SCOPE SEVEN KEY VARIABLES TO TRACK IN THE SCOPE OF COMPLEXITY ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
- 5. Need To Get: Constructive Information • Systematic, pervasive transparency • Advocacy • Learning • Assessments MANAGEMENT FOCUS
- 6. Analysis Complexity as Competing Perspectives
- 7. Deconstruction Management terminology generally intends to provide reliable description and guidance on how to practice. One of the goals of that terminology is to reduce complexity to simpler but reliable recurring patterns, making their encounters more approachable with processes, and making the accountability of those encounters easier to communicate. But the semantics of conventional management tend to initially oversimplify or gloss over the underlying elements and structure of complexity. The following diagrams show how the details of complexity are visible when management oversimplification is not the starting point. The following also shows that there are large differences between multiple management perspectives that should be reconciled before change execution begins.
- 8. AAA BBB CCC DDD Is affecting Is affecting IS RELATED TO (Issue X) (Issue Y) The apparent associations are dependent on the management perspectives brought to the observations: Controls: Environment or Experiences Conditions: Dynamics or Constraints Action: Interventions or Execution Planning: Proposals or Accounting LEGEND The following illustrates and tracks ways that issues and their included elements are identified and associated. Each perspective represents a type of influence that management intends to exert. Each perspective brings a different way of grouping and identifying the key elements of complexity. Differences between the various management perspectives should be reconciled before change execution begins.
- 9. Examples: CULTURE VALUES promotes Detailed: Elements and association within an issue Simplified: management issues and association between issues In this example of one perspective, an issue simply labeled “Priorities” (at right) stands for the relationship detailed between more specific multiple elements (at left). ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
- 10. Perspective: Controls Special attention: Impacts Note: Authorities attempt to manage the perceived environment as experiences
- 11. Directing Accounting for Producing testing CULTURE VALUES EXPECTATIONS DEMAND RATIONALES REQUIREMENTS promotes IMPACTS encouraging ENVIRONMENT justifying ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
- 12. Directing Accounting for Producing testing RESULTS EXPERIENCES PRIORITIES ATTENTION COMMITMENTS ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
- 13. Need To See: A Psychological Environment • Experiences of Events • Counseling and leadership • Patterns and histories • Safety and Support MANAGEMENT FOCUS
- 14. Perspective: Conditions Special attention: Requirements Note: Stakeholders do not necessarily agree on the importance or urgency of conditions
- 15. CULTURE VALUES EXPECTATIONS DEMAND RATIONALES REQUIREMENTS promotes setting encouraging supplying targeting testing IMPACTS justifying DYNAMICS ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
- 16. REQUIREMENTS promotes encouraging targeting justifying CONSTRAINTS NEEDS OBJECTIVES RISKS ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
- 17. Perspective: Action Special attention: Impacts Note: Interventions tend to begin out of synch with existing dynamics
- 18. CULTURE VALUES EXPECTATIONS DEMAND RATIONALES REQUIREMENTS promotes setting encouraging supplying justifying targeting testing IMPACTS INTERVENTIONS ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
- 19. setting supplying targeting testing IMPACTS EXECUTION RULES PRIORITIES METHODS ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
- 20. Obviously there is an alignment problem to solve when action is considered for intervening in the current dynamics.
- 21. Need to Do: Ecology • Gap analysis: current norms (dynamics) versus intended imperatives (interventions) • Dependency modeling • Risk modeling • Policy & Support methods MANAGEMENT FOCUS
- 22. Perspective: Planning Special attention: Culture and Client may not match Note: Stakeholders do not necessarily agree on culture
- 23. CULTURE VALUES EXPECTATIONS DEMAND RATIONALES REQUIREMENTS promotes setting encouraging supplying justifying targeting testing IMPACTS PROPOSALS ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
- 24. CLIENT NEEDS OBJECTIVES PLANS promotes encouraging justifying testing ACCOUNTING ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
- 25. Need to Organize: Goals • Strategy • Community of Stakeholders • Agreements MANAGEMENT FOCUS
- 26. Summation Change without eco-strategy and configuration management probably fails.
- 27. Alignment within Complexity allows Adoption Management intends to exert influence on conditions and actions. Differing kinds of influence may be brought to the same circumstances at the same time. Each type of influence comes with a perspective on how to recognize what can be influenced. Different perspectives see the same things differently! What appears to be a “need-to-change” aspect of conditions may be important and present in one perspective but not important or present in another. Unless perspective differences are reconciled, making decisions about change (influence) can create barriers, contradictions, or other misalignments that will prevent the change effort from completing, with value, as needed.
- 28. Recap Perspective on Information Frequently Insufficient attention Problem Management semantics (new vs. old) Need to Get Constructive Info Overall scope Associations of elements Over-generalizing Elements vs. Issues Know the underlying variables Control Impacts Bias or Avoidance Environment vs. Experiences See the Psychological Environment Conditions Requirements Prioritization Dynamics vs. Constraints Map Eco-systems Action Impacts Disruption or other interference Interventions vs. Execution Use Configuration management Planning Clients Countercultures Proposals vs. Accounting Organize Goals ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
- 29. Archestra notebooks compile and organize decades of in-the-field and ongoing empirical findings. All presented findings are derived exclusively from original research. Archestra notebooks carry no prescriptive warranty. As ongoing research, all notebooks are subject to change at any time. ©2019 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research www.archestra.com mryder@archestra.com Archestra research is done from the perspective of strategy and architecture. With all subject matter and topics, the purpose of the notes is analytic, primarily to: * explore, expose and model why things are included, excluded, or can happen in given ways and/or to certain effects. * comment on, and navigate between, motives and potentials that predetermine decisions about, and shapings of, the observed activity.