Bottom-Up Change

" Though top level involvement is essential to organisational
change, the real change leaders, who affect how the majority
of people perform, come from the ranks of middle and
frontline managers". Katzenberg

In this section you will find information on:

Perspectives on Bottom-Up Change
Bottom-Up Change Tools
Core Capabilities
Case Studies
New Thinking
Useful Publications
Relevant Websites
Interesting Articles

Perspectives

Change efforts often fail because their is little ownership or energy for the action that's needed to make it happen. It all depends on what's important - what captures people's attention at the time. It's about connecting clear visionary objectives and values with the messy world of operational and local realities.

Bottom-Up Change emerges when managers work at coaching their staff and creating the best conditions they can for individual, team and organisational learning. It's about encouraging innovation at the frontline, enabling employees to find solutions and ideas that will work for them, and learning what it takes to make the change real. Performance always improves when people's contributions are appreciated.

This dimension is often lost, if not neglected when change is driven from the top down. This is because performance improvement is felt to be contingent on carefully integrated planning mechanisms that link stategic goals with action on the frontline. So much energy goes into securing compliance for this to happen that those at the top lose sight of the fact that it is the energy of people at the bottom that is needed to make the change happen.

The situation is summarised in the table below.

"Somehow we have got to find the integrating principle for our lives,the creative power that sustains our balance in motion,
and we have got to do it quickly ... The task is urgent: we must
not push it into the future; we must not leave it to others; we
must do it ourselves, and we must begin now and here."
Dorothy L. Sayers x'Begin Here'.

Core Capabilities

SENSEMAKING
to bring understanding and clarity to change initiatives (we introduce you to the latest tools and techniques)

DIAGNOSING
to gain a deeper understanding of how bottom-up initiatives
are perceived (we introduce you to insights from New Sciences)

TIMING
to understand the time frame of change that connects past, present and future perspectives (we provide tools for assessing the pace and likelihood of change)

STORYTELLING
to appreciate the power of self-organisation in thematic groups that want to talk about the things that matter to them, or protect their knowledge by sharing it with like minded people. (we provide tools for encouraging storytelling communities or leadership circles)

SYSTEMISING
to see the relationship between parts and wholes. This is the essence of effective teamworking and sustainability (we provide examples and frameworks for systemic thinking)

SELF-ORGANISING
to see new patterns of behaviour emerge through local interactions. This is the way sel-managed teams operate (we provide tools and techniques that promote self-organising behaviour)

"How people relate to one another affects what emerges in the organisation - the culture, the creativity, the productivity."
Birute Regine

Case Studies

Modernising an Elections Service

Engaging a Neighbourhood Advice Service

"Many times I realised how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labours of my fellowmen, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received."
Albert Einstein

Tools & Techniques

To increase group adaptability use CHANGE LABS

To focus on shared locality use PLANNING FOR REAL

To achieve neighbourhood sustainability use FUTURE SEARCH

To value community diversity use OPEN SPACE TECHNOLOGY

To secure expert involvement use a COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

To get group understanding use QUALITY PROCESS

To stimulate change use a PRODUCTIVE CLIMATE

"No men can act with effect who do not act in concert; no men can act in concert who do not act with confidence; no men can act with confidence who are not bound together with common opinions, common affections and common interests."
Edmund Burke

New Thinking

The bottom-up approach to change is reflected in the complexity concepts of chaos, emergence, dialogue, creativity, possibility space, shadow system, co-evolution and self-organisation.

Short summaries of each concept are outlined below.

Emergence
Out of chaos emerges an ordered pattern. This order emerges naturally and predictably from many self-organised interactions.

Dialogue
This is deeper kind of conversation where ideas emerge from the interactions of the people involved. This makes dialogue an emergent phenomena - the bringing forth of previously hidden meanings and understandings. Dialogue is the tool used to explore possibility space.

Self-organisation
Complex behaviour doesn't have to have a complex explanation. Order emerges naturally from self-organised interactions. We make sense of things by questioning each other, and following a few simple rules that guide our interactions and keep them focused on a shared purpose or goal.

Chaos
This is a vastly misunderstood concept. Order can unravel into rampant unpredictability (like well laid plans) and things that look completely disordered can be predictable over the short-term (like the weather). Living at the edge of chaos (which includes all living things) requires continuous churning and movement to be sustained - but exist in a state of dynamic balance (like surfing a wave or riding a bicycle). Hence dynamic change.

Shadow System
This is a set of interactions among members of a group that they pursue for personal benefit. It falls outside the expected way of interacting. It comprises political and social interactions outside the prescribed rules that underpin the system.

Co-evolution
This principle links changes in an entity such as a person, team or organisation to changes in its environment. Each adapting to meet the needs of the other. But even when one side appears to gain at the expense of the other, both sides still gain over all. It is a pact that ensures continuous improvement. Parasitic behaviour is an obvious example. By developing closer partnerships with others and pursuing policies that serve each other's best interests, a cycle of co-evolution is established, securing the survival of both/all parties.

"Organisational transformation lies in changing the people
system - the skills and behaviour of employees. It relies on
the ability and attitudes of mid-level and frontline managers.
Certainly the ability to exploit intangible assets has been far more
decisive than an organisation's ability to invest in and
manage its physical assets".   Kaplan & Norton

Publications

Emergence by Steven Johnson. Published by Allen Lane/Penguin 2001
The connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software

Out of Control by Kevin Kelly. Published Fourth Estate 1995
The new biology of machines. This book will give you a new and challenging perspective on life and organisations.

Learning to Change by Sheila Harri-Augstein & Ian Webb. Published McGraw-Hill 1995
A resource for trainers, managers and change agents on self-organised learning

Navigating Complexity by Arthur Battram. Published The Industrial Society 1998
The essential guide to complexity theory in business and management

Shifting the Patterns by If Price and Ray Shaw. Published Management Books 1999
Demonstrating the 'biology' of business as self-organising, self-replicating and fiercely self-protecting systems.

The Art of Systems Thinking by Joseph O'Connor & Ian McDermott. Published Thorsons 1997 Essential skills for creativity and problem-solving

Fifth Generation Management by Charles Savage. Published Digital Press 1990
Integrating enterprises through human networking

Dialogue by Linda Ellinor & Glenna Gerard. Published Wiley 1998
Creating and sustaining collaborative partnerships at work by rediscovering the transforming power of conversation

The Intelligence Advantage by Michael McMaster. Published by KBD 1995
Organisational intelligence is the capacity of an organisation as a whole to gather innovation, innovate, generate knowledge, act effectively and organise for complexity.

"It's more effective to allow solutions to problems to emerge from the people close to the problem, rather than to impose them from higher up." Roger Lewin in 'The Soul at Work'

Websites

Chaordic Commons
This site is the home of a global network of individuals and organisations committed to pioneering new ways to organise. The work includes new forms of governance, innovative business models, new models of ownership, new forms of leadership, and dynamic approaches to collaboration.
http://www.chaordic.org

Emotional Literacy
This is the website of the Campaign for Emotional Literacy, set up to help peole handle the complexities of emotional life. It recognises that if people have positive experiences of change they will engage with others to develop good practice, demonstrate its beneficial effects in improving the quality of people's lives.
http://antidote.org.uk

Storytelling
This website contains a series of presentations by heavyweights such as John Seely Brown from Xerox, Steve Denning from the World Bank and Larry Prusak from IBM. All talk abot the power of storytelling as a vehicle for securing real change by engaging other people's ideas and experience.
http://www.creatingthe21stcentury.com

Complex Adaptive Systems
This website contains information about complexity and its many different forms. It contains a wide range of complexity concets and ideas. It is maintained by the New England Complex Systems Institute.
http://necsi.org/guide/concepts/

Centre for Non-Violent Communication
This website provides information and tools used in NVC to enable you to start usit in your daily life, at work and at home.
http://www.cnvc.org xxxxxand xxxxxhttp://www.LifeResources.org.uk

Authentic Business
This website contains a wealth of articles on the principles that underpin ethical and sustainable organisations.
http://www.authenticbusiness.co.uk

Extelligence
This website contains a wealth of articles and information on focusing groups looking at things afresh and imagining a better future. Underpinned and driven by complexity theories and the actions of complex adaptive systems in a constantly changing world.
http://www.extelligence.org

Articles

Balancing Top-Down and Bottom-Up Change Processes
by Jim Clemmer

...more articles will be added shortly