Coherence

Healthy individuals, teams and organisations demonstrate coherence. In other words they balance the four Dynamics of Change.

Change of any kind affects an organisation's performance. If the response is to be positive, individuals must maintain a sense of purpose, perspective and resilience. This creates a need for self-managed learning and leadership for change. It also offers opportunities for closer interaction in order to build more effective communication mechanisms. This generates a positive and supportive work environment, thereby enabling an organisation to renew itself at a strategic level.  

The challenge for Real Change Leaders is to combine the four dynamics in a way that provides coherent leadership or change. The Dynamics of Change demonstrate how Real Change Leaders can integrate four counterbalancing forces.

This approach deals with the main reason why change initiatives fail. That is, they have been mechanistic and one dimensional, only dealing with the top-down command and control pressure for change. A new mental model is now needed because it is the tension between top-down and bottom-up that is the basis of change. It is forcing us to choose.

"Any phenomenon implies and generates its opposite. In each case the existence of one side depends on the other. Yin and Yang ? Opposites are intertwined in a state of tension that also defines a state of harmony and wholeness." Gareth Morgan

Real Change Leaders are more effective when they:

DIRECTION - provide a clear sense of direction
COMMITMENT - communicate it with personal commitment
AUTONOMY - create the space for people to feel a sense of autonomy
LISTENING - keep listening to make sense of the impact the changes

DIRECTION - Strategic Processes
The reason for adopting a strategic perspective on change is to anticipate when changes are needed, and act before a crisis develops. Much depends on an environmental assessment (outside-in), the management of human resources (bottom-up), the ability to lead change (top-down) and a coherent response which combines the other three (inside-out).

Public services face additional challenges in that they have not been proactive in encouraging:
an entrepreneurial spirit
co-operation between managers across functions
a positive attitude to change
Times are changing as more public authorities realise that these characteristics increase their chances of success under a Best Value regime. They are the new intangible assets that all modern organisations are seeking to foster to be more competitive. But such changes take time, so the time to start is now.
The focus is now on building:
the CAPACITY of the organisation to change
the COMPETENCIES needed to deliver that change
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COMMITMENT - Self-Management
Compliance can be commanded but commitment cannot. People who take more responsibility for themselves and for the work they do are nearly always more satisfied with their job and more fulfilled as people.
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"Commitment is like bacon and eggs: the chicken is invlved but the pig is really committed!" Anon

AUTONOMY - Working Environment
It was Humberto Maturana who redefined autonomy as self-referentiality. A living system is defined by reference to itself, whilst all other systems are defined by reference to their context or environment. This reflects the bottom-up and outside-in connection. A living system like an organisation will be subject to this tension and therefore display what Maturana called 'autopoietic tendencies". That is, it will behave like a closed, autonomous system and construct its own reality. Living systems make distinctions between what is them and what is not them - they look for variations. This might explain the power of variation as a tool for seeing errors. Seeing the variations makes it easier for us to learn. It helps us decide what's in and what's out of consideration.
Autopoietic Learning is crucial to our survival. It helps us identify who we are and what makes us different from others. For this to happen learning has to be a social activity so we can get a clearer idea of what's important to us and how we connect and are different from other people, other ideas, other values, etc. It also explains why experiential learning is more powerful a mechanism for initiating change.
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LISTENING - Effective Communication

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Tools and Techniques - Coherence
The How-Why Test

Websites - Coherence

The focus is now on building:
the CAPACITY of the organisation to change
the COMPETENCIES needed to deliver that change