Effective Organizational Change

Leading Through Sensemaking

Einar Iveroth, Jacob Hallencreutz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317751878
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

Organizations are constantly evolving, and intelligent leadership is needed during times of transformation. Change leaders must help people become aware of, understand and find meaning in the new things which arise — they must oversee a sensemaking process.

Addressing this need, Effective Organizational Change explores the importance of leadership for organizational change based on sensemaking. Combining a theoretical overview, models and conceptual discussions rich with in-depth examples and case studies, this book uncovers what it is that leaders actually do when they lead change through sensemaking. It presents the most current sensemaking research, extends earlier work by developing the concept of 'landscaping', and provides guidelines on how leaders can drive sensemaking processes in practice.

This book is for undergraduate, postgraduate and MBA students of organizational change, as well as managers embarking on change projects within their organizations.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315796888-2

Imagine a hospital where more than half of all surgeries fail. Skills, routines and procedures might be in place, preparatory treatments fully completed, but nevertheless patients die, healthy organs are removed instead of damaged ones, and sometimes whole ventures end up in endless preparations, meetings and analysis while the patients perish.

Now visualize an airline where seven out of ten flights go wrong. The planes crash, pilots fly astray or vessels just never leave the runway.

Most of us would not tolerate that level of performance; we would demand studies of surgical procedures or airline safety, call for better regulations and legal actions against this carelessness. We would most certainly question the leadership of these organizations. However, when it comes to organizational change we seem to accept such poor outcome. In fact, in recent decades there has been a general consensus between practitioners and scholars that few are successful when leading organizational change (Burnes 2009). Although debated (Burnes 2011; Hughes 2011), it is estimated that around 70 percent of all organizational change initiatives fail to reach intended objectives. How can that be, in a time when societies and organizations experience change of a magnitude, speed, impact and unpredictability greater than ever before? These high failure rates are costing organizations around the world millions of dollars and wasted hours, year in, year out. Why do we accept that? Is there not an enormous need for effective organizational change?

First of all, we must admit the field of organizational change suffers from a gap between the rhetoric and the reality, both in academia and among practitioners. The literature is too conceptual and the empirical studies describing change processes are tricky to apply. Often-mentioned success factors like “strong leadership,” “good communication” and “empowerment” are hard to argue against in theory, yet difficult to achieve in practice. “How-to” handbooks simplify a complex reality and offer off-the-shelf solutions based on anecdotal evidence. Managers learn of the benefits of these solutions through business publications that promote certain models or “gurus.” The consulting industry is also party to the proceedings. Homemade solutions and quick fixes are offered as a remedy for complex change problems. However, from a more objective point of view there seems to be no universal, prescriptive and systematic change-management model to cover the diversified nature of change in organizations, despite the plethora of articles and books written in this field. So why burden you with yet another book on this matter? Do we not face the same pitfall as everyone else?

Why another book about organizational change?

Our own research and practical experience tell us that there are still aspects to unfold. For instance, in an effort just to get it done there is a tendency among organizations to dismiss the “people side” of organizational change in favor of using a set of quick prescriptive steps or no structure at all. In a stressful environment calling for quick fixes, managers simply do not have the time, focus and ability to apply complex models. In fact, we learn that most organizations do not have a conscious approach to organizational change at all. Rather, an “ad hoc mentality” prevails, especially concerning behavioral aspects of change (Hallencreutz 2012). No wonder change initiatives often go awry.

We have learnt that managers underestimate the effort it takes to create awareness, understanding and meaning. That is the great challenge for change leaders of today, and that is what leading through sensemaking is all about. The lack of contextual knowledge and ability to understand the human response to change leads to leaders who are unable to handle resistance and overcome obstacles (Andrews et al. 2008). This is where it all goes wrong. In real life, effective organizational change is very seldom just a matter of deploying the new organization chart or the new strategy with a few projects. It is about changing people's behavior, often a lot of people, and this is not trivial. So, behind all the complex theories and concepts about change failure lingers a very simple shortcoming: management often fails to win over the hearts and minds of the people in the organization.

This shortcoming happens because the underlying mechanisms of behavioral and sociocultural aspects of organizational change are constantly underestimated. A typical management approach to these matters is: “Well, information is important. I presented the change project at our monthly meetings and no one had any questions. People nodded and seemed to understand. So everything should be okay.” This attitude has nothing to do with not caring—our belief is that most managers strive to do a good job—but it has something to do with ignorance and interest, perhaps combined with a worldview stating that organizations are rational and logical places. “I make decisions and communicate them, and I expect everyone to understand and therefore follow and if they do not I will just tell them again”—almost as if communication is a simple transaction between a sender (i.e. manager) and receiver (i.e. employee or other stakeholder), and if the transaction fails it is because they did not listen enough and just repeating the message can easily fix the problem. However, in modern organizations, very seldom is a decision transformed into swift action just by sending an email, posting an intranet statement or speaking at meetings (Iveroth 2011; Iveroth and Bengtsson 2014). It takes a little more to address the “people side” of change.

There is an increasing amount of research which purports that the problems with the people side of change hinge on sensemaking and sensegiving activities (Maitlis and Christianson 2014; Sandberg and Tsoukas 2014; Weick 1995) of the managers leading change (Lüscher and Lewis 2008; Rouleau and Balogun 2011). In simple terms, managers fail to create widely the necessary awareness, understanding and willpower needed to make people change. From a theoretical standpoint, there are actually numerous research articles on sensemaking and organizational change. However, these are often very detailed and specific—as research articles tend to be. They generally lack a broader context and a discussion of how sensemaking fits into the theory of change. Overall, research articles on sensemaking and change are far too philosophical to disclose how sensemaking is performed in practice (Schatzki et al. 2001; Whittington 2006).

Sensemaking research is hard to make sense of. This is also another reason why managers overlook this aspect of organizational change. There are few, if any, books that explain how change can be led through a sensemaking approach. However, if we ever want to be able to confront and change the prevailing “failure paradigm,” we advocate that leaders seriously explore their practices and attitudes toward the people side of change—especially on how to gain broad-based awareness, understanding and empowerment. By leading people through sensemaking, a change leader will have better conditions to gain sustainable behavioral change and thus handle what we see as the main reason for failed change initiatives. That is why this book is needed.

Let us give you a brief introduction to what this book tries to unfold. To decode sensemaking, we must first realize and accept that the world is complex and dynamic, and is constructed, interpreted and experienced by people in their interactions with each other and with wider social systems. Thus, sensemaking is not yet another instrumental management concept. Instead, we embrace that leading the people side of change is mainly about challenging and breaking up behavioral patterns triggered by social and biological habits—rational as well as irrational.

Research suggests that up to 45 percent of our time is spent on habitual patterns (see e.g. Neal et al. 2006). These patterns are maintained by a jumble of social conventions and interactions but also by core functions of the brain. For instance, we know from the neuroscientists that the brain's limbic system strives to make us run on autopilot because it consumes less energy. The autopilot in the brain consolidates habitual patterns—that is why you do many everyday things “without thinking.” Moreover, the autopilot is also tuned to risk minimization and, as we all know, change means inherent risks. Thus, the nature of the brain can both trigger resistance and prevent change. To break with these habitual patterns, the changes we introduce must “make sense.”

How can that be done? First, people must become aware of the need for change otherwise the mind will remain on autopilot and no sustainable behavioral change is likely to take place—at least, not to the extent we want to see as change leaders. However, if the need is clearly signaled and deeply and candidly discussed, the brain will alert the frontal lobes (where logic takes place) and people will start to reflect and ask themselves questions such as: Why? What? When? How? What will happen to me? If the sensemaking process is poorly managed, the limbic system will fight back and make us ready for fight, flight or freeze. As a response to these primitive reactions, the change leader needs to address the logos behind the change—people must understand the background and motives. Once again, it simply has to make sense. Finally, the next sensemaking challenge is to present solutions and processes to help people produce the willpower it takes to change. So in this respect, breaking with habitual patterns requires movement from the present towards creating awareness, understanding and then willpower. This is by no means an easy task but the models, approaches and guidelines that are presented in this book show how we can facilitate such a process.

However, when addressing the people side of change it is risky to talk about “people” as a unitary system. A population is seldom a homogeneous group of individuals. In our everyday life as civilians and professionals, we all cope with change in different ways and at different speeds. Some of us are eager to go forward and seek challenges; others are reluctant and suspicious of new things. Thus, the adoption of new ideas, work procedures, values, codes of conduct, etc. within a population will not likely be linear during a change process.

When we lecture about the diffusion of change in organizations, we use a childlike metaphor: we compare behavioral change with the process of popping popcorn (the old-school way—not in the microwave). If you put corn in a pot with oil and turn up the heat, the grains will not pop simultaneously. First, you will get a few “early poppers” flying out of the pot. Then, when the heat is stable the majority of the grains will go. After a burst of popping activity about 80 percent of the corn has popped, but 20 percent is still lurking in the oil. What to do? If we turn off the heat we will lose 20 percent of the grains, but if we persist we might burn the 80 percent already popped.

This popcorn ordeal is quite similar to what a change leader embracing “the people side” is facing. We know from theory that 15–20 percent of a normal population are early adopters and willing to take on change challenges (Rogers 2003). Their individual sensemaking processes are swift. We also learn that 60–70 percent will await the “right temperature in the pot” and then change. However, 15–20 percent will be late adopters, and some individuals might not want to pop at all. Surprisingly often we find that change leaders spend a great deal of their management time with the late poppers, coaxing and convincing them to change. This is a risky strategy. By focusing too much on the late adopters, the change leader sends subtle signals to the rest of the crowd: “if you want my attention, resist change.” Moreover, in this situation the speed of the change process adapts to the slowest moving which will trigger early adopters to check out and move on: “at this place nothing happens.” Thus, our unorthodox recommendation is to focus on the 80 percent who actually pop. We should allow early adopters to experiment, conduct pilot testing and be forerunners. Good examples should be highlighted and quick wins celebrated. Then lead by logic of attraction, instead of logic of resistance or replacement. The late bloomers will eventually join in or seek new challenges in other organizations.

The popcorn metaphor highlights that behavioral change is not linear. We are dealing with living systems and you cannot in advance calculate exactly how and when individuals will act and react. Their respective sensemaking processes will take different amounts of time. Habitual patterns within an organization are strong hindering forces. Thus, you will most likely experience an exponential change process, where some individuals start, others follow and—suddenly—you get a burst of activity. According to this worldview, change should be seen as an organic diffusion and translation of ideas rather than an end to be achieved. Gladwell (2000) describes such a change process as a “social epidemic” which eventually reaches a tipping point. Herrero (2008) proclaims the need for “viral change” as an antipode to slow, painful and unsuccessful change projects.

So, what is the point in trying to lead this organic stuff? Our belief, which will be elaborated in this book, is that the blurry reality of the people side of change can, at least to some extent, be planned and managed. The good news is that enhanced focus on these underlying behavioral aspects will accelerate change. To put it in another way, leading through sensemaking will speed up the change process of going from where we are now to gaining awareness, then understanding and finally the willpower to execute change—making the change more effective. We believe that effective organizational change is neither a rigid, planned and linear project, nor a fully circular process of emergent change. Instead we suggest that it should be portrayed as a sensemaking spiral of events and activities moving upward. In t...