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Our personal lives, our reactions tend to be the same. Most people have an instinctive, gut reaction to change. They either shy away because they are comfortable with the way things are, or they gravitate toward the novelty and excitement that change can bring. So does this mean that people think of change as either inherently bad or good? Can change be categorized in such black and white terms?

Review the common causes for change outlined by Dr. Michelle Bligh, and the ways to assess the need for change in organizations as presented in this week’s readings. Then, reflect on the nature of change in organizations.

Leading Change in Organizations Program Transcript

Effectively leading change in an organization requires an understanding of how its parts work together as a whole. In this program, Dr. Nancy Blair underscores the importance for leaders to understand that organizations operate as connected systems and that change affects all levels.

It's important to--for anybody who's interested in leadership to understand, first, organizations and what makes them tick. Typically when people go into leadership studies, they think of wherever they've been, their context, and usually their context is a smaller context of an office or a classroom. And if you think about leadership in an organization, you have to kind of telescope out from that and begin to think about the organization as a whole.

There's been a long history of thinking about organizational development, but in the last 15 to 20 years, we've had some good thinkers out there that have helped us understand how organizations are really a system, and therefore we have to understand what a system is. Systems theory is relatively a new concept on the horizon as we think about organizations. So people like Edward Demming, Peter Senge, and most recently Margaret Wheatley have helped us understand how systems work. And the best way I can explain it to you is to kind of give you an analogy. If you think about a mobile over a baby's crib and you think about all the pieces that kind of hang down from that mobile to entertain the baby, if you were to come up and touch one piece of it, what would happen to the mobile? Well, what happens is that the whole thing starts to move and shift? And that's the way it is in a system. Whether it's a school that is a system or a school that is part of a district that is a larger system, when you affect one piece of it, it's not just that one piece. That one piece is interconnected to all of the other pieces. So obviously if you're going to be a leader acting on that system, you need to understand how your one act doesn't just affect that one thing; it could affect everything within the system.

Luckily, because of our better understanding of how systems work, we have a better understanding of how to effect change in an organization. We have a body of knowledge called Change Theory that actually goes back to the early works of Kurt Lewin in the '50s, but most recently we have people like Michael Fullan who are translating information about the change process into good knowledge base that we could use as we plan change in our organization. So for example, if you're going to initiate a change, you know that there are things you need to do at the beginning of the change that are practical and pragmatic to get the organization ready to change. You also know, then, as you try to implement the change, there are certain things you need to do to get the change under way. And most importantly, there are things you need to do as the change moves on into institutionalization so that the change lasts. It's really the implementation of good Change Theory and research on change that allows us to take a great idea into action and into something that really has a long-lasting impact in the organization. So if we have a good systems theory and understanding of how systems work and good Change Theory and understanding of how change occurs in an organization and those theories are based on research in the field around what works, then those theories really should guide our practice, and that's the benefit of having them.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you want to understand what's going on in our organization, and you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you want to make change. You have a theory that will guide your practice. And it's important. When we think about creating change in an organization, it often makes people uneasy. Roland Barth once said that the only people that like change are babies and then only when necessary. So people tend to resist change, because it's conflictive for them. It means I have to move from where I am to someplace different, and that's uncomfortable. But conflict in an organization is absolutely necessary to move the organization forward. If there was no conflict, there would be no change. And actually, that's even a myth, because there is no staying the way we are, because the world around us is changing. Any time you want to change a structure or someone's job description or how we gather resources or we have to cut resources, which is all too often the case, it creates tension and conflict. So the leader's role is, how do you productively take the point of conflict and turn it into an opportunity to see the value of where we're going and how being there is going to be better overall for the goal of the organization than where we are now? This can all sound overwhelming. There's so much to think about, leading within an organization. So what I often advise people to do is to start small and to go back into their organization with a new set of eyes and to begin to look at things. For example, how are things interconnected? Look at a decision that the principal makes, look at a decision that a department head makes and begin to trace how that decision connects to someone way over there that you hadn't even anticipated that it would or how it affects you in the role that you play to try to understand all those connections, to understand how the structure might shift, how it might impact on an individual person in their role, how it might impact on the resources that we get the next time we go up through the budget process.

It's really a-- it's really an awareness, an awakening to the complexity of an organization. And it's only by opening your eyes and having that awareness, that bit by bit by bit you'll start to get that "aha" moment, and you'll see, "Oh, I now start to get how all these pieces begin to fit together." And it's not until you've had that "aha" moment that you can really be an effectively leader in an organization and telescope out and look at the whole, not just all of the parts. So once you've had that greater awareness and that kind of moment of, "Aha, I see how things fit together," it's going to help you know where to start. It's going to help you know, "Where does my leadership begin "to interconnect with this organization? "Knowing the history, knowing the complexity, "where's a good entry point for me to begin to make "the kind of change and have the kind of impact that I want in Leading Change in Organizations the organization?" You'll be able to start proactively thinking about change in the organization, which is quite powerful.

1. Is it inherently positive or negative?

2. Or does the nature of change, itself, change depending on the circumstances?

3. How does the nature of change explain how people react to it?

4. A summary of your thoughts regarding the nature of change in organizations.

5. Support your explanation with examples from your experience.