Sound and Current Data: #3 of Eight Disciplines for Planned Change
An efficient and successful change process needs good information for effective planning and decision-making. Such a principle, though obvious, is sorely needed as a reminder against mistaking our assumptions for accurate information. Our needs for being “right,” being seen as “smart,“ for not wanting to rock the boat or upset the boss often overwhelm our need for sound and current data. Accordingly, many change efforts suffer from insufficient and inaccurate information while others fall prey to power struggles having to do with whose information is right and whose is wrong. A related pitfall occurs when the need for conformity inhibits needed information from coming to the surface.
An environment of openness, straight-talk, truth, and honesty can be built from effective conflict management and team-building processes. In these ways a safe environment can be created which is the only environment in which sound and current data can openly exist.
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The Disciplines of Managing Change in Human Systems
In recent blog posts we have looked at the stages of planned change, which can also be thought of in terms of critical interventions, and at the levels of organizations in which the skilled practitioner works. We also offered a general process of Organization Development that takes into account these stages and organizational levels. Now we will consider eight crucial disciplines, the mastery of which binds it all together.
Effectiveness with each of the prescribed stages of change across the levels of organization systems requires a degree of critical thinking that is generally beyond that found in the target organization and the general social milieu in which the organization exists.
Each of the eight disciplines directly supports the empowerability of human systems and the people that live and work within them. They also support the use of collaborative strategies and tactics aimed at open communication, consensual decision-making, cooperation, learning, and relationship building which together can make for powerful and productive human systems anywhere. Each is related to and supports the others toward a systemic understanding of critical thinking as applied to making humans systems both productive and satisfying.
These disciplines focus upon:
- Conscious Use of Self
- Systems Orientation
- Sound and Current Data
- Feedback
- Infinite Power
- Learning from Differences
- Empowerment
- Support Systems
We will look at each of them in greater detail in the coming weeks.
The Process of Organization Development
Hey All,
I’ve been thinking about how to formulate with sufficient detail to be useable and in a temporally logical manner, the things that the top OD folks think about as they move from the beginning of an OD project to its end. The problem, of course, is that each step requires the personal judgment needed to move a step from number 3 to 9 or step 12 to 5. Most steps will need to be repeated over and over as the process unfolds anyway.
I’m offering a loose recipe that will always require your own tweaks, modifications, and embellishments. It’s stuff worth thinking about for those who want to increase their ability to manage change in human systems.
Go to http://www.chumans.com/human-systems-resources/process-of-od.html for the document.
Let me know what you would add, change, or subtract from the list that would make it more useful! I’d really like that!
Michael