Archive for the ‘Wicked Problems’ Category
The paradoxes of organisational change
Introduction
It is a truism that organisations are in a constant state of change. It seems that those who run organisations are rarely satisfied with the status quo, and their unending quest to improve products, performance, sales or whatever makes change an inescapable fact of organizational life.
Many decision makers and managers who implement change take a somewhat naïve view of the process: they focus on what they want rather than all the things that could happen. This is understandable because change projects are initiated and plans made when all the nitty-gritty details that may cause problems are not yet in view. Given that it is impossible to surface all significant details at the start. is there anything that decision-makers and managers can do to address the inevitable ambiguity of change?
One of the underappreciated facets of organizational change is that it is inherently paradoxical. For example, although it is well known that such changes inevitably have unintended consequences that are harmful, most organisations continue to implement change initiatives in a manner that assumes complete controllability with the certainty of achieving solely beneficial outcomes.
It is my contention that an understanding of the paradoxes that operate in the day-to-day work of change might help managers in developing a more realistic picture of how a change initiative might unfold and some of the problems that they might encounter. In this post, I look at the paradoxes of organizational change drawing on a paper entitled, The social construction of organizational change paradoxes.
Paradoxes are social constructs
More often than not, the success of an organizational change hinges on the willingness of people to change their attitudes, behaviour and work practices. In view of this it is no surprise that many of the difficulties of organizational change have social origins.
Change makes conflicting demands on people: for example, managerial rhetoric about the need to improve efficiency is often accompanied by actions that actually decrease it. As a result, many of the obstacles to change arise from elements that seem sensible when considered individually, but are conflicting and contradictory when taken together. This results in paradox. As the authors of the paper state:
We propose that paradox is constructed when elements of our thoughts, actions and emotions that seemed logical when considered in isolation, are juxtaposed, appearing mutually exclusive. The result is often an experience of absurdity or paralysis.
Again it is important to note that change-related paradoxes have social origins – they are caused by the actions of certain individual or groups and their effects or perceived effects on others.
Paradoxes of organizational change
The authors describe three paradoxes of organizational change: paradoxes of performing, belonging and organizing. I describe each of these below, but before I do so, it is worth noting that paradoxes are often exacerbated by people’s reactions to them. In particular, those affected by a change tend to interpret it using frames of reference that accentuate negative effects. For example, employees may view a change initiative as a threat rather than an opportunity to improve performance. Paradoxically, their perceptions may become a self-fulfilling reality because their (negative) reactions to the change may reinforce its undesirable effects.
That said let’s look at the three paradoxes of organizational change as described in the paper.
Paradoxes of performing
A change initiative is invariably accompanied by restructuring that results in wholesale changes in roles and responsibilities across the organisation. Moreover, since large-scale changes take a long time to implement, there is a longish transition period in which employees are required to perform tasks and activities associated with their old and new roles. During this period, employees may have to deal with competing, even conflicting demands. This, quite naturally, causes stress and anxiety.
Paradoxes of performing relate to contradictions in employees’ self understanding of their identities and roles within the organisation. As such, these paradoxes are characterized by mixed messages from management. As the authors state, people faced with such paradoxes often express feelings of rising frustration with/distrust of management, doubt (inability to choose) or nihilism (futility of choice). This paradox isparticularly common when organisations transition from a traditional (functional) management hierarchy to a matrix structure.
Paradoxes of belonging
Another consequence of organizational restructuring is that old hierarchies and workgroups are replaced by new ones. Adjusting to this requires employees to shift allegiances and develop new work relationships. Leaving the safety of a known group can be extremely stressful. Moreover, since the new structures are rarely defined in detail, at least at the start, there is a great deal of ambiguity as to what it really stands for. It is no surprise, therefore, that some employees attempt to maintain the status quo or even leave while others benefit from the change.
At the heart of this paradox is a double bind where a desire to maintain existing relationships competes with the realization that it is necessary to develop new ones. People react to this differently, depending on their values, motivations and (above all) their ability to deal with ambiguity. Inevitably, such situations are characterized by antagonistic attitudes that accentuate differences and/or peoples’ defensive attitudes that provoke defensiveness in others.
Paradoxes of organizing
The fact that organisations consist of people who have diverse backgrounds, motivations and interests suggests that the process of organizing – which, among things, involves drawing distinctions between groups of people based on their skills – is inherently paradoxical. The authors quote a couple of studies that support this contention. One study described how, “friendly banter in meetings and formal documentation [promoted] front-stage harmony, while more intimate conversations and unit meetings [intensified] backstage conflict.” Another spoke of a situation in which, “…change efforts aimed at increasing employee participation [can highlight] conflicting practices of empowerment and control. In particular, the rhetoric of participation may contradict engrained organizational practices such as limited access to information and hierarchical authority for decision making…”
As illustrated by the two examples quoted in the prior paragraph, a manifestation of a paradox of organizing is that the (new) groups created through the process of organizing can accentuate differences that would not otherwise have mattered. These differences can undermine the new structures and hence, the process of organizing itself.
As the authors suggest, paradoxes of organizing are an inevitable side effects of the process of organizing. The best (and perhaps the only) solution lies in learning to live with ambiguity.
Conclusion
In the end, the paradoxes discussed above arise because change evokes feelings of fear, uncertainty and doubt within individuals and groups. When such emotions dominate, it is natural that people will not be entirely open with each other and may do things that undermine the aims of the change, often even unconsciously.
An awareness of the paradoxes of organizing may tempt one to look for solutions. For example, one might think that they might be resolved by “better communication” or “more clarity regarding expectations and roles.” This is exactly what professional “Change Managers” have (supposedly) been doing for years. Yet these paradoxes remain, which suggests that they are natural consequences of change that cannot be “managed away”; those who must undergo the process of change must also suffer the angst and anxiety that comes with it. If this is so, the advice offered by the authors in the final lines of the paper is perhaps apposite. Quoting from Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi’s book Finding Flow, they state:
Act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference . . . It is this serious playfulness, this combination of concern and humility, that makes it possible to be both engaged and carefree at the same time.
…and that is perhaps the best advice I have heard in a long time.
On the nonlinearity of organisational phenomena
Introduction
Some time ago I wrote a post entitled, Models and Messes – from best practices to appropriate practices, in which I described the deep connection between the natural sciences and 20th century management. In particular, I discussed how early management theorists took inspiration from physics. Quoting from that post:
Given the spectacular success of mathematical modeling in the physical and natural sciences, it is perhaps unsurprising that early management theorists attempted to follow the same approach. Fredrick Taylor stated this point of view quite clearly in the introduction to his classic monograph, The Principles of Scientific Management…Taylor’s intent was to prove that management could be reduced to a set of principles that govern all aspects of work in organizations.
In Taylor’s own words, his goal was to “prove that the best management is a true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules and principles, as a foundation. And further to show that the fundamental principles of scientific management are applicable to all human activities…”
In the earlier post I discussed how organisational problems elude so-called scientific solutions because they are ambiguous and have a human dimension. Now I continue the thread, introducing a concept from physics that has permeated much of management thinking, much to the detriment of managerial research and practice. The concept is that of linearity. Simply put, linearity is a mathematical expression of the idea that complex systems can be analysed in terms of their (simpler) components. I explain this notion in more detail in the following sections.
The post is organised as follows: I begin with a brief introduction to linearity in physics and then describe its social science equivalent. Following this, I discuss a paper that points out some pitfalls of linear thinking in organisational research and (by extrapolation) to management practice.
Linearity in physics and mathematics
A simplifying assumption underlying much of classical physics is that of equilibrium or stability. A characteristic of a system in equilibrium is that it tends to resist change. Specifically, if such a system is disturbed, it tends to return to its original state. Of course, physics also deals with systems that are not in equilibrium – the weather, or a spacecraft on its way to Mars are examples of such systems. In general, non-equilibrium systems are described by more complex mathematical models than equilibrium systems.
Now, complex mathematical models – such as those describing the dynamics of weather or even the turbulent flow of water- can only be solved numerically using computers. The key complicating factor in such models is that they consist of many interdependent variables that are combined in complex ways. 19th and early 20th century physicists who had no access to computers had to resort to some tricks in order to make the mathematics of such systems tractable. One of the most common simplifying tricks was to treat the system as being linear. Linear systems have mathematical properties that roughly translate to the following in physical terms:
- Cause is proportional effect (or output is proportional to input). This property is called homogeneity.
- Any complex effect can be expressed as a sum of a well defined number of simpler effects. This property is often referred to as additivity, but I prefer the term decomposability. This notion of decomposability is also called the principle of superposition.
In contrast, real-life systems (such as the weather) tend to be described by mathematical equations that do not satisfy the above conditions. Such systems are called nonlinear.
Linear systems are well-understood, predictable and frankly, a bit boring – they hold no surprises and cannot display novel behaviour. The evolution of linear systems is constrained by the equations and initial conditions (where they start from). Once these are known, their future state is completely determined. Linear systems cannot display the range of behaviours that are typical of complex systems. Consequently, when a complex system is converted into a linear one by simplifying the mathematical model, much of the interesting behaviour of the system is lost.
Linearity in organisational theories
It turns out that many organizational theories are based on assumptions of equilibrium (i.e. that organisations are stable) and linearity (i.e. that the socio-economic forces on the organisation are small) . Much like the case of physical systems, such models will predict only small changes about the stable state – i.e. that “business as usual” will continue indefinitely. In a paper published in 1988, Andrew Abbott coined the term General Linear Reality (GLR) to describe this view of reality. GLR is based on the following assumptions:
- The world consists of unchanging entities which have variable attributes (eg: a fixed organisation with a varying number of employees)
- Small changes to attributes can have only small effects, and effects are manifested as changes to existing attributes.
- A given attribute can have only one causal effect – i.e. a single cause has a single effect.
- The sequence of events has no effect on the outcome.
- Entities and attributes are independent of each other (i.e. no correlation)
The connection between GLR and linearity in physics is quite evident in these assumptions.
The world isn’t linear
But reality isn’t linear – it is very non-linear as many managers learn the hard way. The problem is that the tools they are taught in management schools do not equip them to deal with situations that have changing entities due to feedback effects and disproportionately large effects from small causes (to mention just a couple of common non-linear effects).
Nevertheless, management research is catching up with reality. For example, in a paper entitled Organizing Far From Equilibriium: Nonlinear changes in organizational fields, Allan Meyer, Vibha Gaba and Kenneth Collwell highlight limitations of the GLR paradigm. The paper describes three research projects that were aimed at studying how large organisations adapt to change. Typically when researchers plan such studies, they tacitly make GLR assumptions regarding cause-effect, independence etc. In the words of Meyer, Gaba and Collwell:
In accord with the canons of general linear reality, as graduate students each of us learned to partition the research process into sequential stages: conceptualizing, designing, observing, analyzing, and reporting. During the conceptual and design stages, researchers are enjoined to make choices that will remain in effect throughout the inquiry. They are directed, for instance, to identify theoretical models, select units and levels of analysis, specify dependent and independent variables, choose sampling frames, and so forth. During the subsequent stages of observation, analysis, and reporting, these parameters are immutable. To change them on the fly could contaminate data or be interpreted as scientific fraud. Stigma attached to “post hoc theorizing,” “data mining” and “dust-bowl empiricism” are handed down from one generation of GLR researchers to the next.
Whilst the studies were in progress, however, each of the organisations that they were studying underwent large, unanticipated changes: in one case employees went on mass strike; in another, the government changed regulations regarding competition; and in the third boom-bust cycles caused massive changes in the business environment. The important point is that these changes invalidated GLR assumptions completely. When such “game-changing” forces are in play, it is all but impossible to define a sensible equilibrium state to which organisations can adapt.
In the last two decades, there is a growing body of research which shows that organizations are complex systems that display emergent behaviour. Mainstream management practice is yet to catch up with these new developments, but the signs are good: in the last few years there have been articles dealing with some of these issues in management journals which often grace the bookshelves of CEOs and senior executives.
To conclude
Mainstream management principles are based on a linear view of reality, a view that is inspired by scientific management and 19th century physics. In reality, however, organisations evolve in ways that are substantially different from those implied by simplistic cause-effect relationships embodied in linear models. The sciences have moved on, recognizing that most real-world phenomena are nonlinear, but much of organisational research and management practice remains mired in a linear world. In view of this it isn’t surprising that many management “best” practices taught in business schools don’t work in the real world.
Related posts:
Models and messes – from best practices to appropriate practices
Improving decision-making in projects (and life)
Note: This post is based on a presentation that I gave at BA World Sydney on 26th June. It draws from a number of posts that I have written over the last few years.
Introduction – the myth of rational decision making
A central myth about decision making in organisations is that it is a rational process. The qualifier rational refers to decision-making methods that are based on the following broad steps:
- Identify available options.
- Develop criteria for rating options.
- Rate options according to criteria developed.
- Select the top-ranked option.
The truth is that decision making in organisations generally does not follow such a process. As I have pointed out in this post (which is based on this article by Tim van Gelder) decisions are often based on a mix of informal reasoning, personal beliefs and even leaps of faith. . Quoting from that post, formal (or rational) processes often cannot be applied for one or more of the following reasons:
- Real-world options often cannot be quantified or rated in a meaningful way. Many of life’s dilemmas fall into this category. For example, a decision to accept or decline a job offer is rarely made on the basis of material gain alone.
- Even where ratings are possible, they can be highly subjective. For example, when considering a job offer, one candidate may give more importance to financial matters whereas another might consider lifestyle-related matters (flexi-hours, commuting distance etc.) to be paramount. Another complication here is that there may not be enough information to settle the matter conclusively. As an example, investment decisions are often made on the basis of quantitative information that is based on questionable assumptions.
- Finally, the problem may be wicked – i.e. complex, multi-faceted and difficult to analyse using formal decision making methods. Classic examples of wicked problems are climate change (so much so, that some say it is not even a problem) and city / town planning. Such problems cannot be forced into formal decision analysis frameworks in any meaningful way.
The main theme running through all of these is uncertainty. Most of the decisions we are called upon to make in our professional lives are fraught with uncertainty – it is what makes it hard to rate options, adds to the subjectivity of ratings (where they are possible) and magnifies the wickedness of the issue.
Decision making in projects and the need for systematic deliberation
The most important decisions in a project are generally made at the start, at what is sometimes called the “front-end of projects”. Unfortunately this is where information availability is at its lowest and, consequently, uncertainty at its highest. In such situations, decision makers feel that they are left with little choice but to base their decisions on instinct or intuition.
Now, even when one bases a decision on intuition, there is some deliberation involved – one thinks things through and weighs up options in some qualitative way. Unfortunately, in most situations, this is done in an unsystematic manner. Moreover, decision makers fail to record the informal reasoning behind their decisions. As a result the rationale behind decisions made remain opaque to those who want to understand why particular choices were made.
A brief introduction to IBIS
Clearly, what one needs is a means to make the informal reasoning behind a decision explicit. Now there are a number of argument visualisation techniques available for this purpose, but I will focus on one that I have worked with for a while: Issue-Based Information System (IBIS). I will introduce the notation briefly below. Those who want a detailed introduction will find one in my article entitled, The what and whence of issue-based information systems.
IBIS consists of three main elements:
- Issues (or questions): these are issues that need to be addressed.
- Positions (or ideas): these are responses to questions. Typically the set of ideas that respond to an issue represents the spectrum of perspectives on the issue.
- Arguments: these can be Pros (arguments supporting) or Cons (arguments against) an issue. The complete set of arguments that respond to an idea represents the multiplicity of viewpoints on it.
The best IBIS mapping tool is Compendium – it can be downloaded here. In Compendium, the IBIS elements described above are represented as nodes as shown in Figure 1: issues are represented by green question nodes; positions by yellow light bulbs; pros by green + signs and cons by red – signs. Compendium supports a few other node types, but these are not part of the core IBIS notation. Nodes can be linked only in ways specified by the IBIS grammar as I discuss next.
IBIS Elements
The IBIS grammar can be summarized in a few simple rules:
- Issues can be raised anew or can arise from other issues, positions or arguments. In other words, any IBIS element can be questioned. In Compendium notation: a question node can connect to any other IBIS node.
- Ideas can only respond to questions – i.e. in Compendium “light bulb” nodes can only link to question nodes. The arrow pointing from the idea to the question depicts the “responds to” relationship.
- Arguments can only be associated with ideas – i.e in Compendium + and – nodes can only link to “light bulb” nodes (with arrows pointing to the latter)
The legal links are summarized in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: Legal Links in IBIS
The rules are best illustrated by example- follow the links below to see some illustrations of IBIS in action:
- See or this post or this one for examples of IBIS in mapping dialogue.
- See this post or this one for examples of argument visualisation (issue mapping) using IBIS.
The case studies
In my talk, I illustrated the use of IBIS by going through a couple of examples in detail, both of which I have described in detail in other articles. Rather than reproduce them here, I will provide links to the original sources below.
The first example was drawn from a dialogue mapping exercise I did for a data warehousing project. A detailed discussion of the context and process of mapping (along with figures of the map as it developed) are available in a paper entitled, Mapping project dialogues using IBIS – a case study and some reflections (PDF).
The second example, in which I described a light-hearted example of the use of IBIS in a non-work setting, is discussed in my post, What should I do now – a bedtime story about dialogue mapping.
Benefits of IBIS
The case studies serve to highlight how IBIS encourages collective deliberation of issues. Since the issues we struggle with in projects often have elements of wickedness, eliciting opinions from a group through dialogue improves our chances arriving at a “solution” that is acceptable to the group as a whole.
Additional benefits of using IBIS in a group setting include:
- It adds clarity to a discussion
- Serves as a simple and intuitive discussion summary (compare to meeting minutes!)
- Is a common point of reference to move a discussion forward.
- It captures the logic of a decision (decision rationale)
Further still, IBIS disarms disruptive discussion tactics such as “death by repetition” – when a person brings up the same issue over and over again in a million and one different ways. In such situations the mapper simply points to the already captured issue and asks the person if they want to add anything to it. The disruptive behaviour becomes evident to all participants (including the offender).
The beauty of IBIS lies in its simplicity. It is easy to learn – four nodes with a very simple grammar. Moreover, participants don’t need to learn the notation. I have found that most people can understand what’s going on within a few minutes with just a few simple pointers from the mapper.
Another nice feature of IBIS is that it is methodology-neutral. Whatever your methodological persuasion – be it Agile or something that’s BOKsed – you can use it to address decision problems in your project meetings.
Getting started
The best way to learn IBIS is to map out the logic of articles in newspapers, magazines or even professional journals. Once you are familiar with the syntax and grammar, you can graduate to one-on-one conversations, and from there to small meetings. When using it in a meeting for the first time, tell the participants that you are simply taking notes. If things start to work well – i.e. if you are mapping the conversation successfully – the group will start interacting with the map, using it as a basis for their reasoning and as a means to move the dialogue forward. Once you get to this point, you are where you want to be – you are mapping the logic of the conversation.
Of course, there is much more to it than I’ve mentioned above. Check out the references at the end of this piece for more information on mapping dialogues using IBIS.
Wrap up
As this post is essentially covers a talk I gave at a conference, I would like to wrap up with a couple of observations and comments from the audience.
I began my talk with the line, “A central myth about decision making in organisations is that it is a rational process.” I thought many in the audience would disagree. To my surprise, however, there was almost unanimous agreement! The points I made about uncertainty and problem wickedness also seemed to resonate. There were some great examples from the audience on wicked problems in IT – a particularly memorable one about an infrastructure project (which one would normally not think of as particularly wicked) displaying elements of wickedness soon after it was started.
It seems that although mainstream management ignores the sense-making aspect of the profession, many practitioners tacitly understand that making sense out of ambiguous situations is an important part of their work. Moreover, they know that this is best done by harnessing the collective intelligence of a group rather than by enforcing a process or a solution
References:
- Jeff Conklin, Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems, John Wiley, New York (2005). See my review of Conklin’s book here
- Paul Culmsee & Kailash Awati, The Heretic’s Guide to Best Practices: The Reality of Managing Complex Problems in Organisations, iUniverse: Bloomington, Indiana (2011).
Eight to Late 