Managers who like to be in control have a predictable reaction to their organization grappling with a change which creates chaos — they want it to stop. When? Now, right now.
What happens if management decides to short-circuit chaos with a magical solution? What happens if management accepts chaos as a necessary but uncomfortable period of the change process?
In Greek mythology, Chaos is the disorder from which the first gods emerged. It’s a raw place where things can be broken apart and recombined to create something new.
Managers who short-circuit chaos aren’t necessarily resisting the change. They may fully accept the need for the organization to change. But they can’t stomach the day-to-day disorder necessary for the organization to break itself down and rebuild itself.
These managers reach for their gun and load it with their own personal silver bullet and shoot at the chaos; for instance, a change effort to reduce expenses is averted by a magical tax write off. It solves the problem. Rather than killing the chaos, the manager has shot themselves in the foot. The revenue problem returns later and it’s worse than before.
Can you imagine helping anyone learn anything without some period of chaos where their performance is erratic. Children don’t learn to catch a ball without a period of chaos. Teenagers don’t learn how to deal with the opposite sex without a period of chaos. Adults don’t learn how to rear children without a period of chaos.
Chaos is a necessary part of learning. Short-circuit the chaos and you limit the learning.
So what should the wise manager do about chaos?
- Utilize redundancy
- Center themselves
- Enter the chaos
- Offer support
A wise manage will plan for a period of chaos and utilize organizational redundancy to minimize the impact the chaos has on the organization’s customer. This strategy is a regular course of action in an engineering organization. They have engineers who sustain a product while another group changes itself to build a new product.
The same strategy can be applied to other business situations: One group keeps the business context in place for the customers while another group undergoes a change process. It may seem like it costs more money to process change this way. But what it really does is make the costs visible. Estimating the cost of making a change is a responsibility management has to the business.
If you are managing a group that is changing, I advise you to first center yourself. Enter the chaos with your employees. Offer your support. They will need it. Help them break things apart. And help them rebuild.
This process isn’t new to any of us. We did it all the time when we were children. And, much of the time, we changed and thrived on changing. The same possibility is available to organizations.
For More Information
Wikipedia Chaos (mythology)
Steve Smith’s (my) Satir Change Model article
Jerry (Gerald M.) Weinberg Quality Software Management: Vol. 4: Anticipating Change, ISBN: 0-932633-32-3
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