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Social Change Training Manual
1. ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE AND GROWTH
This paper examines three principal areas which are fundamental to good management of organisations:
- It explains why organisations need to change
- It addresses how change is initiated
- It suggests how change should be managed
Presenter: Chris Harris
In managing change there are a number of key issues which generally arise and in order to manage change properly each of the following issues must be addressed:
1. Key Issue
CHANGE IS NOT SOMETHING THAT JUST HAPPENS, WHETHER TO US OR TO OTHERS - IT OCCURS BECAUSE OF EXTERNAL OR INTERNAL FORCES AND IS USUALLY INITIATED, ORGANISED AND PLANNED
In some cases the change experienced is initiated by someone for negative reasons, not to improve the effectiveness of an organisation but for reasons of personal politics, power, or to force individuals with whom they disagree to leave the organisation.
Many people in thinking about, examining, discussing and experiencing change tend to assume that change happens. In most cases it doesn't - it is made to happen, someone, somewhere, is initiating change and (possibly) managing it.
2. Key issue
CHANGE IS CONSTANT AND IT IS OFTEN NECESSARY. IT IS DESIRABLE FOR US AND OUR ORGANISATIONS TO CHANGE TO COPE WITH CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH ALTER AS A RESULT OF CHANGES ELSEWHERE
In the case of the community sector and more specifically the environment movement we often experience change initiated from elsewhere (Government, industry), or from within (increased budgets, more staff, extra information) but we don't manage it.
In many cases we don't even recognise the need for change (especially managed change) to cope with these external or internal events.
3. Key issue
From these key issues a third issue arises:
IS OUR ORGANISATION STRUCTURED TO COPE WITH CHANGE OR DOES IT NEED TO CHANGE ITSELF INTO TO BE ABLE TO DEAL WITH CHANGE AND GROWTH?
Those issues for me justify the importance of needing, initiating and managing change and bring one to the processes for dealing with those issues.
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1.1 WHY DO WE NEED CHANGE?
Change is often very threatening to people: it affects their sense of security and changes situations in which they feel secure. Ongoing change is, however an essential element of organisational survival and success. Those organisations which do not change will eventually become irrelevant in the face of changing social forces. In essence there are two principle reasons why organisations need to change:
1. Because of organisational growth
Most of the current medium and large organisations within the environment sector experienced their most rapid growth and change up to and in the early and mid-1980's, often experiencing annual growth rates or ten, twenty or thirty per cent. Few however managed or planned this growth.
2. Because of external forces
Social and business conditions have changed. Business and Government has internationalised. Privatisation has taken hold and a small Government is theoretically at large. The internet has arrived.
No part of Australia is immune from the same environmental problems and every environment centre and conservation councils faces these problems. Yet the environment movement continues to be fragmented, with little cross organisational cooperation, limited innovation and only incremental steps to initiate and manage change.
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1.2 HOW DO WE INITIATE CHANGE?
There are four principal ways in which change can come about and these are:
- From above
- From below
- Collectively
- As a result of the action(s) of an individual(s)
The manner in which change is initiated is very important to its success. The most successful change programmes are usually ones which involve a broad range of people working towards the same end. This may involve an individual with an idea who co-opts other ordinary staff members and who persuade those in management positions. Or it may be initiated by managers who obtain support from others on staff.
In considering change it is important to consider informal power structures and whose support may be needed to effect change.
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1.3 HOW DO WE MANAGE CHANGE?
Change can be initiated in a number of ways and can also proceed two different ways; either in an ad hoc way (usually where management fails to address change issues and has change forced on it) or in a planned (systematic) way.
1.3.1 Ad hoc
The key features of ad hoc change are described below. When organisations grow and change in an ad hoc manner, nothing is planned to cope with this change. Demands on the organisation and staff grow, the number of staff grows, as do the variety of personalities (and their motivations for working for the organisation. The needs of those staff increase.
- The culture of the organisation may change quite dramatically as a result of these changes, alienating some of the older staff members.
- Management committees or boards may have million or multi-million dollar budgets and staff of twenty or thirty for whom they are responsible, but may have no personnel management or financial management skills and may, indeed, in many cases simply by on the board for prestige.
- Staff and committees may be dealing with technical, financial, political or social situations for which they have never been trained or of which they have no experience.
- Organisations have experienced repetitive financial and management crises. Staff have experienced burnout. Staff turnover has been rapid in some cases up to forty or fifty per cent annually.
- Occasionally when crises develop within organisations efforts are made to initiate change, but often these tend to be superficial, dealing largely with the symptoms of change rather than the causes and avoiding the need for major cultural and systematic changes within the organisation.
- As soon as the immediate crisis has passed board and management revert to their former practices. In most cases where changes have been proposed and agreed to they are not implemented, either because of lack of will, lack of systems or a perceived lack of resources.
1.3.2 Systematically
Systematic management of change: The alternative is to recognise that external forces, the growth in demands on ones organisation or the actual growth in size require continuous change and processes to cope with and manage that change.
The failure to do this within environment and other community sector organisations, is the reason that some organisations which in the 1980s were at the cutting edge in community campaigning, in use of technology, in the use of the media, or in advertising and promotional campaigns.
Generally within the environment sector there has been minimal growth in the larger organisations. Indeed many organisations have shrunk, largely because of the failure to properly manage change.
In dealing with and planning for change however we need to recognise that their are a variety of attitudes to change and a variety of types of change which we need to manage - the reason that this is important is that many organisations and individuals try and deal with one type of problem by changing unrelated things.
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1.4 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY CHANGE?
There are a variety of types of change that occur or are initiated from both within and outside the organisation
- Change from within the organisation
- External changes (society/industrial/political/technology)
- Cultural/social changes (external/internal)
- Style (personnel)
- Structural changes
- Technological changes (without systems)
- Financial changes
- Systematic changes (including technology)
- Legal changes (incorporation)
Each one of these changes requires a different approach. A common mistake is to deal with problems that are largely ones of culture and style by addressing issues to do with structure, resources or systems.
Thus issues of low morale and high staff turnover which are caused by poor leadership or lack of care and concern for staff are often addressed by a re-structure or a change to organisational systems neither of which address the causes of the problems.
One of the unavoidable reasons for change within an organisation is growth in size. Beyond a certain point organisations stop functioning effectively unless they initiate, plan and implement changes to cope with growth.
In the rest of this paper I am going to deal only with a few of these issues as many of the issues relating to external forces such as external social and political change are within the ambit of campaign strategy and implementation. I want to focus briefly on organisational change to cope with and manage growth.
Organisational growth or development can take place for a number of different reasons and in a number of phases. These are outlined below:
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1.5 THE CHRONOLOGY OF CHANGE
1.5.1 Establishment phase (Voluntary/no office/1-2 people)
- Most organisations within the community sector start as small, often voluntary organisations of one or two people, with limited resources of any type. In many cases they operate out a persons house, have no infrastructure.
- Initially the organisations are operated by one or two people who know each other well, understand the other persons mode of operation, have a good understanding of the goals which they are aiming to achieve (at least in the short to medium term) and are able to share most of the information coming into the organisation.
1.5.2 Informal phase (few rules, no committee)
- These organisations are often informal. They may not be incorporated, may have few rules or structure, and no management committee.
1.5.3 Change phase (usually unplanned)
- The organisations tend to change in an ad hoc way. Because the organisations may be volunteer driven it is impossible to select who participates or what skills they have. The modus operandum and goals of new entrants may be different to the original founders but this is often not explicit.
1.5.4 Initial formalisation (small organisation, incorporation, membership, little discussion)
- At some point many organisations start to formalise; they will incorporate, establish a management committee, set rules.
- These steps are often taken without any discussion of what type of organisation participants are seeking, without any understanding of whether there are shared goals, without formalising structures, decision making processes, roles.
- Organisations will often establish fundraising and membership programmes of sorts and start being much more public and pro-active
1.5.5 Growth phase (rapid growth, office, staff)
- At this stage organisations will often pass the 'critical mass' and start growing rapidly. The organisation may open an office and start employing staff.
- As the number of people involved or employed on a full time basis passes four or five and the information flow increases, the opportunity for continuous and shared interaction and for common sharing of all information decreases.
1.5.6 Secondary formalisation (more than 3-5 staff)
- At this stage organisations have passed the informal/establishment or small organisation stage and are becoming a mid-size organisation (from five to six people or more), largely determined by the inability of all staff to communicate informally. There are sufficient staff to require meetings and formal mechanisms to communicate internally.
- This is the point at which organisations should start to plan and organise for change and growth.
1.5.7 Medium size organisation (more than 3-5 staff)
- This is the point at which informal structures based on daily informal interaction cease to operate properly; internal communication systems have to be put in place, regular formal meetings start occurring, organised information systems should be required.
- It is also a key point at which many organisations fail to implement necessary change.
- In initiating and planning for change, however, their are a number of key areas which govern an organisation which must be addressed. These are the CULTURE of the organisation, the STRUCTURE of the organisation and the SYSTEMS of the organisation.
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1.6 INITIATING PLANNING AND ORGANISING CHANGE
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DEALT WITH?
1. Cultural and Philosophical issues
Philosophy: What are the goals of the organisation (these may be different from the formal goals in the rules and may have changed since the organisation was founded)
Culture: What is the culture of the organisation this involves things like staff and volunteer involvement, consultation on policies and other decisions, decision making processes.
2. Structural issues
By structure I mean such things as whether it is centralised or decentralised, whether it is staff driven or committee driven, whether it has a branch structure, whether it is a federation of separate but equal state offices or a national structure with subordinate state branches. How finances are controlled. Issues to be considered include:
- The role of branches
- The role of the Board or management committee
- Whether the organisation is centralised or decentralised
3. Systems (information/personnel systems, infrastructure, finance management)
By systems I mean how information is organised and shared, how finances are managed (as opposed to controlled), personnel systems, how infrastructure is organised and managed. Issues to be considered include:
The establishment of personnel policies, including wages and conditions, sexual harassment policies, job descriptions, performance evaluation, working conditions etc.
- How is information to be managed and distributed
- The use of technology and equipment
- Fundraising and financial management
- Performance evaluation
It is also important to consider the relationship between these areas, eg between cultural and structural issues and structural and systems issues and how one may influence the other.
We tend to make assumptions that certain types of organisations will behave and operate in certain ways but this is not always so, for example:
- Consensus can be organised and efficient
- Hierarchical can be disorganised & inefficient
- Systematic & technologically advanced can also be radical
These assumptions tend to be based on our knowledge (or lack thereof) about existing examples within community groups, assumptions which can be false. Thus supposed consensus organisations (eg TWS) are often seen as being radical, relatively decentralised and non-hierarchical and non-systematic in their organisation, whereas they can be centralist, elitist and conservative.
Apart from the fact that assumptions about existing organisation may be false, one can in fact have highly authoritarian organisations that are highly anarchic and disorganised internally, while one can have decentralised and consensus organisations that have efficient and effective systems.
Similarly there is no relationship between effective systems and administration and conservatism in organisations. There tends to be a luddites assumption in some parts of the social change movement that technology, systems and effective administration is somehow the realm of business and government, is therefore conservative, and should be avoided. Such an assumption apart from being un-environmental and wasteful, is irresponsible and damaging to the environment movement as I hope to show.
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1.7 TEN KEY RULES FOR MANAGING CHANGE
1. Change - integrated and ongoing (Change is constant, is initiated from within and planned for)
Recognising that there will always be a need for change and incorporating an ongoing mechanism for examining what changes are needed and how to manage them. Even if the culture of the organisation is fine and the structure is OK, there will be a range of both internal and external forces that will require a constant review of operations and organisational systems.
2. Change must be in the context of the organisations culture (change will fail unless those identifying and recommending change understand the organisation - changes must be 'owned')
That the use of external consultants to identify problems and recommend changes will often be wholly unsuccessful, unless those people understand the culture and dynamics of the organisation, and unless the process and outcomes are owned and implemented by the staff, volunteers and management committee as whole.
3. Responsibility for managing change must be clearly identified
There needs to be a clear distinction in addressing issues between those matters which are properly the responsibility of management and those that are the responsibility of the Board. The tendency for management committees and boards is to avoid responsibility and to abdicate their power and roles to permanent staff, who may in some cases be the cause of the need for change.
4. Don' t address cultural issues via structural/systematic change or vice versa
There is often a tendency to try and address deep seated cultural problems (lack of care about staff, poor working conditions, lack of leadership) by superficial changes to systems and structure; changes which are almost bound to perpetuate the problems rather than solving them.
5. For change to work it usually needs to be inclusive (though not always)
Major organisational change usually needs to be inclusive of all staff, volunteers and committee members; changes driven from above or below are less likely take root.
6. Implementation of decisions about change is critical
Implementation of change is critical to success. No process of decision making should occur without an identification of resources, timetables and responsibility for implementation and a regular process of review of progress, involving all the original participants.
7. Monitoring and evaluating decisions taken and their implementation should be a continual process
In order to successfully implement change it is usually necessary to continually monitor and evaluate the decisions and their implementation. Poor decisions can be reviewed, as can timeframes and allocations of resources.
8. Providing skills and resources for change is essential
People are often asked to undertake changes requiring new skills without the skills and/or resources being provided. This will often exacerbate the problems rather than solving them.
9. Expert advice should be sought where appropriate
Expert advice about the technical and systematic aspects of change will reduce mistakes - many organisations opt for false economies by trying to implement change without proper technical advice.
10. Proper cost/benefit will reveal the real (often lower) costs of change
There is often a tendency to think change cannot be afforded. Real cost benefit analyses will often show that what appear to be costly changes will often quickly save money.
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