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Leading Continuity in times of change (or: James Bond at the Crossroads: 007 and the luscious underbelly of change management)

Jonathan Gosling

Questions leaders ask…

Machine Logic Narrative logic

Generate and interpret numbers

What’s going on?

Generate and interpret stories

How much control do I have?

What’s coming next?

What are the tensions and dilemmas?

What can I change?(Where are the levers?)

What should I do?

What will provide enough continuity?

Can I predict the outcome?(Did I predict the outcome correctly?)

Will it work?(Did it work?)

Does the continuity make sense?(not just does the change make sense?)

Change is in the system

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and with them the relations of production, and with them all the relations of society …… Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social relations, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones …

Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1844 1972:476

Leading successful change

1. A sense of urgency

2. Guiding coalition

3. Clear vision

4. Communicate the vision

5. Remove obstacles

6. Short-term wins

7. Continuous change

8. Institutionalise new approaches

Kotter, J. “Why Transformation Efforts Fail” HBR 1995

Freytag’s Pyramid

How theatre is created

1. The script2. The Director forms a misty vision of the

production, and works with the designer 3. Actors work in the designed space, with the

script, to develop characters

Macbeth

Act 1, Scene 1

Thunder and lightning.

Enter three Witches

How theatre is created

1. The script2. The Director forms a misty vision of the

production, and works with the designer 3. Actors work in the designed space, with the

script, to develop characters 4. Rehearsed to strict timetables and budget5. Repeatable performances

But most organisations are more complex than the project-like qualities of a theatre production

• Complicated situations, uncertain what is going on, where we should go, what will get us there, what choices we have, what the unintended consequences of our actions might be.

An organisation is a continuing dramatic programme, presented in multiple serial instalments each week, through a narrative composed of interlocking storylines that focus on the relationships within a specific community of characters.

Adapted from: Mumford, L.S., 18, 1995

A soap opera is a continuing fictional dramatic television programme, presented in multiple serial instalments each week, through a narrative composed of interlocking storylines that focus on the relationships within a specific community of characters.

Mumford, L.S., 18, 1995

Soap Opera forms and norms found also in Organisations

• Never ending• Multi-plot• Unfolding text• Cliff-hangers and teases• Central core of characters - about 20• Character flaws in one sphere the basis of

success in another.• Mergers

Production of soap opera … production of organisations?

• Conversation topic• Gossip, empathy• Resistive pleasure• Challenge boundariesof propriety• The construction of real time• Permeable boundariesbetween reality andrepresentation• Unfolding text

insight

•Central vision of plot v.local improvisation•Instalments, acts, beats•Competition and loyalty•Trust between audience and producers•Assembly line Production• Markers are of repetition and returnas much as interruptionand change

societyproductionThemes, setting,characters audience

…shared knowledge of the past…

• Harmony and trouble

• Cliff hangers, teases

• No final closure

• Speculation, choices

• Open-ended, no rush to climax, never-ending

Projecting us via expectation & desire into the future. To be continued...

•Regular encounter•Escapist fantasy•Identification and involvement• Belonging• Conflict of familyand emotional needs•Keeping up with what’sgoing on• Loyalty• Watching and guessing• Appreciation of thecircularity of narrative

Storyline A B C

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

What leaders cope with

1. Regularity and repetition

2. Identification & involvement with characters

3. Fantasy & Imagination

4. Partiality, discrimination and caring.

5. Pleasure of resistance

6. Extended focus either side of climaxes

7. Multiple plot-lines each with own events

8. Blurred boundaries

Corrie: 27th Jan 1971, Val Barlow in her final scene, mending the plug of a hairdryer before she was electrocuted.. 15 million people watched her funeral on 3rd Feb.

Corrie: Deidre Rachid sent down, in 1998. Several newspapers (and Tony Blair) campaigned for the Home Secretary to intervene. She was released after three weeks.

Leading Change and Continuity

1. A sense of urgency

2. Guiding coalition

3. Clear vision

4. Communicate the vision

5. Remove obstacles

6. Short-term wins

7. Continuous change

8. Institutionalise new approaches

1. Regularity2. Identification &

involvement 3. Fantasy & Imagination4. Partiality 5. Pleasure of resistance 6. Extend focus7. Proliferate plot-lines8. Blurred boundaries

Leading the soap opera

Characters Themes Plot

Catalytic Leadership

A temporary architecture which enables

new realities to emerge