REINVENTING
THE ORGANIZATION
Reviewed by Grady McAllister
Change Lab International (1993),
Two Greenwich Plaza, Suite 100, Greenwich, CT 06830
Reinventing the Organization
is the second film in the series The Power of Change .
Dr. Gerald Ross and Michael Kay of Change Lab International
discuss how an organization can change to meet the new marketplace.
Talking about change and making
it happen are two very different things. Michael Kay describes
the change this way:
Companies that have really
changed--as opposed to those who merely say they have--have
one thing in common: Everyone from the CEO down to the mailroom
has reinvented their job and committed to a clear strategy
for serving the customer.
However, many companies want
to enter the land of change without changing their mode of
travel. According to Gerald Ross, in many cases when
companies introduce quality, for example, they won't change
the accounting system or they won't change the compensation
system or the other supporting systems. As the result, the
change peters out because it's a new idea applied to an old
system.
Kay says, "They are taking
out defects that nobody cares about from products that nobody
wants to buy." They should be linking the quality issue directly
to the customer. In larger organizations, people work in separate
functions such as sales or research and development. They
focus on their own part of the company. Ross says that tends
to push people apart:
In a situation like that,
they can not rationally discuss the business.
Also, different functions
may feel "some deep-seated anxiety" and "long-held animosity"
toward each other. Kay says the key is to move outside
the problem. This means "to plant a flag outside the organization
that everyone can rally around." Ross adds: "It's much
easier to have people align themselves around a flag that
is outside the system." For a company, the most effective
flag is the customer.
Organizations often try to
do too much too fast. To employees, it looks like just
another program or fad of-the- month. Ross says:
The senior management team
goes off on one-week retreats to rethink the business. The
person on the shop floor is lucky if they get a one-hour video
on quality or whatever the topic is. And then we wonder why
the organization hasn't transformed itself. You need to allow
the same amount of time to everyone to rethink his or her
job. This puts everyone's purpose into alignment. Instead
of compliance, there is enrollment in a shared vision.
By keeping people involved,
says Ross, you can "embrace the tiger of resistance." Kay
concludes the video with this rhetorical challenge for leaders:
Are they going to continue
to commend dependence or are they going to become leaders
of free people?
A
review of Part 1 in this series is also available on this
web site.
The
Vasthead is the professional web site of
Grady McAllister of Houston, Texas.
http://vasthead.com
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