Date: 2024-05-14 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00024445
MANAGEMENT ... MOVING THE NEEDLE
CHANGE PARADIGMS: AN OVERVIEW
Five fundementally different ways of thinking about organizational change
CHANGE PARADIGMS: AN OVERVIEW
Five fundementally different ways of thinking about organizational change
Original article: http://www.truevaluemetrics.org/DBpdfs/Ideas/Caluwe-Vermaak/Caluwe-Vermaak-Change-Paradigms.pdf
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
As of April 2023, this paper is almost 20 years old. It reminds me of the tension that I experienced when consultants in organizational development were assigned to help me with the resolution of critical problems ... like profit performance ... in a real world setting.
Maybe there is a role for academic thinking about organizational development and corporate performance management but my personal experience over several decades is that a lot of consultants and advisors ... including probably myself ... tend to find an issue and run with it not matter where the issues fits into the more complex real world of corporate activity.
Some people liked my work a lot ... others did not. My focus was to work as much as possible with people lower in the orgnaizational hierarchy because they often had a lot more understanding of the glitches that were constraining performance than many of the 'higher ups'. While I tried to engage with everyone in the 'chain of command', I experienced negative push-back more than I got much that was positive. Quite often, top management were very happy with the results ... that is profit improvement ... but it often left some in the chain of command less than happy when it was obvious that they had 'dropped the ball'. This left me vulnerable and not always in a position to protect myself. Time to move on!
The moral of the story is that profit performance improvement is a team sport. Good training is a good foundation, but ability to operate rapidly and effectively in real situations is even more important. Profit performance improvement is helped by good data and good analysis ... but it must be coupled with good understanding of all the moving parts, and especially the moving parts lower down the organization where the 'rubber meets the road'.
This paper reminds me of various incidents in my career where consultants were employed (not by me) to solve problems using some 'silver bullet' of a new idea that was fashionable at the business schools for a time, but disappeared almost as fast as it appeared. Of the following color coded thinking, it is white that describes what I would expect to be the most effective!
Peter Burgess
Change Paradigms: An Overview
Written by Léon de Caluwé and Hans Vermaak
Abstract
The authors present five fundamentally different ways of thinking about change, each representing different beliefs systems and convictions about how change works, the kind of interventions that are effective, how to change people, etc. They are labeled by color: yellow, blue, red, green, and white print thinking. Each is based upon a family of theories about change. These five models function as communication and diagnostic tools and provide a map of possible change strategies.
Yellow Print Thinking
The foremost consider emost consideration of tion of the yellow-print change agent is to al is to always bear in mind the conglomeration of tion of interests, parties, and players and strive for agreements and policies.
Blue Print Thinking
The foremost considerations of the blue-print changer are these: Plan and organize first; use all possible expertise and do not let people’s individual ideas and preferences interfere; and never lose sight of the intended result.
Red Print Thinking
The foremost consideration of the red-print change agent is that the human factor plays a vital role.
Green Print Thinking
The foremost consideration of the change agent is to motivate and support people to learn with each other and from each other in order to establish continuous learning in collective settings.
White Print Thinking
The foremost consideration of the white-print change agent is to observe what is making things happen and change, supply meanings and perspectives, remove obstacles, get initiatives and explorations going, and empower people while giving them sufficient free rein.
