Change Management Models give Structure to Chaos

Is the model you are using helping or hindering?

Are you assessing change management models? Looking for guidance to move your organisation to the next level of performance?

Your organisation is most likely in the Differentiation or Mechanical / Scientific Phase of its development which makes change all the more complex.

The model you choose needs to do justice to you and everyone else in your organisation. It must address all aspects of your organisation...

your people, your processes, and your values...

Keep your organisational development projects on track and human.

Based on the U-procedure, a 7-step process originally developed by Friedrich Glasl in the 1970s, this model for change management is particularly well suited to large organisations undergoing substantive change.

Organisations large enough that many sets of values exist to be reconciled. And with many points of view to be taken into account. The type of problems you'd expect in departments with greater than 150 people working together...

How can you use this? And what is it called?

Using the model is easy, just start at the bottom-left and work your way around the inverted "U". Because it lays the foundation for such substantial change, we call it the "Strategic U-turn".

Each step is a project in itself, giving you seven phases in a master change management project. That's why we consider it to be the most comprehensive of all the change models available.

And because this change management model is based on epistemology, the study of cognition, it has its own framework.

In philosophy, this "framework" is an ontology and you also need a taxonomy, a way of classifying the things in your framework. That's where enterprise architecture frameworks help.

Seven Stages

At first glance, seven stages appears too much and the temptation is to cut out steps

Before doing so, consider what happens in each project...

Understand the Present

• Present Technical Subsystem
• Present Social Subsystem
• Present Cultural Subsystem

Assess the Present Situation and Develop Future Strategy

• Strategic Analysis

Ensure that Change means Improvement

• Future Cultural Subsystem
• Future Social Subsystem
• Future Technical Subsystem

There are a couple of things to note.

See how the bottom layer, steps 1 and 7, are marked as process mapping? What is this telling you?

That most projects that masquerade as "change" address only one-third of your organisation, if that!

If the models you use are based on processes alone, you miss two-thirds of what makes your organisation unique. Your people and their values!

No wonder change is not sustainable...

The real change happens above the dotted line...

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