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www.leadership-studies.com
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