Tue, Aug 19, 2008 8:24 EDT

"The appearance of change can be the enemy of real change"

Posted by: Chris Potts in Best Practices

Topic: Enterprise Management

Current Rating: Comments: 3

An observation about government politics in The Times yesterday might equally be true of business. However, investing in the appearance of change may be either the friend or enemy of real change...

I had lunch yesterday with Tom Graves, who has written and self-published books on business management, and other subjects such as water dowsing (our conversation was mainly about the former!). We met in London, in the cafe underneath St Martin-in the Fields church on Trafalgar Square. On the train, I read The Times and in the Leader articles saw the above quote, so with Tom's permission made it one of the topics that he and I discussed.

It's an angle that seems worth exploring, at least in conversation and probably in the numbers, too. How much of your organisation's total investment in change is going on real change, and on the appearance of change?

It seems there should be a healthy balance between the two, and often they should be ‘friends' rather than ‘enemies'. An organisation would often be under-exploiting the value of a change, for example in terms of Brand and reputation, if it didn't also invest in making the benefits of that change apparent to people, both externally and within the organisation. Equally, it would be a high-risk strategy to knowingly invest in creating the appearance - or illusion - of change without actually making that change real.

More subtly, though, if an organisation is investing in what appears to be a change, but in reality nothing really changed, then the benefits of that investment will fall well short of what's expected.

The Times' leader article was headed Moving the Deckchairs, almost certainly a reference to the saying ‘moving the deckchairs on the Titanic" (but also to the fact that UK politicians are returning from their summer break). Most organisations are not the metaphorical Titanic, and most changes that they invest in have more substance than moving deckchairs.

But to borrow the ship analogy, what if we invested in replacing the boilers with shiny new ones, only to find the ship went no faster, cost about the same to run and didn't make passengers any happier? Did anything really change?

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Tue, Aug 19, 2008 19:57 EDT

"Change"? In Politics? ... Nahhhhh

Posted by: Mark Cummuta
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Chris,

I can clearly see your point when in reference to politics, especially as here in the US all the candidates that were running spoke to "Change" in some major or minor form. Further, of course, as monolithic as any government body is, any real change is highly unlikely, and we will most likely see the majority of our tax dollars fronting the vision of change as you put it.

But, I'm a little mystified to how your point can be applied to businesses. If a business, or any of its constituent parts are only providing "smoke and mirrors", I would think that that fact would be found out rather quickly and eliminated. So I'm hoping for some further clarification. Thanks!

Mark Cummuta

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Wed, Aug 20, 2008 5:14 EDT

A couple of examples...

Posted by: Chris Potts
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Mark

Thank you for your question.

A couple of examples where a company might want to check the balance between investing in the appearance of change, and real change:

- Launching a new or updated Brand Proposition, yet on-the-ground delivery to Customers is still delivering the previous Proposition

- Redesigning the company's internal structures (e.g. processes, organization, systems) in ways that do not materially change the company's value to its stakeholders.

This is not about 'smoke and mirrors', which in my understanding implies a deliberate act of concealment. Instead, the question is whether the company's portfolio of investments in programmes and projects is achieving the required changes in business outcomes, rather than simply 'change'.

The answer helps towards understanding the company's culture of investing in change - and what, if anything, needs to be done differently to deliver maximum value from all its change initiatives.

Chris

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Fri, Aug 22, 2008 15:37 EDT

Helpful Examples

Posted by: Mark Cummuta
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Chris,

Thank you for the examples, those helped pull that together for me.

I'm working with a firm right now that is considering a variety of potential organizational and business processing changes. The first task is understanding what is already in place, followed closely by what has already been tried. If some good ideas have been tried and failed, I think its beneficial to understand why, both for historical benefit (learning from the past) but also to better understand the culture and the environment.

Or as you put it, checking these prior investments in change may help improve our success ratios for our future investment portfolio.

Thanks!

Mark Cummuta

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