Extracts taken from my new book The Flipping Point. [1] A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs to be reached. The Flipping Point [1] contains 200 short vignettes exploring what ’deprogramming management’ may look like. Read a recent review [2].
Change is social, doing it together, a praxis.
More Confucius and Tao than Aristotle. More Roman than Greek. Individual change happens by ‘doing it in a group’ and experiencing it. It’s not conceptual. It’s not simply contractual either: lose 5 kilos in 3 months. It’s ‘collapsing the distinction between knowing and doing’(Kyoto Zen school).
Change is social, doing it together, a praxis. The modern Kyoto Zen school is truly rich in observations. The Roman vs Greek comparison is very present in recent Taleb [3] writings. The ‘collapsing the distinction between knowing and doing’ is of course on the Zen side.
In any change programme, it’s important to know what is not for changing.
In any change programme (whatever that may mean) the most important thing is to know what is not for changing.
It’s amazing how this is so difficult to articulate. Presumably, values, for example, are not for changing. I always ask my clients to start the communication on change by what is not changing.
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Continue the conversation. Find out more about our free webinar, The Myths of Change [4], on 18th June, with Leandro Herrero and his team of organizational architects.
Traditional management and a great deal of academic thinking is responsible for the colossal failure of ‘change programmes’.
The first in our series of webinars will debunk uncontested assumptions in this area and uncover the alternatives, whilst considering why this debunking of myths is even more relevant today in the current exceptional environment.
To change to ‘the new normal’ we must think and act differently in the management of our organizations, particularly in the areas of change and transformation. We must abandon change as something imposed in favour of people becoming true agents. Organizations that have mastered this have been in ‘the new normal’ for a while!