Improvement Leaders Collaboratives
Residential Module
Organisational paradigms
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Understanding organisations
Exploring organisations, change and OD (organisation development)
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‘Change: you do not have to do this. Survival is not compulsory!’
W Edwards Deming
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How do you think about organisations?
Organisations are like…
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Mechanical
Complex
Social (organic)
3 organisational paradigms
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Predictable and planned: the use of project charts, documents, etc.
How does change happen in a mechanical system?
Cause and effect: we can predict what will happen next
Change happens within the organisational systems
Hierarchies are important to get things done (power is important)
Change managers need to be organised
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Networking is important
How does change happen in a social system?
Relationships are key to getting things done
Change happens within the communities that exist both inside and outside the organisation
Change managers need to be connected
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Change is unpredictable
How does change happen in a complex system?
Change in one part of the system will effect every other part
Change happens within every part of the system (micro and macro)
Change managers need to be comfortable with uncertainity
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Instead of slow moving flows, leaders find themselves hurtling down rapids. White Water Leadership is the new corporate necessity…to learn to move towards uncertainty rather than away from it
White, Hodgson and Crainer: The Future of Leadership –a White Water Revolution, 1996
White Water Leadership
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Complexity – what is it?
• Complexity does not mean complicated
• Complex systems are created from the interplay between many parts
• The more parts, the more complex
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Chaos Theory
• Chaos theory helps us understand the patterns that are formed when complex system operate
• First noticed in 1960 by Edward Lorenz when he was creating whether simulation modeling
• He noticed that small changes in a system can create massive changes in outcome
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Chaos Theory and the Strange Attractor
• At the heart of chaos theory sits the strange attractor
• The strange attractor is a simple set of rules that, if followed by the system, will create patterns of behaviour (fractals)
• Fractals allow us to predict a direction of travel (to a degree), but not the individual behaviour of any part of the system
• Changing these rules will create massive changes to a system
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Leadership, Complexity and Chaos
• If we can understand the organisational drivers, (the strange attractors), then we can make choices about what we want to change and how it might impact the system
• Every interaction, (conversation/behaviour), creates a potential change, (or maintains the status quo)
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Noticing complexity and chaos in your own organisations
• Where do you notice patterns of behaviour in your own organisation that are driven by simple rules?
• Can you identify the rules?
• What would it personally take to create change in these situations?
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Leadership, Complexity and Chaos(References)
• http://fractalfoundation.org/resources/what-is-chaos-theory/
• http://www.abarim-publications.com/ChaosTheoryIntroduction.html#.VTgCj4dAyCt
• Margaret WheatleyLeadership and the New Science