When dealing with change, at the stages of either planning or
implementation, in a social organization such as a school, one can usually
count on a certain amount of tension.
This is because change by its nature is veering a person or a group away
from what is customary and oftentimes comfortable to what is new and
unknown. When this type of change
happens at the workplace, many normative and coercive forces are potentially at
play. Even when management runs on
humanistic principles, the employee is not likely to forget he or she is at
work and the boss is watching with expectation.
This is true in even the most laid back work environments.
In previous postings, I have tried to communicate that the
above unsettling situation makes it difficult for one to be “normal” in conducting
the interactions of the day. Given that
even in the most normal of conditions, we all, from time to time, act in ways
that we cannot explain even to ourselves, much less to others. When tension levels increase, we can count
that the number of times such inconsistent behaviors occur will more than
likely increase, sometimes significantly.
I use the term inconsistent advisedly because inconsistency is a
prevailing concern among those who deal with change professionally. But before I expand, let me relate a short anecdote
that I think makes the point.
I heard a story the other day about a man I have met once or
twice, but cannot say I know very well.
A mutual friend told me this person has a phobia concerning cleaning his
ears. He is otherwise a very clean person. Due to some childhood trauma, he has a weird
fear or sensation when it comes to making sure his ears are appropriately
washed. Now, I know ears can be a bit
tricky – you don’t want water to get into the canal beyond the outer earlobe
area. I once got a nasty infection
because I got water in one ear at a hotel pool and was not in a position to get
any alcohol into the area. I worked one
summer as a day camp counselor and the worker who supervised the kids after
they finished their daily swim made sure every one of them got a drop of
alcohol in each ear to prevent infection.[1] Anyway, this man with the phobia, according
to the account, has had recurring ear problems due to his lack of cleaning
them. When asked, he will admit that his
problems stem from this deficiency in his ear cleaning habits, yet he persists in
not taking sufficient care to keep his ears clean. If you ask him if one should clean his ears
and if one should have good hygiene, he would totally agree. Therefore, what he believes does not
translate into how he behaves, at least in this aspect of his life. I wish him well.
This little anecdote – which was told to me with a straight
face with no hint of derision toward our subject – I believe reveals a very
important insight into human decision-making and consequent behavior. And the insight has some relevancy to the
challenges which confront those who are engaged in organizational change. Over the next few postings, I want to address
these types of challenges and, by doing so, share with you influential language
in the field of organizational change.
Three terms in this lexicon are theories-in-action, theories-in-use, and
espoused theories.[2]
When I reviewed, a few postings ago, how varying mental
images, emotional forces, and physiological drives or needs might compete to
gain dominance in how one responds to a given perceived occurrence in that
person’s life space, I described it as a rumble or tumble. Let me put more meat in that image. In order to make sense of the confronted
situation, we form a holistic imagery of it.
That is, we formulate a “theory” about it. You can review those earlier postings to
gather what is going on, but the theory makes sense of the tumult. Since there are varying images and “messages”
involved, there is a good chance that in order to make sense, our mind will
likely diminish some images or forces in order to strengthen the overall
theory. That works psychologically and
allows us to respond, but if the situation presents contradicting evidence that
we cannot totally block out, then we are facing an inconsistency; something
does not look or feel “kosher” enough to our theory and this might very well
call for a change in our theory or how we are behaving. An opposing imagery makes itself felt and one
is facing a sort of dilemma. Dilemmas
are contradictory images presenting choices in which whatever is chosen, a
negative consequence is anticipated.
Argyris and Schon speak of inconsistent governing variables – individual
beliefs of our theory or other theory, that “govern” how our theory functions
given the situation in question.
Let me illustrate.
Suppose a change plan calls on students to begin viewing social reality
from a more communal perspective than they have been asked to do in the past. The teaching staff during their planning and
teaching activities all agree this is a useful strategic decision. As part of this change, the students are to
engage in certain exercises in which they are to work in groups. After the strategy is put in place, the
teaching staff notices that certain students choose not to contribute to group work
assignments and opt to “coast” and get credit that is earned by the more
productive group members. The staff is
hit by a dilemma. Should, for example,
the teachers devise a grading protocol in which fellow student team members
determine how credit should be distributed; does such a move illegitimately
place the responsibility of evaluation on students – ill-trained to perform
such a function – or should the these less productive students be allowed to
get credit they did not earn? Of course,
I am presenting this dilemma as an either/or situation to illustrate the point –
there are other options – but I can testify that this is an inherent problem
with group projects. But the fact that
there are other options leads to very useful methods of facilitating change.
I mentioned governing variables. In the theory shared by the teachers, there
is this governing variable that holds that experiencing the give and take of
group work will encourage students to appreciate the power of groups in
accomplishing or devising solutions to complex problems. Complexity here is defined in relation to the
sophistication of the students. But
another related governing variable is that individuals should feel a sense of
ownership within group efforts if an individual can be expected to
contribute. These two governing
variables are not necessarily exclusive of one another, but they can, as in our
example, function at cross purposes. But
as the overall situation does not present an either/or dilemma, neither does
each of these governing variables. Each
presents the change agents and implementers with a range of options. How much does a work assignment have to
promote a communal sense? How much
ownership does an individual have to have in order to productively
participate? These are questions that
those who are trying to implement the change can ask, answer, and accommodate so
that the change has a higher probability of success. If the strategy can get the students along a
desired path – viewing social reality from a more communal perspective – perhaps
an individual change element does not have to accomplish the end
objective. Partial success might be the
ticket for a strategy such as group projects.
Now it can be the case that an inconsistency is so great that
the gap cannot be bridged. That is, both
sides of the dilemma demand choices that go beyond acceptable ranges. For example, in our case absolute ownership
is demanded of every activity. This makes
those activities devoid of any communal quality. In that case, what the staff is confronting
is an incompatibility within the internal dimensions of the theory. If that is the case, we truly have a
dilemma: continue with the project as it
is currently defined or end it. A truly incompatible
dilemma is unfixable given the overall context of the change environment. Something fundamentally has to change and
such change is probably beyond the purview of those planning and/or
implementing the change.
The other point to make here is that the theories under
consideration fall into two categories: espoused
theories and theories-in-use. The
example above more readily represents the latter, theories-in-use. And the inconsistency is one which resides
internally to the theory. In my next
posting, I will describe what happens when espoused theory (what should be) is
inconsistent with a theory-in-use or vice-versa. As with internal theories, consistency is a good
thing. One way to up the chances for
consistency is to develop sufficiently sophisticated theories that adequately
account for the elements of the reality one is confronting. Given a particular reality, this can be very
difficult, yet what we are about is often demanding not only of our abilities
but of our needs.
[1] I am not an expert on ear hygiene; I’m just reporting
what I saw these many years ago.
[2] Argyris, C. and Schon, D.
A. (1985). Evaluating theories in action. In W. G. Bennis, K. D. Benne, and R.
Chin (Eds.), The planning of change,
Fourth edition, (pp. 108-117). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
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