Speaking For All Mankind

I’ve launched a new wiki based on my dissertation research. The purpose of the research was to examine a possible link between mental models, change visions, and organizational alignment.

As of 2006, there were over 1 million articles on organizational change and a multitude of change models in the literature. But, surprisingly, these change models were prescriptive rather than descriptive of actual change processes. I knew from my project management experience that most organizational change efforts fail or are only partly successful. What I wanted to do was develop a research method to collect empirical data on change efforts.

The entire dissertation is available on Scribd any you are welcome to download a copy. With the wiki, I have summarized the dissertation chapters and will update the research as new articles are published and I review other organizational change efforts.

I appreciate any comments or suggestions that any readers have and I am also looking for any agencies that are interested in being research subjects. Thank you.

Elizabeth Corcoran gives a great argument in the ongoing debate about technology’s effect on our minds.  She makes an important point- “I keep wondering why we lump all “technology” into the same basket. By doing so, we ignore the most important distinction of all: whether we are sponges for absorbing other people’s ideas, or whether we’re making our own.“

She gives an example of how children learn more when they are given tools to create content rather than tools that just deliver content.  Now, she talks about technology in the classroom but this equally applies to technology in the workplace.  Think of the training that consists of delivering content (lecture, PowerPoint, brown bag talk, etc.) versus the training where people are encouraged to play with the new software program or tool.

I consider the basis of learning to be the creation of mental models.  You cannot just transmit your mental model completely to me; I have to create one unique to my own mind.  You can give me information to build the model and you can create experiences that will shape the mental model but the final product is still through my unique mental processes.  But every mental model starts with engagement.  Thus, this is why allowing people to make content rather than absorb content is the key to effective learning.

Two interesting articles about organizational culture in the latest issue of the “Journal of Organizational Change Management.”  The first article is a cultural analysis of organizational memory and its role in organizational change while the second article describes how organizational memory can hinder learning a new technology.

In the first article, McCabe gives a more detailed description of organizational culture as a collection of shared memories.  These memories can contradict each other or just be ambiguous about past organizational events but, woven together, these memories form a dynamic and conflicting culture for the organization.  McCabe disputes the common belief of many management theorists that the past can be erased in favor of the new reality because the past always blocks change.  Organizational memory is more complex than that because some memories can help facilitate change while other aspects resist change.  McCabe concludes by stating that organizational memory cannot be managed as part of the change process but must be accounted for.

McCabe’s article illuminates the findings in the second article by Becker.  The second article deals with the process of acquiring new technology in an organization.  As Becker explains, for employees to adopt a new technology they must unlearn the old technology.  They do this through releasing mental models of the workings of the old technology and create mental models of how the new technology works.  Memories of past change efforts can hinder the process of unlearning if it promotes fear and anxiety among the employees.  Becker does not have any specific remedies for dealing with organizational memory and unlearning but she does argue that further research is necessary to fully understand the unlearning process.

The relevance to Gov 2.0 is clear.  Many agencies have long and painful memories of past change efforts that have been woven into the current culture.  Gov 2.0 advocates must understand and acknowledge the past while developing strategies to alleviate the fear that will prevent government employees from unlearning the current way things are done in favor of making government transparent, open, and engaging.  Gov 2.0 advocates must take the positive aspects of the past and use those events to counter the negative past events while realizing that culture cannot be fully controlled.

References:

Becker, K. (2010). Facilitating unlearning during implementation of new technology. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 251-268.

McCabe, D. (2010). Taking the long view: A cultural analysis of memory as resisting and facilitating organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 230-250.

Been spending a lot of time on GovLoop last week in preparation for this Wednesday’s OpenGov Workshop.  The theme of this workshop is about cultural change and OpenGov which intersects beautifully with my dissertation.  I posted this in response to one of the conference questions:

Q: How do we facilitate a change from existing behavior and culture to open government?

A: I did my doctoral research on questions similar to this question. In my research, I examined the link between the communication of a change vision (a special form of mental model) and organizational alignment to determine what constitutes effective communication in bringing about organizational change. I developed a case study of the merger of a city archives and a county archives into a single metropolitan agency.

Listed below are findings that might prove especially relevant to the questions:

1) There are two change visions: an internal change vision and an external change vision. The external change vision in this case is the one that is promoted from the Obama administration to the general public. This external change vision explains the benefits of open government and attempts to build support with the external stakeholders of the government agencies. The external change vision is detailed and extensively communicated through a wide range of communication methods.

In contrast, the internal change vision is the vision that is communicated to the employees of the affected agencies. This vision is often lacking in detail and is not as well-communicated as the external change vision. In many cases, there is little or no effort to gain support of the internal change vision. The internal change vision is imposed from the top-down with no input from the rank-and-file employees. There may be some discussion of the benefits from adopting the internal change vision but the main message is that resisting the internal change vision will harm or terminate the employee’s job.

2) Examples of poorly communicating organizational change to employees is to give little opportunity for feedback and abundant use of clichés. In the case that I studied, the employees attended mass meetings with the government merger team but did not receive specific answers to their questions. There was an intranet but none of the communications encouraged feedback to the announcements from the change team.

Clichés and “management speak” are especially pernicious because employees – already concerned about the organizational change – will interpret clichés and management speak in the most negative ways. In my case study, the change team talked about addressing the “lowest hanging fruit” first. The archives employees took this to mean that the less-essential, non-revenue producing agencies will be either shut down or drastically downsized. This was never said by the change team but the adverse perception was widely communicated among many of the employees.

3) The organizational change was still successful despite the poor communication of the vague internal change vision. I believe that this was the result of two factors. First, the professionals of the archives agencies have a mental model of how a professional archive should work and they used this mental model to fill in the gaps of the internal change vision. Second, there was a “change vanguard” or a group of employees who perceived the need for organizational change and took advantage of the vacuum created by the vague internal change vision to implement changes they wanted.

Kelman (2005) believes that it is a myth that people are resistant to change. Front-line employees are most familiar with the shortcomings of the organization and would like to change processes and operations but feel they don’t have the power to initiate the change. Once a leader signals their support for the change, the vanguard is emboldened enough to sustain the change effort. The change vanguard can be a great source of innovative ideas and help to motivate the rest of the organizational members in support of the change vision.

Thus, for OpenGov to be successful, government change agents should become aware that there is more than one change vision and that they need to spend just as much effort on the internal change vision as they do on the external change vision. Change agents should also realize the existence of change vanguards and work to recruit them into the change effort to help increase the possibility of success of change efforts. Collaboration, openness, and transparency in affecting organizational change in the government agencies will bring about the organizational alignment needed for OpenGov.

References:
Brantley, W.A. (2009). The effect of mental models on creating organizational alignment around a change vision (Doctoral Dissertation). Available from Dissertations and Theses Database (UMI).

Kelman, S. (2005). Unleashing change: A study of organizational renewal in government. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

A future project of mine is to create an artificial organization to study organizational change.  I want to build agents that have mental models so that I can simulate through the exchange of mental models and change visions.  I am studying Processing and NetLogo as two possible languages.  The idea is to model the spread of a change vision in a simulated environment and then compare this to real-world cases.