Changing? Be aware of experts!

CHANGING? BE AWARE OF EXPERTS!

A SHORT REFLECTION ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE TO NOT SEPARATE THOUGHT (POLICY) AND ACTION (EXECUTION) By: MA/MSc J.H van Pelt Captain of the military administration

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CHANGING? BE AWARE OF EXPERTS! A SHORT REFLECTION ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE TO NOT SEPARATE THOUGHT (POLICY) AND ACTION (EXECUTION)

By: MA/MSc J.H van Pelt Captain of the military administration In our world changing continuously stands central. I am thinking in this context on the international political territory, for example, about the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the reformations in Eastern Europe, the problems in the Middle East, the recession in the United States and the approach between North- and South Korea. Also on a smaller scale within organizations, like the Koninklijke Landmacht “KL” (Royal Netherlands Army), constant changes (reorganizations) are taking place. Think in this context about the restructuring project KL, the implementation of the policy framework to improve business operations and the many subsequent reorganizations arising from there within the operational units.

The problem The changing of structures and processes within organizations normally is seen as a great amount (complex) of actions that should lead to a situation where the organization unit is adjusted into both the internal and external environment. Within the organization science in this context, is spoken a lot about the organization as an ‘open system’. This perspective on change, does not answer the question as to when and how the change needs to be established. Within the KL in this matter, the central question is how the mentioned changes should be managed. Although in the past decennia lots of manuals and methods were issued about this matter, the initiating, controlling and managing of the changing process continues to be a huge, and according to my believe, an unsolvable problem. The reason of this problem, essentially, is the fact that we people are not capable of bringing all relevant aspects of an organization into a ‘map’ and to understand them. Nevertheless, any insight in the reason why the problem is unsolvable can give an important contribution on how to approach reorganization projects. In continuation, I will briefly explain the essence of the image on our society. Given the problem ‘how to accomplish changes within organizations’, this image is translated into four, further explained quotes.

Then with every quote the meaning for each mentioned problem will be indicated.

Image on the society Every human is a ‘part’ of our society. All human acts have an influence on the way how society develops itself. As well as our acts also are being influenced by this society because of (having) to adapt our behavior. Biologists Maturana and Varela come, in this context, to the following aphorism:

“All that is been said, is said by someone” With this aphorism they indicate that an experience (something is been said) is inseparably connected with the person who said something (to act). The presumed reciprocal (recursive) relation between action and experience produces such a big complexity, that the predictability of acts (behavior) and experiences (events) soon decreases. This means that scientific argued causal connections (in the long term) never can exist.

Conclusion: 1. Our experiences determine if there are (effective) actions (“the listener decides what has been said.”).

2. Our society today differences itself from de one of yesterday because it develops itself (in an unpredictable way).

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Figure 1 visualizes that “the society of tomorrow” cannot be derived from the “society of today”, but that there is a division of change around the actual structure.

Statements and its significance for the problem On basis of the conclusions above, four quotes are being made about accomplishing changes within organizations from which the most important meaning for the problem will be indicated.

Society of tomorrow Society of today

Structures norms and values Rules Procedures

Figure 1 1. “Changing requires for a leader to also know that there are changes”.

The ‘simple’ statement that our experience is essential for really changing a society and therefore an organization means that actions never can effectuate changes without a change happening in the experience. ‘Implementing’ another structure (norms, values, rules etc.) requires that the structure simultaneously, however not known yet, is being prepared in ‘our’ heads. During a changing process all actions (activities) should be focused on abiding changes of our experience. The establishment and complementation of a new organization-table, and therefore the use of new material means are in this approach only two (important) resources (actions) to change this experience for the long term. Education, as well as external as internal, having discussions, creating different opinions, etc, etc, are also acts which are as important as the two before mentioned actions.

2. “Changing, okay!, but keep your hands off the manual” From the hypothesis that accomplishing changes is a result from the fact that we experience our world differently, this means that (wanted) changes depending on their nature, requires changes in our experiences. For us to have less difficulty with small reorganization projects than with big projects is caused by the fact that with small projects normally a limited amount of changes seems necessary in our experience1.

To establish drastic changes and therefore establish lots of changes in our experience leads to the question to how these changes should be accomplished. This way with a reorganization on a big scale the total of actions increases exponentially, in sense of quantity and quality. A manual, I define here as a tool wherein indicated when, which and how activities, focused on reaching the wanted result (change in the experience) must be executed. These indications are essentially ‘normalized’ recommendations, which are established on ground of experiences in the past. Within big organizations regular recommendations are not rarely further converted in recommendations, which connect better to the concerning organization. Military, concerning this matter, has lots of manuals and standards. A manual receives a static character, so it only adjusts to the situation as it has occurred in the past. Since changing means that the situation should be experienced differently, each manual should be reviewed critically before applied. Certainly, there are inevitable elements incorporated which are closely connected with the ‘actual’ structure in which now exactly changes need to be adjusted.

3. “Changing, nice!, but let`s not prepare as much as possible” From the previous we can observe that each realized change in our experience is of influence on how we approach our society and therefore on the effect of measures to

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change our experience. To accomplish a big range of changes differs because of this interaction from a situation where the amount of changes is limited (for example, the implementation of a new declaration system). Within de social science but also the biologic science grows the notion that the predictability of objects decreases when the amount of freedom-degrees increases and the period of reflection gets longer. In that connection more and more is seen that the studied object behaves unpredictable and starts leading its ‘own life’ (self-organization). This explains that in a reorganization project on a big scale, a fully controlled plan of action in practice never can be followed completely. To prevent that an organization project develops itself towards an unwanted direction, the attention in a reorganization plan needs to be moved towards the way decisions are been made and evaluated.

4. “Changing and chaos, a necessary combination” In the literature about information planning it is noticed that the quality of personnel and not the used method or resources are decisive for the quality of the information system (see figure 2).

Quality of personnel

Ressources

Low

High

Low

Insufficient

Good

High

Weak

Very Good

Figure 2: Quality of an information system This conclusion may be seen as a confirmation of the first quote, when understood that good personnel ‘identify’ better with the changes. This assumption is not illogical when thought that we (normally) highly appreciate ‘the personnel’ who feel (co-) responsible for ‘operating’ an organization. Furthermore, of importance is to establish that the personnel are responsible for a dynamic character of a reorganization process. As known, everyone who is familiar with reorganization projects, that the personal capacities of the direct involved, political interests, unexpected matters as well as new or existing regulation, constantly influence the results of the reorganization project. The sometimes chaotic situations, seen through the outsider`s eye, lead however only in a limited number of situations towards a total fiasco of the project. The reason for that can be explained through the already indicated opinion, that complex systems possess some kind of self-organization form. The mathematician Tennekes surmises that: “chaotic systems constantly generate coherent structures which adjust to their dynamic”. Tennekes also surmises that: “because of this the behavior of complex systems becomes more predictable than that of simple systems”. This predictability cannot be compared against the unpredictability, where spoken about in the second theory. A chaotic system obviously is capable in an, for outsiders unpredictable way, to realize its final goal in a predictable way (to adjust an organization onto a changing environment). The improved operational management in the policy framework of the KL mentioned philosophy, wherein outcome oriented thinking and acting is being promoted, concludes (probably unwanted) the theory about chaotic systems. For the KL it is of great importance to not unnecessarily want to structure the outcome oriented thinking and acting. The meaning of this quote for the problem can be summarized in 4 points: 1. A optimal solution does not exist 2. Do not intervene directly from higher positions into a reorganization project, when something seems to go wrong.

3. Make the approach, methodology and the thereby manageable procedures secondary to the human activity.

4. Green is not green when blue does not exist.

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Conclusion Without doubts, you would have thought during reading some quotes that from practical experience you already knew that ‘it works like that’ with a reorganization. You will be happy to find out that your knowledge is not only the everyday knowledge but also the scientific knowledge. A few aspects that are mentioned above have more attention in scientific area at this moment than in the past decennia. I think in this case about forming theories concerning information transfer, motivation of personnel and making planning draft for complex changing processes. The most recent theoretical insights about chaos, discontinuity, recursive relations etc. shall be given a new impulse to this developments and form a new theoretical framework from where research can be done.

This framework can completely change the way of thinking about organizations in the near future.

Notes (Endnotes) 1 This observation asks for a clarification since it seems a contradiction with the before given hypothesis that a society develops itself in a predictable way. This hypothesis means that in any moment there is question of a new structure, which cannot be explained from the ‘old’ structure, with the result that the amount of changes (can) be unlimited. On this issue the assumption also is that the chance that a structure completely differs from the ‘old’ structure becomes smaller when the explored period of time is shorter. In other words, the standard deviation of the in figure 1 showed division of chance decreases when the explored period of time becomes longer. The chance (and no more than that) that with ‘small’ projects the new structure in a way is different from the old structure is decreased with bigger projects.

Literature a. See amongst others: Management en Organisatie, theorie en toepassing (Management and Organization, theory and implementation), Dr. D Keuning, Dr. D.J. Epping, 1984, H.E. Stenderfert Kroese BV, Leiden/Antwerpen.

Besturen van het bedrijf, leiding geven en Interne organisaties (Leading the company, leadership and Intern organizations), Drs. J. Heinsdijk, 1985, Wolters Noordhoff, Groningen. b. De boom der kennis, Hoe wij de wereld door onze eigen waarnemingen creëeren (The tree of knowledge, How we create the world through our own perceptions), H.R Manturana en F.J. Varela, 1989, Contact, Amsterdam. c. Chaos, James Gleick (de derde wetenschappelijke revolutie- the third scientific revolution), 1989, Contact, Amsterdam. d. Reorganisatie, bezien als besluitvormingsproces, een theoretische en empirische studie naar het voorkomen van problemen bij reorganisatieprojecten (doctoraalscriptie) (Reorganization, seen as a process of decision-making, a theoretical and empirical study to prevent problems with reorganization projects –doctoral essay), J.H. van Pelt, juli 1991, RU- Utrecht, Zeist. e. De vlinder van Lorenz, de verassende dynamica van chaos (The butterfly of Lorenz, the surprising dynamic of chaos), H. Tennekes, 1990, Aramith, Bloemend

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