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Organizational
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Frameworks for Change
Bob Phillips
How does one make change happen?
In an earlier article for MindPlay ("The ABC of Pathfinding," May, 1995), I put forward some ideas from my own practice and in relation to Doug Engelbart1s proposals for innovation, and I urged caution in using theoretical frameworks for change as a blunt instrument to beat the targets of change into submission. I was not, however, promoting the idea of practice free from theory. My point was that a theoretical framework that guides us in making change happen must not obtrude, and must never be coercive.
This leads me onto a further enquiry: what kind of theoretical framework is likely to assist in the practice of helping our fellow human beings to change themselves, their organizations and their culture? This is an important question: many of the theories that we ought to be able to lean on from the world of academic psychology turn out to have just the sort of coercive characteristics that make them very unhelpful in practice. They too readily become just the sort of blunt instruments that can kill efforts at facilitating change. We need to avoid them, or at least bend them intelligently to our purpose. For this, we need to be able to recognize them for what they are.
So, a rather metaphysical study, of the nature and types of theories, has some practical use in cajoling innovation out of our clients and our colleagues. I have found the insights of the German philosopher JŸrgen Habermas (particularly in his book Knowledge and Human Interests) very helpful in these deep waters although, to be fair to the gentleman, I should not attribute what follows too closely to him - I have to take the blame for these musings myself.
Let us start with a useful distinction between two types of science -predictive science and interpretive science. The first seeks to understand the world in order to be able to make predictions about the way events will proceed. The second seeks to understand the world in order to be able to interpret and further understand events. Both can be scientific in the sense that they rely on understanding that is established by a scientific method: rigorous, shared, repeatable and logical.
Predictive vs. Interpretive
Both sciences start from the accumulation of knowledge about the world into categories that will further the pursuit of scientific understanding. In a predictive science these categories provide a means to classify and identify things in the world, from which knowledge of the future behavior of these things can be predicted. For instance, if something is categorized as a metal, it would be expected to behave in appropriate metal ways.
An interpretive science likewise starts from the accumulation of knowledge and the articulation of categories. However, those categories are used to inform, rather than to predict. In psychology, categorizing a person's past behavior as "obsessive compulsive" provides an interpretation of the past behavior, not a prediction about future behavior.
As Habermas points out, Freud systematically misinterpreted his own scientific knowledge as if it were part of a predictive science. His categorization of someone as an "obsessive compulsive character type" would lead to predictions about that person1s behavior - miserliness, ritualistic traits, etc. The same knowledge leads to different conclusions depending upon the model of science used.
Freud used a predictive model because it was the only model of science available to him. He needed to, and deserved to dignify his discoveries with the name of science, and in his era and society that meant assimilating them to a model of knowledge in which identification and prediction (diagnosis and prognosis) were key elements. If he had had access to the alternative model of interpretive science as also a truly scientific endeavor, then he would have been able to couch his findings in a form that truly reflected the way they were to be used Ü to interpret and facilitate change in behavior through the deepening understanding of the subject of the study.
Control vs. Liberation
The difference between an interpretive and a predictive understanding of psychological science can be examined in some of the ways that psychology is used. The belief that psychology is and should be a predictive science is associated with an attitude to the subjects of that science that tends to degrade their existence as free, independent human beings. In Doris Lessing's book The Four-Gated City, the character Linda describes her experience of psychiatrists and psychologists as treating her as a "nothing but." "You1re nothing but an example of the Electra complex," "You1re nothing but a paranoid schizophrenic." Even though the psychiatric professionals would not use the term "nothing but," Linda received the firm understanding that they saw the categories of psychology as determining the individual.
The belief that scientific knowledge enables one to predict how an individual will react to future situations, reduces that individual and, ultimately denies free will. I believe that the fundamental issue is this: Is a human science a means to interpret the actions of free beings, ultimately free to choose even if their current activity is constrained to run in well-understood channels? Or is a human science a means to predict the behavior of beings that can ultimately be reduced to the workings of biology, chemistry and impersonal forces of society?
An Interpretive Science of Change Management
Organizational change shares some characteristics with psychoanalysis: it is a practice as well as a theory; its theory exists to guide practice. The subjects of organizational change are individuals free to make choices. Organizational change usually has to recognize a level of constraint beyond that which faces psychoanalysts: the focus of change and the measure of change is in the performance of the organization. The individuals are free to make choices within the constraint that it is the organization1s health that determines the value of those choices. It is, in my profession, the sum total of innovation effectively applied in the organization that counts in the end, not the unfettered innovation of a collection of individuals.
How do these ideas about interpretive science apply here? The theoretical framework that we should use is one that enables us to understand the individuals, their motivations, behaviors and successes, in the context of the organization. However, it should not be a framework that purports to determine peoples' actions as caused by other actions and by imposed organizational constraints. It should be a framework of concepts that enable us to interpret peoples' actions and beliefs, and which provides us with the means to facilitate our clients in understanding their own actions and seeing for themselves the framework that channels consequences and empowers actors.
(Of course, there is another long discussion that takes off at this point: What do we, as practitioners committed to the empowering of our clients, do when faced with an organization that seeks to create constraining, determining forces, rather than enabling forces? This is a discussion which must explore the relationship between political power and the practice of change, and it would require a separate space.) For the practice of change management, we are left where we started out: with the thought expressed in my earlier article that a theoretical framework for change is not something that is wielded openly at the outset, however proud we are of our shiny new concepts. It is something to be used to help realization emerge as our clients "get" change: it should be a self-actualizing framework, gaining its validity from the extent to which the clients articulate it as a means to understand and empower themselves to reach the goals of the organization (as influenced by the newly empowered actors). The proof of the pudding is in the eating not in the recipe.
For more information: Bob Phillips, of Ernst & Young LLP, (215) 448 5890 or robert.phillips@ey.com.