Preparing for Continuous Change
The Always-On Production of Alignment to Demand
Remaining Coherent
Continual is the term that describes the constant flow of variations in the environment surrounding what we think of as our organizational entity.
Continuous is the term that describes the overall effort we imagine conducting in order to create and sustain our organization’s ability to adapt to continual change.
Adaptation presumes that the entity in question is the same entity in some essential way, before and after the adaptation. That “sameness” must refer to the purpose for which the organization operates, otherwise the only basic characteristic of the organization’s “adapted” form is that it continues to be a recognizable “asset” to someone in some way.
Said differently, the goal of adaptivity is not only survival in the unqualified sense of avoiding termination or destruction. Instead, the goal presumes coherence — which here means inclusion of the continuity of ability to function per the intent of its form.
With that understanding about coherence, it is readily apparent that adaptation may in fact be a matter of any of the following:
a) re-purposing the form in order to preserve it as an asset: this is a change of approach to obtaining “value”
b) modifying the form in order to preserve functionality under new conditions: this is a change of structure (static) or configuration (dynamic) for “effectiveness”
c) replacing the form in order to enable new functionality for preserving the purpose: this is a change of approach to serving the same “intent”
We have to understand that an operational organization may or may not be dysfunctional (inherently) or ineffective (expressly) in the face of given environmental conditions, and that being functional, thus operational, thus effective is the hierarchy of dependency that is vulnerable to continual change. Each of the three terms is a variable, which can be by types, scopes, scales, and more.
Modes of Adaptation
Adaptation also presumes a necessity to do any of the following:
- re-conform to the stable environment (recovery),
- newly conform to the stable environment (growth)
- conform to a modified environment, (transition)
- re-conform to a new environment (translation) or
- address whatever current environment with a new form (transformation)
All of the above approaches would be accompanied by a motivating expectation (intent) or cause (necessity).
That means only some of the approaches are appropriate (justified) at any given time of consideration.
The justification may directly link a necessity to an intent, as a requirement; or it may link an intent to a necessity as an opportunity.
Unmanaged Change
Change occurs whether we manage it or not.
On an ordinary day, most people recognize unmanaged change in three flavors: nature, accidents, and play. In each case, “stuff happens”.
There are those circumstances in which each of those three is elevated to a more specific level of appreciation. For example, nature is thought of as bounty; accidents are thought of as luck; and play is thought of as either creativity or learning.
There are also occasions where all three elevations are imagined (or pursued) as being intentionally blended — for example where making luck beneficial gets a nod as being either resourcefulness or innovation.
The interesting thing about those assessments is that they are characterizing the value of the intention, independently of whether any of the three parts of it was managed.
This leads to a view of intention as being the “driver” of the resulting value, with the events along the way being at minimum arranged for the effect.
Without the intention, and without the arrangement, there is no particular reason to anticipate or evaluate outcomes as being due to managing the changes.
Managed Change
Now it is evident why the core of the concept of “change management” is a simultaneous attention to intended value and arranged effect.
Organizations that pursue beneficial change are assigning themselves with the responsibility (hands on support) and accountability (rational attribution and explanation) for how the change is meaningful (value) and how the significant difference was arranged (built).
As a discipline, the assignment does not change along with the various forms of organization. Regardless of its structure, the organization is either good at the assignment, or not good at it, and being good at it requires covering both the value as assessed and the difference as built. There is no logical definition of change management that includes one and not the other.
One of the most persistent assertions about change efforts taken on by organizations is that somewhere between 65% and75% of the efforts fail. We can now understand that the figure will probably include any mix of competency evaluations and value judgements.
If the retrospective view of the effort is that it was not capable of generating the needed outcome, that’s a failure. Or if the outcome is not relevant to the need prevailing at the moment of “final” evaluation, then that’s a failure.
That not only explains why there can be so many efforts deemed insufficient; it also explains why alignment, of intention to effort to relevance, is the core purpose of change management.
Continual Production of Change for Sustainability
In a general way, we distinguish “outcomes” as the conditions created by “outputs”.
Ordinarily, we recognize a system as a form of organization that is continuously generating intended specific outputs from its function. (This is distinct from a form of activity, which we refer to as a “process”, not as a system.)
A system is a preferred form because it offers predictable reliability. Using a system is called operating the system.
But the system is valuable primarily because of why we care about the outcome.
Of course, in the real world there are undesirable outcomes that are also systematically produced.
If a system is unusually influenced by some force, whether internal or external, it may operate (with whatever degree of functionality) in a way that changes its outputs, thereby potentially affecting outcomes.
The adaptability of a system to changes is therefore seen positively in these two ways:
- the degree to which it can remain coherent when its constituent elements are varying independently
- the degree to which its coherence is relevant (necessary and sufficient) to current demand
Adaptation Processes
An adaptation’s outcome is a situation in which the conditions of the environment can both cause and react to the influence of the adaptive entity. But positive outcomes are not guaranteed for any period beyond when those conditions may be affected by other events or forces, such as other adaptations.
The benefit (positive) value of an adaptation’s outcome is at least ecological compatibility, or better, is symbiotic productivity.
•In nature, both may arrive through evolution; our disciplinary counterpart to that is governance.
•In manufactured co-operation with nature, cultivation is a principal mode of deliberately developing compatibility or symbiosis.
•An additional principal mode, with or without nature, for developing compatibility or symbiosis is architecture.
Whether causing or reacting, the environmental conditions on the influences of the entity’s adaptation may not be detectable, recognized, understood, leveraged, or subject to manipulation — except by continual exploration and examination.
Consequently, continuous adaptability as a competency (i.e., the ability to be continuously adaptive) means establishing resources, disciplines and practices of the above as “business as usual” always-on operations.
In an environment where multiple adaptations may be in process for differing reasons concurrently, the predictable rule of thumb is that di-Vers-ity requires Vers-atility in order to maintain sustainability.
Sustainability is observed as the organization’s deliberately maintained relevance to changing demand.
© 2019 malcolm ryder / archestra research
