Tempo and change

Every organization has a natural ebb and flow of operations. Organisational change is at heart about changing these rhythms to better suit the circumstances and goals of the organization. Successful change embraces and moves with the flow of the organization. Imposing change without an awareness of larger, more structural forces imposes heavy penalties on the organization and is likely ineffective. These penalties take the form of employee turnover, hits to service and product quality and spiralling project costs. Tempo and timing are at the heart of Sente.

Reading the tide

Because organisational change happens between the ears of the people involved, perceived success is as much key to reading the tide of the organization as ‘hard’ metrics of success like turnover. Budget cycles, product life cycles, customer spending patterns, the job market and many other cyclical effects all factor in to the perceived and actual success of a company over time.

Reading the tide is fifty percent science and fifty percent tradecraft of being a good manager and leader. The science part consists of looking at leading and trailing performance indicators over time to chart the ebb and flow of the organizational fortunes. The tradecraft part consists of having an excellent cadre who will tell you the unvarnished truth about your operations and circumstances. There is no substitute for people who can handle, and trust their boss to handle the truth.

The baseline cycle of the organization is rarely a smooth sinus, since it’s an interference pattern of many cyclical phenomena. Nevertheless, a sinus model will serve to visualize tempo and timing effects on the organization. The blue plot in the graph below shows the ‘natural’ pace of change of the company, moving with largely external forces such as economic cycles and the availability of skilled personnel. Awareness of this basic pattern is critical to the timing and effects of organizational change initiatives.

At any one time, an organization can find itself on an upslope, peak, downslope or trough. When the slope is trending upwards, leading KPI’s indicate that the organization will have a good quarter ahead while trailing KPI’s indicate that the recent quarter was not quite as successful. Analogous trend analysis (exercise for the reader) reveals peaks, downslopes and troughs as well. These four moments are suitable for different types of change.

The effect of organizational change can be measured in the effect it has on the natural tempo of the organization. This can be increased (shorter peak-to-peak), smoothed (less variation peak-to-trough), and a slope change can be effected (each peak is higher than the last). This way the effect of a change initiative on the fundamental character of the organization can be mapped.

Over the next few weeks this blog will explore the themes of tempo and timing in a series of short articles. For an in-depth exploration of these themes I would recommend Tempo by Venkatesh Rao and Certain to Win by Chet Richards, as well as management classics Good to Great and Great by Choice by Jim Collins.

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If you would like to explore these themes as they relate to your organization or project, contact me anytime through DiVetro, at paul.kunneman(at)divetro.nl.