Organisational Change: 4 Ways to Situate Yourself

Successful change strategies recognise the validity of different perspectives. They accept that people are different and that any organisation benefits from this difference. They know that any change will be approached and understood in different ways. Quite often these different approaches are not visible or appreciated at the highest levels of management where there can tend to be a uniformity of approach to decision-making. Change efforts often fail, irrespective of levels of logical planning, because they have forgotten that it is people who have to make any change work, and work well..

What can we do about the reality of this situation? A framework for understanding these different approaches to change is a good start to effective use of time and money in these efforts, not least for understanding where you sit in terms of approaches to change. Personality researcher Isabel Myers developed a flexible framework from work initiated by C.G. Jung that is extremely useful in this context.

In part of her work, Myers distinguished two groups of people which she called Realists and Innovators. Realists are obviously practical and down-to-earth, while Innovators prefer the world of ideas. There are three times as many Realists as there are Innovators. Both these groups were further categorised by Myers as either Thoughtful, or Action-Oriented. There are about equal numbers of these two categories. Organisational approaches for these four groups of people are summarised below in Figure 1.

Thoughtful and Action-Oriented Innovators like to look at things differently, so they are more open to change. They may at times simply want to change things for change's sake. The Thoughtful and Action-Oriented Realists on the other hand, want practical, concrete masons why change should occur. This doesn't mean they don't want to change, they simply have to see a good reason for it.. The Action-Oriented Realists and Innovators are also likely to let you know publicly what they think of change efforts, while the Thoughtful Realists and Innovators need to be asked for their views, either in a one-to-one discussion, or through writing. These four categories of people are found throughout most organisations and all are necessary for a successful modern organisations.

Liking change, of course, doesn't mean blind acceptance of any change. Each of these four groups of people have their own needs for understanding change and really agreeing to participate in it to make it work. Real agreement means that something actually happens. It's not signatures on a document, vision and mission statements on walls or hands raised at general meetings. This agreement is one that individuals make and act on in their day to day activities, from managing director to factory floor. Figure 2 shows in simple terms what these four groups require as a basis for understanding and accepting change.

Once again, we can see the difference in perspectives and the different reqirements. The key differences here are between Realists and Innovators, the step-by-step and the big picture, but also significant is the Action-Oriented person's need to relate change to external factors in the real or conceptual world, compared to the Thoughtful person's need to relate it to individually known facts or concepts. Explaining change in ways that cater for the needs of all these groups goes a long way towards avoiding many of the stresses that often needlessly come with these processes.

Which of these four perspectives describes you, and what do you need to experience organisational change positively ??

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