Change starts with an idea that something should be different. That idea can come from anyone in the organization. But to affect change, that idea has to get to a point where it can be acted upon.
So what does that drop of water look like that propagates out to the rest of the organization? Here are four ways I’ve seen change introduced into organizations.
Lone Wolf
Sometimes an individual just decides to do their own job differently, and the change is in stealth mode for a while. If they’re lucky, someone sees the results and wants to replicate them within the organization (although they might consider themselves lucky if no one finds out). If they’re unlucky, someone tells them to stop.
Approved
Often change goes through the “appropriate channels” within the organization, gaining approval up the chain of command until it reaches the right level of authority. Both the problem and the solution are brought to someone who can say “yes, let’s do this.” The result then is usually a top-down roll out of the change.
Grass Roots
Grass Roots change is like the Lone Wolf with more socialization. Friends and colleagues share a common problem and decide to come up with a solution at their level in the organization. As more people adopt the new way of doing things, it may force a decision about which way people will work going forward.
Co-Creation
With co-creation, people from all over the organization get together to define the problem and develop the solution together. Instead of the change being designed by one or a few individuals, the group defines and designs the change together.
Which of these have you seen, and what others would you add from your own experience?
jonathan smith
March 2, 2014 at 1:16 pm EDTI work mostly in Africa, Asia and the “Arab world” . I’m guessing that my exposure to change happening in the work place is perhaps slightly different, in that grass roots and lone wolf are not much what I’ve witnessed. The pushes for change that I mostly see would be those which are donor-driven, e.g. the “conditionality” attached to loans and grants; or simply technology-driven, e.g. outside forces which drive the organization to go along in order to get along. In both cases, such change drivers end up being under the “approved” category you define. (I like your categories, by the way…pretty succinct and well defined). Connected to the development programs with which I am familiar, and which often bring change through the doors of organizations, is the fact that many governments that benefit from donor-driven programs have, themselves, set out on programs like Vision 2020, which are pushed from even the President’s Office. But, again, those are hand in hand with world-wide pushes such as Millenium and what have you. One interesting donor-driven approach I saw, and have always liked, is to get mid-management and key technical staff into training events, such as “taking charge of change” programs, instead of first getting top management involved in such programs (top management is supposed to know everything, so it is often un-seeming that they “take training”…it sends the wrong signals). When mid-management come out of such training events , often with concrete “decisions” to create workplace changes (your co-creation scenario), top management will sometimes get nervous, because they see their subordinates leaning and knowing new concepts and even techniques which they, top management , actually do not know. Then, as is often the case, top management request similar programs for them, since they do not want to be left out or left behind…