Managing Continuous Change: The Realities
Heather Stebbings
Steve Macaulay
The latest announcements that the Health Service is to undergo
yet another change has prompted some people to say what we
need is some stability. Other people, however, are saying look
this is the way all organisations are going – we need to
continually change.
Now, joining me in the studio today is Heather Stebbings.
Heather is doing a Doctorate in organisational transformation.
Now, Heather, what is your take on this idea of continually
changing an organisation?
Heather Stebbings
Hello Steve, thanks for inviting me in today. Yes, I am very
interested in this concept of continuous transformation for
organisations. And if we take a look at a lot of the companies
out there right now in industry that have a number of these
challenges, change is something that is now the new norm in
effect. Perhaps some of the things that they struggle with is
this continuous requirement to change.
When we look at that, especially with for example, the recent
healthcare industry announcements about restructuring, about
the way in which the organisations are perhaps suited to
perform all their business processes, when we look at those
types of organisations what we frequently find is that they are
set in their structure, they are set perhaps for a longer term
strategy, they are set perhaps in the way in which they actually
have to produce their outcomes, they have to produce [for
example] the care that they are delivering. So that is the
healthcare industry.
Other examples include the banking industry, for example and
we have restructuring between investment arms and retail arms
of banking. So this continuous requirement to change is now
perhaps the new norm.
Steve Macaulay
So let’s get down to specifics. If it is the new norm, I suspect in
practice, it involves a lot more than that. What are the things
that are changing and need to change?
Heather Stebbings
Some of the research that I have been involved with pretty
recently, looks at what is it that underlies this ability to
continuously change; what is it that actually helps organisations
manage the way in which they adapt, manage the way in which
they evolve.
Heather Stebbings
One of the things that is starting to come through from a recent
pilot study is this ability to manage the relationships between
critical components, between critical resources. And in some
cases the resource could be as wide as another business
function itself and it could be as small as a single computer; and
what we are looking at particularly is the way in which these
relationships can flex. Because once you have a flexible
relationship, you will find that the organisation can move more.
So perhaps it is dependency driven or it is the constraint that
actually holds the organisation in a particular pattern.
Steve Macaulay
So give me a for instance.
Heather Stebbings
Give you a for instance: let me give you an example that I have
looked at from the legal industry. A number of them have
particular processes that they have in place, they are very set in
their ways, they need to operate as a professional services
organisation that constantly delivers a good quality output.
They exist to serve their customers and their clients with specific
needs.
When we look at the way in which particular business processes
change, what we have is information routing whether it’s a flow
of information to a particular point, or perhaps the criticality of
that information changes, what you then find is if the process
can’t adjust the information flow, or can’t adjust the content,
what you find is the input and output of that process then
becomes the rigid factor.
Steve Macaulay
So how do you oil the wheels to make that change?
Heather Stebbings
I think there are a number of things that are associated with
oiling the wheels. If we look at particularly the legal industry
study that I have just done, one of the oiling factors is
understanding what it is that contributes to those flows of
information; what is it that maintains that business process –
the integrity of that business process? And if we look at the
input/output value relationships that exist there, oiling those
resources and oiling those connections and oiling those
relationships – managing those interdependencies really
effectively. It removes a lot of the constraints.
So it is about managing those interdependencies that allows
that level of flex.
Steve Macaulay
So for practical managers on the ground, what would your key
message be to make organisations adaptable, transformational,
responsive?
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Heather Stebbings
Heather Stebbings
If I put my engineer’s hat on for a second and look down in the
nuts and bolts of the organisation, I would be looking at the
dependency mapping, the constraint mapping – all of those
things which for a particular business process, mean that (a)
goes to (b) goes to (c), because the chances are when we look
at organisational change and we look at perhaps it is painful
over here, root causes down here – well root causes the ripple
effect that happens over here and what we will find is that if we
start to map those constraints you will find a way of getting back
to actually what we need to do is to not shuffle the deck chairs
on the Titanic, what we need to do is address the way in which
the organisation manages constraints between business process
parts.
Steve Macaulay
So oil the wheels, look at the constraints and unblock them?
Heather Stebbings
Absolutely.
Steve Macaulay
Heather, thank you very much.
Heather Stebbings
You are very welcome.
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