Great blog. I am a quality manager for a large international construction firm, and I will be reading this blog on a regular basis.

Cheers,

~Steve

I disagree with the assertion that “It is not organizations that resist change”. An organisation develops its own history and systems that, as the organisation gets larger, are very resistant to change. The change to lean may require a change to the accounting, purchasing, time recording, and remuneration systems – an organisation has spent a lot of time and money making these systems work and is very reluctant to abandon them. The statement should be “It is organisations that resist change”.

Individuals can and do choose to change but in an organisational context individual change is un-directed. I see it as Brownian motion in a fluid – all the individual molecules are very active but the overall effect is to cool the fluid. Directed change is like a pump – all the molecules are still active in random directions but overall they move in the same direction.

So, to keep stretching the analogy, organisational change needs a “pump” – someone or something that causes an overall direction of change. The bigger the organisation the bigger the pump required and the longer it takes to get things moving.

Christensen points out in the “Innovators Dilemma” that companies and their systems are almost unable to respond to disruptive innovations. Individuals within an organisation change and adapt how they work far faster than the organisation but they all change in different, unco-ordinated directions that overall causes inertia and resistance to a change.

I’ve been collecting a list of What Does Not Work when it comes to change. I see in my list many of the tactics commonly employed to encourage change. Interesting.

Here’s a link to the list of what does not work:
http://www.projectcommunity.com/PureSchmaltz/files/WhatDoesNotWork.html