Speaker 1: Good afternoon, everybody. My name again is Thijs Homan. I'm a professor in change management, but I am what we call a critical scientist. So my opening sentence would be, the more you try to manage change, the more it comes to a halt. That is my basic principle. And the second one is that a lot of change in organizations is going on, in spite of change management. So I'm a very critical scientist, trying not to go along with the hypes, but really look beneath the surface about what is going on in organizations. So first let me show the way I was announced on the internet. Apparently I am going to talk about how schools can transform smoothly. And that is exactly what I am not going to talk about. Because this assumes that there is a change which is needed, and there is someone managing the change, and that someone is managing the change in such a way that it is going to be smoothly. And the dream of managers is, of course, that people are changing without them knowing it. That's the ideal. But I think change is never smoothly, nor can it be managed. So that's what I'm going to talk about. I don't think it's relevant, and don't expect all kinds of solutions about how to change people in organizations, because I think that is not the reality, what is going on in schools and organizations. But first I want to talk about a reflective perspective about how can I understand change, and how do I look at change in organizations. And again, also in the preparation, people ask me, okay, what is your takeaway message? What do you advise people? I don't give takeaways, and I do not give interventions and ideas about what to do. I want to talk about what are our assumptions, why we think that way of talking and doing is so relevant for us. So that's what I'm going to do together with you. And let me talk about education a little bit. I walk around in that sector quite often, and there, of course, are many things going on over there, and I assume that also today some of those themes are presented in talks and sessions and so on. But all these themes, I would think, are what we call the what, the content side of change. And I do not want to talk about the what of change, but about the how of change. And in many organizations, what my experience is that people talk a lot about the what, how can we do blended learning, and what kind of systems do we need. And after we know what we want to do, then we're going to talk about change. And usually the change paragraph is the thinnest paragraph in the plan. But I think it is the most important one, and that's why I'm a professor in that field. But I'm going to talk about the how of that side. Typically, the whole idea, classical idea about change management, like a smooth transition, is that I intend something as a teacher or director of a school or member of the board, and I devise a plan. And then I do the right things, the right interventions, and I involve everybody, and we have nice sessions and speeches and inspirational moments. When I do that correctly, there is a straight line towards the goal which I intended and which I wrote down in my plan before I started. So this assumes that changing people in organizations is like doing the right interventions, and then the things are going to happen which I hoped they were going to happen. But when you look at the reality, what this means is that managers who are working from this perspective have an intense need for tools and techniques. And of course, the whole consultancy industry is thriving on that need. But the typical question is, what should I do? And that means, what kind of interventions can I do? Appreciative inquiry, large-scale interventions, process sessions, inspirational sessions. So maybe you would also expect from me that I would say, okay, this is how you have to change your school, as if I could say that here standing on the red dot. But the basic assumption here is when I, as a manager, do the right thing, they predictably will go into the right direction. That's the basic assumption for this way of looking. But my experience on the bottom side is that change projects are not so smooth, even though the nicest interventions are rolled out. And from research, it's a very known fact that almost 70 to 80 percent of the planned change projects fail. And I think even the percentage is even higher. But my most prominent question is, and that is what I still not understand, why do we continuously go on with managing change in this way, when we also know, it is scientifically proven that it does not work? And for me, that is a dilemma I'm still thinking about, but the typical reaction on a failed change project, so we change the structure of our school, the people don't change. So what we do is we start another change project, for instance, on behavior or culture or things like that, using exactly the same assumptions about change for the structural project, which apparently failed. And for me, I don't understand it. But this question more or less triggered me to think about what are our assumptions? What are we assuming when we are doing change management in the conventional way we are used to do it? And I would like to draw your attention to two different perspectives on sets of assumptions. And the one is monocentric change, and that assumes that change is managed or triggered from one center, and that is the change management. Or I have a polycentric development that I say, where I say change is coming from everywhere, and it is not exactly managed by one specific person or party. So I would like to start out with the monocentric perspective, and you will recognize this. I call this the center perspective. This assumes the manager has to do the right things, the right sessions, the right interventions, and then all what we call the noses are going to stand in the right direction. So that assumes first the manager does something, and then the noses will change. Assuming this way of thinking, the manager is the one who moves the unearthed math. So the assumption is that the organization is not changing, is inert, and that the manager is the one who has to create movement. And of course, once it is created, the manager has to monitor progress and correct things when they are not going in the right way. Oh, I'm sorry. But the whole idea here is that the manager is the highest, strategy is the highest, so the manager has to give the vision to say, this is where we have to go, because the environment changes, so we have to change, and the manager has to say which direction the change has to be into, and then a change only comes about when it is change managed. There's a very fundamental assumption. So when we do not manage change, then the assumption is nothing will happen. And that entails the last assumption that in the regular way of looking at change, people in organizations are assumed not wanting to change or being resistant to change. Given that assumption, it is logic that you have to manage change, and when you have to manage change, you have to know the direction, and that is what management determines. The whole idea about monocentric change is that the organization is the result of good change management. That is the very basic assumption, and it is very, very deep in where we live. Go to an academic bookstore, and you will find a shelf with management literature, but there is no shelf of employee literature. So we are very management-centric focused that managers have to change the organization. Well the other perspective has to do with the recipients, and here is a manager talking about the vision of his organization, but the recipients, when you look at them, they are not a homogeneous group. You can see it, that somebody is looking, some people are looking away, some people are talking to each other, and even, I know, look at the yellow arrow, somebody is sleeping, I think. Yeah? So there is not a homogeneous group, and people are talking and doing and thinking about all kind of different things. So to make it a bit more realistic, suppose this is our organization, and in the conventional perspective, people in organizations are assumed to be the result of what managers do well. They are instructed, but here I would say people are working in organizations and trying to make the best of things, given the circumstances they are involved in. So they are continuously improvising, reacting to what is going on, but they are living in their own mini-world, trying to make the best of things, and there are a lot of mini-worlds. So in this world, then, there is the guy in the green box, and starting a change project, but the whole change literature is about how to manage change, but the problem is, usually, there are already several change projects going on in the organizations. Meanwhile, people are also talking about all those, and they are also dealing with their reality, and maybe there are some political coalitions going on in the organizations about what we really think about things. This way of looking at change management entails that the one who is managing change does not have an overview of what is going on. You cannot know everything which is talked about in the organization. Yes, yet, what people talk about is, for them, the most relevant reality. So you are managing change, not knowing everything, not being completely in control, and meanwhile, everybody else is doing their own thing and making the best of the situation. These are, for me, very important assumptions. Given that assumption, so that everybody is trying to make the best of things, given their own circumstances, you would suggest or would think that an organization would be a chaos. When everybody is minding their own business, it will be very chaotic, but, and I mentioned the word one time, the complexity theory, or the sociological complexity theory I'm working with, exactly says the contrary, that it means that in organizations, always different orders, plural, will emerge. So those orders are just emerging in the interactions between people, and that means that an organization is not inert, but an organization is blooming with change. Everybody is changing continuously in order to do the best thing, given their circumstances. I also like the sentence, all those improvisations, so to speak, are changes wanting to happen. I think this is the best what I can do, but in the normal way, in the regular perspective, managers say, we have to bring about order. So they lay their order from a very limited perspective on the reality of many people who live in a completely different reality. But here it says, the order which emerges is not the result of only good management, but the order which emerges, I like this sentence, is influenced by everyone, yet controlled by no one. So exactly the contrary of the traditional management perspective, where the manager is controlling what is going on in the organization, the complexity perspective would say, of course managers are controlling, but next to them there are about 50,000 other people trying to control things, and what emerges is not a linear result of what a manager does, but on what all those actions together do to each other. So I have a picture of that. I think the different orders in organizations can be metaphorically shown like this. Some people say, we should do this in our organization, and some people say, well, we have to start a competition with another school, and some people will say, well, we have to put the pupil more central, and all that kind of stuff. And I would say that there is a competition between different orders in organizations. And when you look at the bottom little cloud there with the blue arrow, you can say, well, that's the manager. They will also want something, but what is actually going to happen in an organization is the result of what I would say the power dynamics between all those little orders. So to say it more formally, I think the real development of organizations is not the result of change projects, but the result of change projects and millions of other things at the same time. And I would say that change is a power dynamic, not an ordering or plan dynamic, but the result of changing power configurations. So my next last bit is about what do those patterns which emerge look like, and I came in my experience in my work in organizations on the big difference between what I call onstage and offstage behavior. And onstage behavior is the behavior that people show when there is a manager standing in front of the room, and there is somebody from HR in the room and an external consultant. So the manager says, yes, we can, and we clap, and we go to the loo and say, what a boo, you know. So that onstage behavior is the behavior people show when there are managers. My research is about offstage behavior, and that is that I think people continuously, day to day, not in sessions or something like that, or in intervention, they just talk about what is going on with them. And for instance, look at the laptop on the right, suppose you are working and there's this email about, okay, next week there's a big management event, schools for the future or whatever, and I'm sitting there and I'm looking at my colleagues, did you have that mail as well? Yeah, well, it's a busy day because I have to teach, well, yeah, but you can't, yeah, but we have to be there because they have to look to see our faces there, yeah, but it takes a lot of time. And then, you know, during the session, you are sitting in the room and then, you know, there's the guy saying, we should do this or that, and you go to your neighbor and say, and something like that. And when you come back to your workplace, the colleagues who were so good not to go to the session, but continue working, and was it nice? He said, well, okay, the lunch was good, yeah, but what I mean with that is that there is a continuous process of sensemaking going on in informal conversations where people make sense about what is happening in the formal side of the organization. The next thing I want to show, and this is a bit of our research results, I think those sensemakings are not individual sensemakings, but are social, locally social sensemakings. They are about how certain groups of people talk about their reality. So I think the way people look at organizations is not something from themselves or inside themselves, but has to do with the group they belong to and the group with whom they go to lunch every day and who they have cigarettes in the smoking room and things like that. And this is why I come to the concept of clouds of meaning. The orders which emerge spontaneously in organizations, I would say, are clouds of meaning. And given that idea, I think the clouds of meaning, and this is fundamental for this talk, are the most strong influences of behavior in organizations. So not what is happening on stage, but what is living in the clouds of meaning, the way people make sense about their reality. So this brings me to some questions. Suppose you are involved in a change project. Would you know the clouds of meaning about that change project? What do people talk about informally about what is going on, and do you think those clouds are stable or are they moving? This is an important question because I think organizational change is, for me, the same as that the clouds are moving. When the clouds are stable, the sense people make about their reality is not changing. I think nothing will change. But there is a very funny thing here because as clouds are offstage, you cannot, as a manager, see them all. That is intrinsically impossible because they are offstage. So you are managing, and in fact, one arm is put behind your back because you do not exactly know what is going on in the organization. For me, this brings me to the most fundamental issue, what I'm talking about. We call that the management paradox, and that means that, of course, as a manager, I have appointments about what targets I'm going to reach, but how can I achieve those goals being both in control and being not in control at the same time? The traditional reaction of managers, given the conventional change assumptions, is give me new tools, give me new monitoring devices, more audits, so that you deny this paradox and try to get into control again. But I think you cannot get in control because that's always onstage and the real life is going on offstage. So I would say the more you want to try to get in control, the more you're disconnecting yourself from the reality of the offstage dynamics in organizations. Well, just to close my talk, I think the whole instrumentary, all the tools and techniques of change management are things which are happening onstage, and that's very nice, but our research also showed, we had research in about 100 organizations, that there is no direct link between the beautiful interventions onstage and what is going on offstage. So basically, you're doing a lot of things which are not directly influencing what is happening in the organization. And I think organizational development is not dynamic onstage, but more about power relationships offstage. And I have some additional questions which you can read later on. Going back to the starting point, I think the consequence of my talk is that the most important things in traditional management, for me, are less important. Doing nice interventions onstage is beautiful, heroic, and I think fun to do, but again, you are not influencing the life in your organizations. On the other hand, I would say, do I have to change when I reach? I said no, because the way this conventional paradigm is, you only look at the formal side of your work, but beside and around that, you're continuously interacting offstage. Or maybe not, you're just sitting in a room, but I don't think so. So I think that what you cannot see, assuming the traditional change management, maybe when you lay off those classes, you will see that you are doing a lot of things which, from this perspective, you would perceive as a waste of time, or frustrating, or things like that, but I would say that is the real work. So my most important question for me would be, reflect, what are my assumptions about change management? Do I think I have to manage change? Or is change going around everywhere, and is it more like that I have to find the change and link myself to it, and try to enhance it in that way? I think that is a completely different perspective, and that opens the way, I think, to look at all the activities which you now think are not very fruitful and useful, because I think those activities are the most important part of changing organizations. Thank you. 1