Dear Rose,
You write,
" What I am still trying to locate is a model that describes WHY it is
even necessary for organizations to change"
and
" My training goal is to help them beginning to see change as normal."
My background has been in the area of developing ideas for production.
Some of the methods that I have been using are based in the nature of
spontaneity. Conventional training tends to have people hang onto their
ideas as something precious, personal and with inherent value. This is
due to their attaching of their personality to the idea, thereby giving it
value. This makes it difficult for others to adjust or suggest change to
the idea without, seemingly attacking the fundamental personality attached
to it. In workshop environment, I suggest that if the individual can
detach their personal value concepts from the idea, then it will be
allowed to change and more importantly, to develop.
At, first there is resistance is to the suggestion that ideas are to be
considered without value. But I then I take the group through a series of
exercises that demonstrate that the source of ideas is limitless. By
suggesting things like, "ideas are simply a function of living, you know,
like sweating. You live, you sweat. You live, you have ideas." Then
through the exercises, we discover this to be true. One can no easier
stop the mind from having ideas, than one can stop oneself from sweating.
In organizations, that are being encouraged to change, usually for the
purpose of development, perhaps it can be suggested that dialogue amongst
the participants be thrown open to experimentation with the intuition as a
source of thought and that this source will also serve to supply
solutions, if they are allowed to arrive through development of the truly
spontaneous thoughts.
As I indicated above, the first obstacle to overcome is the one of
re-training the brain to allow the intuitive to be taken seriously as a
limitless source of ideas, some of which may be useful if developed. This
entails risk taking etc...i.e. the fear of being involved in something
potentially being seen as "stupid" or "revealing" activates the basis for
the trained favouring of intellectually derived solutions. So the safety
factor is important here.
If your group can see that ideas can evolve radically within seconds if
allowed to, then perhaps it will follow that they will see that certainly
an organization can adapt to change if the environment for that change is
set up in, as Dr. Peter M. Senge at MIT says, "a new field of alignment".
As to why change must occur, the answer I think is that it is another part
of the nature of being alive. As has been written elsewhere in this list,
businesses are made up of living creatures and like those creatures, the
businesses create their own demands for change.
Frank Totino
Action Teater 2002
frank@varvet.helsingborg.se
--frank totino <frank@varvet.helsingborg.se>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>