Drive Improvement: G3
Dynamism and Co-evolution
The difficulties of responding to change or instituting change in organizations are well-known, but the implications in terms of management duties less so. In the literature, the focus is often on the «heroic CEO leader», and rather little attention is given to legitimate concerns of those within operations, or the reality of co-evolution.
Managing demands the handling of numerous dynamic elements (persons, departments, technologies, markets &c.) both within the organization and in the environment. Each element receives pressures from and creates pressures on other parts and the result is .
As a result, mechanisms are simply insufficient when it comes to necessary change. In any case, is primarily oriented to present realities. To expect engagement with an unknowable, evolving future in the present creates doubt and uncertainty in choices. This uncomfortable situation can, however, be authoritatively mastered by incorporating a third to form a Triadic grouping (G3) .
The desired can now be formally specified and driven through by ensuring all associated choices are made and enacted. In order to sensibly, the work must be handled systematically. Otherwise there will be misunderstandings, mishaps and confusion. Cooperation may be lost.
5 Pressures of Co-evolution
Proceeding on this basis produces 5 overlapping 3-Level hierarchical Groups (Triads): see diagram. The pressures to manage co-evolution demand that managers deal with change in the operations in a determined and authorized way. In order, the Triads are named:
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Moving up the Triads there is a step-wise progression from an over-riding concern with continuity in the face of disruption through to responsibility for increasingly radical changes in operations.
Features
Function: The Triads ensure that significant changes can be introduced without excessive disruption to existing operations and current initiatives.
Quality: of any degree need to be driven through systematically in the sense that all aspects of the situation and all involved staff need to be engaged in an orderly way.
Integration within each Group: The middle Level (g2) mediates drives for rapid change emanating from above (g3) and needs for stability emanating from below (g1), while programming what is possible.
Integration across all Groups: Stabilization and changes of all sorts must be recognized, expected and permitted simultaneously within the organization.
Psychological Correlate: All will experience needs for continuity and completion of what has been started, as well as desires for variety, novelty and challenge.
Personal Tension: People vary in the degree of change they prefer or can tolerate: some are intensely conservative, others look for progressive reform, and others are happiest with profound, even revolutionary, alterations (e.g. turn-around or recovery challenges).
Social Correlate: Every social entity is subject to powerful social forces and each contributes to them in a small way. So co-evolution is intrinsic to all choices and achievements.
Organisational Tension: Identity v metamorphosis: because stability and continuity are at the heart of identity (Latin idem = same) and yet change, sometimes wholesale transformation, may be necessary for survival.
Practical Implications: Managers need to have special review meetings including both subordinates and subordinates-once-removed—i.e. an «extended management team». Complex change projects are programmed by the project leader (g2) but typically need a steering mechanism run by higher-level staff (g3).
- See further explanation of these features and details of each of the .
Originally posted: 19-Mar-2014