[Also, I heartily recommend the new book _The Dance of Change_
[In association with Amazon.com, I offer this link for readers in the US:
The Dance of Change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in Learning
Organizations
by Peter M. Senge, Art Kleiner (Editor), Charlotte Roberts, Bryan
Smith
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385493223/learningorg
...Rick]
The new book by the team of Peter Senge and others who wrote The Fifth
Discipline Fieldbook will go on sale in the USA about mid-March, and
probably in early April in the UK, Australia and elsewhere. Its an
important and very useful book, which brings together a great deal of
experience in initiating and sustaining transformational change.
This review by Bill Godfrey is taken from the BookWatch site at
http://BookWatch.com.au
[The BookWatch site is a database of reviews of (currently) just under 300
books related to change management and strategic management of
organizations. It aims to provide practising managers with useful guidance
to which current books (and which parts of books) are likely to be of real
help to their work and learning, and to assist them in identifying what
warrants some of their limited time for reading. Search facilities by
topic (eg scenario planning, organizational learning), author and title, a
topic based guide to books in each field and short reviews of each book
are 'open' and freely available. Access to detailed reviews, such as the
one following, and to a growing range of analytical articles (for example
on aspects of leadership), are by subscription at $US95 a year. A hard
copy Digest is produced every three months, which is also available in
.pdf format.
A copy of this review has been placed temporarily in the 'open' section of
the site at BookWatch.com.au/BB/990101Senge.bbd for anyone who wants to
print off a formatted version. (Note: Do *not* forget to put the .au after
the .com There is a quite different site called bookwatch.com)]
REVIEW
Senge, Peter et al The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining
Momentum in a Learning Organization.
(USA) Currency Doubleday 1999 ISBN 0-385-49322-3
(UK) Nicholas Brealey 1999 ISBN 1857882431
Short Review
The long awaited successor to The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook amply
fulfils its promise. An indispensable collection of theory, practice and
tools for initiating and sustaining change, organised within a systemic
framework. It is the fruits of continuing work by many leading
practitioners.
Review
Like its predecessor The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, The Dance of Change
is designed as a source book and reference compendium, and not just to be
read and put aside. It combines concepts, examples and reference to
further resources in a way that is both accessible and tempting of
further exploration.
For anyone who is seriously concerned with organisational change and
organisational learning, it is indispensable. As I did with the
Fieldbook, I will probably keep two copies, one intact and the other
separated into loose leave form - in fact I will probably end up
combining the two books in a single (large) loose leaf folder.
The six core authors have reached out to include contributions from a
wide range of people who can add special expertise or unique perspectives
(and have included references to a wide range of resources, including
reviews of books, some of them taken from BookWatch). In addition, much
of its content is based on direct experience derived through the MIT
Center for Organizational Learning, the more recently founded Society for
Organizational Learning and the executive or consulting work of the
authors and contributors. The effect is immensely enriching, particularly
as a distinguishing characteristic of all the contributions is that they
are genuinely part of a collective inquiry, not an attempt to 'sell an
angle' or promote a 'unique selling proposition'. The result is a rich
mix of ideas and practices that are intelligent, practical and helpful.
For all that, the book is very carefully structured. The authors suggest
that you can 'Start anywhere. Go anywhere'. That is true, particularly
for a second reading. How you should read it for the first time depends
in part on how your mind works. Some people like to work from detail to
concept and may want to start with some of the detailed case studies,
others prefer to get the concepts first and then go into the detail. I
belong to the latter group and for me there is definitely a 'best way' of
approaching the book:
The first four sections of Chapter 1 establish the objectives and the
core assumptions and set out the central argument of the book, and should
be read first.
Then Chapter 2, consisting of four sections, contains a brief overview of
the underlying reinforcing processes at work in generating profound
change and how to support them and a brief discussion of time, which
makes the point that growth has a natural tendency to accelerate but that
growth never operates unchecked. Understanding growth in natural
systems, the sources of limitations to growth and the impact of delays
allows leaders to be effective in understanding and dealing with limits.
Succeeding chapters deal with each of the ten limits that the authors
have identified 'so far'. Each starts with a statement of the challenge
that includes expansion of the causal loop diagram to illustrate how the
constraint operates on the basic growth structure. Each chapter then
goes on to examples, case studies and tools that are relevant to managing
that constraint. I would go through the book to scan the challenges in
order to understand the conceptual framework as a whole more fully. This
also allows me to identify the constraints of most immediate current
concern to me, without being blind to the fact that none of the
constraints are wholly independent of each other. Do not miss the final
section by Peter Senge, entitled Leadership in the World of the Living.
This then sets the agenda for going more deeply into particular areas.
Chapter 1 is crucial because it sets the framework of the book. Briefly,
the authors have set out to find a way 'to effectively organise diverse
insights' about the exceedingly complex world of initiating, sustaining
and reigniting organisational change. The metaphor offered is that of
the influence of Mercator's projection as a means of organising the
discoveries of different explorers. The framework that they offer - not
surprisingly from the writer of The Fifth Discipline - is systemic. It
is built around the complex interplay of forces which reinforce growth
and forces which constrain growth. The aim of the book as a whole is to
identify those forces, map the way that they interact and to suggest
strategies, techniques and, above all, ways of thinking and relating to
each other which will support growth or development and overcome the
constraints through the key stages. There is a chart on P. 28 that
summarises the ten major constraints identified (listed in a table
below). Chapters 3 through 12 explore the causes of each constraint and
offer strategies and actions to limit their effect.
These sections also establish the fundamental underlying philosophy or
belief system of the authors:
'Sustaining any profound change requires a fundamental shift in thinking
and action.... We need to appreciate "the dance of change", the inherent
continual interplay between growth processes and limiting processes.
... This requires us to think of sustaining change more biologically and
less mechanistically. It requires patience as well as urgency. It
requires a real sense of inquiry, a genuine curiosity about limiting
forces. .... And it requires recognizing the diverse array of people who
play key roles in sustaining change - people who are "leaders".
The section on leadership and leaders (Pp11-21) is also central to the
theme of the book. Just as change itself involves a 'dance' between the
reinforcing and inhibiting forces, the process of sustaining change
requires a cooperative 'dance' between (at least) three types of leader,
which Senge identifies as
* Local line leaders
* Internal networkers and community builders
* Executive leaders.
It offers a direct challenge to widely held myths about the leadership
role by contrasting two sets of statements, arguing that a very large
body of experience indicates that the statements in the right hand column
are the better descriptors of reality:
TABLE REPRODUCED HERE AS A LIST
[LEFT HAND COLUMN]
Significant Change only occurs when it is driven from the top
There is no point in going forward unless the CEO is on board
Nothing will happen without top management buy-in.
[RIGHT HAND COLUMN]
Little significant change can occur if it is driven only from the top
CEO proclamations and programs rolled out from corporate head-quarters
are a great way to foster cynicism and distract everyone from real
efforts to change.
Top management buy-in is a poor substitute for genuine commitment and
learning capabilities at all levels in an organisation. In fact, if
management authority is used unwisely, it can make such commitment and
capability less likely to develop.
END TABLE
Section 3 contains a brief discussion of these issues and the roles of
the three groups of leaders, to be taken up in more detail throughout the
text.
Section 4 introduces the ten challenges of intimating change, sustaining
momentum and system-wide redesign and thinking that form the structure of
the rest of the book. The challenges identified are associated with
three broad stages of change:
Challenges of Initiating
* Not enough time
* No help (Coaching and Support)
* Not Relevant (what are we doing this for?)
* Walking the Talk
Challenges of Sustaining Transformation
* Personal fear and anxiety
* Assessments and measurement (It's not working!)
* True believers and non-believers ("They're acting like a cult!")
The Challenges of Redesigning and Rethinking
* Governance ("They never let us ...")
* Diffusion (We keep re-inventing the wheel)
* Strategy and purpose (What are we here for?)
Throughout the book, you will find a wealth of ideas, tools and
practices, virtually all of them tested in the fire of practical
application. With few exceptions, what they have in common is that they
are not simply 'techniques'. All, in one way or another, encourage and
support the processes of:
understanding systemic interactions
learning to explore each other's mental models for enrichment
supporting new ways of thinking and interacting.
The authors use an excellent system of marginal icons - an expansion of
the system adopted for The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook - to identify
individual and group exercises, resources, material of particular
interest to specific groups, guiding ideas and so on. The wide margins
are also used for references to further reading and as 'white space' on
which you can make your own notes.
Much of the material makes no pretence at being 'new'. Rather, it is a
distillation of previous knowledge and practical experience, brought
together in a context and presented in a way that encourages its use.
But some is relatively new or little known outside a group of
practitioners. An example is the excellent work of George Roth and Art
Kleiner to develop 'Learning Histories'. The material is available on the
Fieldbook website (book marked in the text), but I have not seen a
description in printed form before. The use of learning histories -
which at one level could be described as a form of continuous evaluation
of the human aspects of a change program - can provide a powerful support
for the change process and for learning.
The last Chapter, Strategy and Purpose, contains three sections which
particularly struck me. One is an intensely personal reflection on
scenario planning by Adam Kahane, one of the 'greats' in the field.
Another is an important article called 'Conscious Oversight' by Charlotte
Roberts, in which she defines Conscious Oversight as 'a discipline of
care and nurturing of people and systems with an eye toward the impact on
generations who come after them. ... When practising Conscious
Oversight, people focus on insuring congruence and viability of a system
larger than themselves, in service of a purpose larger than themselves.'
The third is Peter Senge's final article, referred to above.
Given the richness of references within the book, there is little point
in adding cross references here - with one exception. I could not see a
reference to Gareth Morgan's Images of Organization. I find it provides
a very valuable overview of the use of metaphor in working with
organisations and of the implications of the use of particular metaphors
(consciously or unconsciously) for the way in which you interpret the
organisation. In that respect, it is a valuable tool for constructively
exploring each other's mental models and for bringing one's own mental
models into consciousness.
Bill Godfrey
Bill Godfrey & Associates Pty Ltd
8 Reibey Place, Curtin, ACT 2605, Australia
Tel: (61) 2 6282 2256
Fax: (61) 2 6282 2447
email: bgodfrey@ozemail.com.au
BookWatch site: http://www.BookWatch.com.au
PLEASE NOTE NEW SITE URL, but previous site at
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--Bill Godfrey <bgodfrey@ozemail.com.au>
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