The Disgruntled Masses – How to Change the Unchangeable

Prefer to watch than read?  You can click here to watch me go through this on video. 

The disgruntled masses – the groups in your organisation that are locked into staying the same, staying disappointed, and no lever is long enough to jemmy them free.  This article is about what’s going on and the strategy to get things moving.

Barry Oshry’s Organic Systems Framework

The Organic Systems Framework of Barry Oshry helps us see what’s going on.  He shows how we can see organisations as social systems, and through running week-long live-in simulations with groups for over 40 years, has seen the same consistent patterns emerge again and again. 

The guts of his framework is that the relationships within systems is what determines how things will go, more than the individuals involved.  Here’s the typical framework of an organisation:

This diagram combines Oshry’s Top/Bottom relationship (one group is responsible for and has authority regarding another) and the End/Middle/End relationship (one group is pulled by competing needs of two or more groups).  Putting them together we get the Top – Middle – Bottom relationship.

Tops are those accountable for the whole system’s survival and success – think Executive team or parents in a family system. 

Middles are those who are charged with executing the plans from the top, and are therefore between the Top and the Bottom systems.  Literally called ‘middle management’, and they are often torn between the two.

Bottoms are those who have the role in the relationship of having someone else responsible for them, and who don’t get final say.  The word ‘bottom’ is chosen on purpose, not to reflect the value of the people who are in these roles, but to acknowledge the nature of the relationship.

Sometimes you’re the Top.  Sometimes you’re the Bottom.  Sometimes you’re the Middle. 

Here’s the freaky part – our perceptions and behaviours of what’s really going on are more influenced by the role relationships we play in the system than by our own individuality.  This means that what we think of things is created by the relationship more than by ourselves!

A bit full-on hey!  Before you reject this, remember – 40 years of experiential research supports this. 

The Bottom Will Coalesce….Naturally!

The systemic relationships are all fine…until pressure is put on.  And the classic pressure in the workplace is….change.   Each of the relationship roles will have its own reaction to this pressure, and for the bottom system the natural reaction is to…..coalesce.

And this coalescence will be against the Top and Middle Systems!

Like any group being attacked by another group, the natural response is for individual differences within the group to be put aside, and to unite against a common enemy.  In the live-in experiments Oshry has conducted for decades, those in the Bottom relationships consistently did this, regardless of which ‘groups’ they might be a part of in their everyday lives outside of the workshop.

Think of union action.  Think of the attractiveness of a charismatic person saying to the group “leave it with me, I’ll talk to management”.  Think of all the reasons why the new system can be shown to be a bad idea.  And now consider that these reactions might not be the individuals involved being ‘resistant to change’, but are perhaps people experiencing reality exactly as Oshry’s work predicts!

The implication here is not that what the Top system is requesting is either wrong or right.  Just that it’s the natural tendency of the Bottom system to see such requests as wrong, or threatening. 

And….like a car that is steering to one side of the road…it can be corrected if we look at what’s happening…

Within the Bottom System

Moving from Oshry’s work into the Bottom system itself, I pick out four factors that encourage individuals into the coalescence that occurs naturally.

Collection Plate

Many of those in the Bottom system will come from a set of values based around loyalty.  Like someone who has faithfully put money into the church collection plate for years, there is the promise of everlasting connection and security in return for loyally providing the work required by the authority. 

Put ‘change’ into this mix, along with fanfare and “the old world is rubbish” rhetoric,  the messaging is clear: a lifetime of money in the collection plate no longer has value, there is no more collection plate, and the promise of heaven for loyalty has turned to dust.

What would your reaction be in this situation? 

Membership

It’s nice to be part of a club.  In fact, relationships are a necessity for psychological security as we can’t survive our first years without them.  This never goes away, the fear of being cut from the herd goes deep, and while we may grow more sophisticated in our methods of addressing this fear (or protecting ourselves by actually making it happen – self-sabotage anyone?), it’s a key driver of our behaviour.

The crucial relationships at work are those with peers, as they are the ones who are impacted by the decisions coming from the Top and Middle systems in the same way.  Safety in numbers is the expression here, and, to be one of the numbers, you need relationships.

Useful Engines

The highest praise that could be heaped onto Thomas the Tank Engine was for him to be called a “very useful engine”.  Useful engines are invited to be around, they are more welcome in the social system than those that aren’t.  For those that have gained expertise in a way of doing things over time, change presents the possibility that this expertise will not be as valuable.  Threat of declining usefulness leads to threat of isolation….and the attractiveness of coalescing skyrockets.

Stationary is Comfortable

And let’s not forget simple comfort.  There’s a reason we like to lie in the warmth of bed on a winter’s morning – it’s more comfortable than getting out.  Emerging from the quilt has longer-term benefits, but in the shortest-term – it’s not as nice.

As Ichak Adizes points out – what is comfortable in the short-term is uncomfortable in the long-term…and vice versa.  And when a Bottom system has been repeatedly kicked out from under the quilt into the cold of the morning only to find out that the promised land of the new day never actually appears…the comfort of not getting out of bed at all becomes more attractive.

(And let’s be honest – we all do this.  That’s why that stuff around the house hasn’t been fixed yet.  So let’s not be mean and judgemental).

The Strategy to Change

Here’s the strategy:

re-integrate the Bottom System with the whole.

Re-integration means taking actions to move the Bottom, as a system, so it moves more in the direction required, and the whole means the entire organisation. 

Remember, you can’t see this system, it’s a mental construct, but you can picture the way a herd moves.  Here’s a brilliant drawing of one:

Herds move when those toward the edge start moving beyond the edge and pull the herd with them.  Not too far, but enough to gain attention and create a ripple effect through.  If those that venture out beyond the herd can be seen to not only survive, but look like they might be more secure, useful and comfortable in doing so….we have a chance of moving.

This means that what we want to do is provide some members of the herd with useful expertise.  Which means knowledge, skill or experience that will be useful in the new situation.  Training, ‘playing with’ the  new system, often just creating some time and peace to allow familiarity, group sessions…the tactics for each situation will be different, but the strategy remains largely the same – to help people not only see, but to know that they will continue to have value as a member and with expertise in the new situation.

From Selling Change to Systemic Change

The key here is treat the group as a system, and not automatically try to move everyone together.  Many ‘change programs’ are generic and apply to everyone.  And they’re ‘sold’ with the exact reasoning that appeals to the Top System – ‘we can achieve more, do more, be more’.  When you’re in the Bottom System, this sounds like yet another load of change which won’t make any difference, and there is only one logical reaction to this – duck, nod politely, and wait for it to blow over

Because it always does!

But every now and then, there is an actual change that is needed for either success, or sometimes survival.   Those in the role of Top System have an obligation to play their role in helping the whole system move.

By seeing the natural forces in play of social systems, we can stop mass-market selling of the standard change program, an instead focus on supporting particular individuals who can naturally pull the system forward.  The job is to build the confidence of these people within the larger group that moving to the new is both necessary for future comfort, and that they can have expertise that will be needed. 

Remember, the change has to be necessary in the first place.  No “I read a book on my holiday “ instigated change, which is the reason why Bottom Systems coalesce in the first place – it would be nonsense not to.  

Bringing this home

This is the harder path.  While bigger ‘change programs’ seem like hard work, they aren’t.  A few presentations,  a cascading PowerPoint deck,  keep-cups, posters and screensavers.  These take no effort, particularly when assigned to a well-meaning ‘change manager’ who takes care of al ofl it .

And this is exactly what causes the coalescence against the wider system in the first place, as it’s just more ‘done to’.

Seeing and respecting the forces of social systems and how much they create our reality is confronting.  We want to deny the evidence and believe we are above this.  We’re not.  Then the work of having conversations with people who have differing angles on the same reality requires a level of self-reflection and acknowledgement which is uncomfortable.  As is working through the realities of what is required and the numerous stop-starts that occurs to first create connections, then support what’s required to move a coalesced system forward.

Sounds a lot like hard work doesn’t it!  Which is why the standard change program is usually preferred.  And doesn’t work. 

And why this does.  If you’re up for it.