As Edgar Schein mentioned that there are really two types of people: those who understand process and those who don’t.
Understanding process means to understand the making of our social relationships.
If you want to change a stakeholder relationship from, say, dysfunctional to helpful, you cannot just order people to do it. You have to intervene further upstream in the process of social reality creation. You have to change the making of that relationship from one mode to another – for example, from reactive to co-creative.
Similarly, with respect to the the ‘source’ level of creativity. We can say that there are two types of people those who understand containers and those who don’t. Container means holding space for the learning, creativity, innovation and leadership to emerge.
Often CEO and leaders in various organizations fail to get that. They think they can create behavioural change just by making speeches and pushing some tools onto the organization. Tools are important,but they are also overrated because they are so visible. But what is usually underrated is all the stuff that is invisible to the eye-e.g.: the less visible elements of a good holding space: Intention, Attention and Subtle qualities of deep listening.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS:
Much of the conventional language and toolkits around managing change turn out to be partially useful at best.
DRIVING CHANGE is a misnomer.
Just as a farmer cannot ‘drive’ a plant to grow faster, a leader or change maker in an organization or a community cannot force practical results. Instead attention must be focused on improving the quality of the soil.
What is the quality of the social soil?
It is the quality of relationships among the individuals, teams and institutions that give rise to collective behaviour and practical results.
The above write up is based on Theory U by MIT Prof. Dr. Otto Scharmer
MANAGEMENT INNOVATIONS 