The way organizations make decisions are changing, I find these changes to be for the better and help the organization to constantly move forward. Looking back, historically changes and or decisions were made from top down which mean that those making the changes were not aware of the implications that were taking place below. In order to bypass those issues, upper-management is now finding that making changes from all levels leads to happier work environments and a more prosperous organization.
I work for a relatively progressive organization and the organization as whole is constantly trying to put new ways of doing business for both the staff/faculty as well as students. I know that it can be difficult to allow decisions to be made from anything other than the traditional top down but it doesn’t mean that it cannot be done. It also can be hard to see how changes for the betterment of an organization can come from the middle or the bottom of an organizations hierarchy.
I would be willing to say that 75% of changes that have effective long term success rates come from those who are the middle to bottom of the hierarchy and I say that for many reasons. It has been my experience that upper management implement changes that will never affect them so they do know understand the repercussions. These types of changes seem to do more damage that good. I also think that you have to see who is on top to try and think like they do to better understand what changes they are trying to implemented. If you haven’t been in the trenches you don’t know how to help those people; leaders need to know their employees in order to make positive change from the top down.
How does this affect strategy? This method would squash the way most leaders feel about strategy because most leaders would find that this would infringe on their “bigger” plans but realistically this is the best way to conduct business. Take the idea of strategy and shift it so that you are strategically making changes based on what those who are going to be affect by it think/feel/say about it. No longer are you being strategic for your betterment but now you are being strategic in the betterment of those who will be affected by the change. To me it is all about how you approach strategy and how you approach strategic change.
Speaking to the idea of how to be strategic in how you approach change, I relate these ideas to my current position. I am constantly working with faculty, whom of which are notorious for being extremely finicky. You have to do a lot of stroking and caressing to get what you need and I am fine with that; this is where I have to be strategic. I cannot approach each faculty member the same way or my plans would blow up in my face and I would be dealing with sassy instructors so I strategically put feelers out there to see how I can affective change their way of thinking in order to be successful in a strong course development; it is all in the approach. I like to think of this as a dance, the Waltz preferably… not all partners will know how to move but once you find the right flow, the dance goes off seamlessly.
So what is indicative to these new ways of handling strategic change within an organization? First, organizations have to understand that the times are changing and no longer are people sitting back and letting upper management run the whole show. Organizations now understand that their best assets are not sitting at the top but are positioned all throughout the organization and their opinions matter. Second, organizations are beginning to recognize the need for diversity and in order to do that they have to go to the people. Those understandings help to unify the organization which leads me the third point which is organizations want to be better not only from an industry standpoint but also in the eyes of their employees. In the grand picture, employees are what sell the organization. They are the faces of the company and they are out there representing it all times. When someone asks you, “what do you do you and where do you work” the next question they ask is, “do you like your job” and the best way for organizations to keep good employees is so manage equally from within and create changes that start from the middle and work their way out. Top down management is out the door and new waves of thinking are now being created.
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