Client Articles: Vision-Based Diagnosis
Transforming Change in Public Organizations
Our originating question focused on what was needed to initiate discontinuous or transformational change in the public sector. We summarized an emerging body of literature expressly aimed at invention‑based rather than adaptation‑based change that suggested that the key initiating condition was creating a new future‑one that was not simply an extension of the past. This vision would, in turn, generate commitment and staying power in the chaos of an inventive change process through what were termed intentional breakdowns. These could be used as diagnostics in helping to create a focus for intensive and creative problem solving, or breakthroughs. This process required and contributed to the culture of a learning organization.
The KCMO of USDA's Farm Service Agency provided a case study of a public organization in the initiating stage of a project to make radical improvement. In this first phase of its change process, the issue was how to mobilize people who lived in a top‑down, command‑and‑control environment to be fully engaged and creative in inventing new ways of working. Mobilizing is, of course, by definition only a beginning. Our main finding is that the VBD described here in theory and practice appears to be viable and supportive of organizational transformation in the public sector.
VBD also provided the basis of seeing an alternative to the top‑down, command-and‑control model of hierarchical authority typical of public‑sector organizations. Although continued work must be conducted with public‑sector organizations, we found that the VBD opened the organization to at least begin discussing the possibility of discovering new, more participatory and empowering ways of working to provide products and services to its customer base. We found that VBD provided what is embodied by the spirit of reinvention ‑ that is, to start with a blank page and invent from nothing, thereby causing discontinuous change within an organization and an organizational culture.
In terms of the Goss et al. (1993) model of managing the present from the future, we have clearly completed Steps 1 and 2 by assembling a critical mass of key stakeholders (both internal and external) and, most important, by doing a vision‑based organizational audit. Although we have not engineered an organizational breakdown, KCMG leadership declared one that helped launch the project by getting everyone's attention at the all‑hands meeting in January 1995.
Creating urgency to discuss what is not working within a public‑sector organization seems only to be acceptable when the very survival of the organization is threatened. In this agency, the funding paradigm was being altered as a result of the GPRA. Inside the new funding paradigm, business as usual would lead to closure. This issue of organizational survival generated the opening in which to begin to look at new ways of providing products and services to customers‑a finding reported by Goss et al. (1993, p. 98). Given the reductions in workload implied by the new Farm Bill signed by President Clinton in March 1996, this declared breakdown in the beginning of 1995 seems prophetic in retrospect.
Conducting the organizational audit as a VBD was a very powerful tool that allowed for frank discussions within management about business practices that were not working without triggering the defense mechanisms of the executives. Given that the vision statement in itself articulates a break from past management practices, the executives were able to observe objectively the extent of inherited business practices that are no longer applicable in today's business environment.
Testing other parts of the overall organizational transformation model such as the viability of breakdowns and breakthroughs is beyond the scope of this article but is being tracked as the KCMG project unfolds. Breakdown, in this context, refers to the happenings that occur daily in the life of an organization that interrupt employee commitment to fulfill the organization's future. It has been well reported in the literature that for any change to occur, unfreezing of the current mode of operation must occur this process of unfreezing can be generated by causing intentional breakdowns within the culture, which, in turn, generate chaos such that people are required to think beyond the business‑as‑usual solutions. In this particular organization, the executives have been confronted with demanding business circumstances for such a long period of time that it is unfathomable to them to introduce engineered breakdowns within the organizational culture.
In the future, we expect, according to our organizational transformation model, more chaos and uncertainty within the culture as the process of inventing new ways of working unfolds. Although education and training are being delivered in the beginning of 1996 to prepare the executives for dealing with the chaos, it is unclear how the internal organization and the organization at large will respond to the turbulence generated from the organizational transformation model. At the very least, in terms of Goss et al.'s (1993) ideas applied so far to the KCMG, there has been a shift from "distrust and resignation toward an authentic, powerful partnership" (p. 108). The next steps for this organization include the challenge of keeping those committed to the effort engaged in the face of threats to their commitment inherent in breakdowns. Also, in this new domain of leadership, KCMG managers are recognizing the need for additional education that impacts the two elements of communication: powerful listening and committed speaking. Finally, the development and training in leadership for reinvention is not being limited to only KCMO's top management. The charter challenges leadership at all levels, and courses as of May 1996 have been offered also to project leaders.
Public‑sector organizations are known for their hierarchical structure and bureaucratic mode of operation. In these centralized, top‑down bureaucracies with a command‑and-control environment, we found that the initiative, inventiveness, and creativity of the workforce was almost totally lost because of barriers perceived by workers but not top management. The one thing that top management in a command‑and‑control environment cannot dictate is local initiative. For the federal government and the Department of Agriculture, it is ironic that the president is encouraging agency heads to reinvent their agencies to be customer driven, yet the entire effort is dependent on the local workplace‑level initiative to act. At the very least, VBD creates an opening for transforming exclusively top‑down structures in public organizations into more participatory, two‑way streets in which local invention, not only innovation, becomes possible.
The Meaning of a Vision-Based Diagnosis
Review of the Literature on Reengineering and Reinventing
Magma as a Model of VBD
A Case Study at the Farm Service Agency
Mobilizing for Transforming Change
Appendix and References
The KCMO of USDA's Farm Service Agency provided a case study of a public organization in the initiating stage of a project to make radical improvement. In this first phase of its change process, the issue was how to mobilize people who lived in a top‑down, command‑and‑control environment to be fully engaged and creative in inventing new ways of working. Mobilizing is, of course, by definition only a beginning. Our main finding is that the VBD described here in theory and practice appears to be viable and supportive of organizational transformation in the public sector.
VBD also provided the basis of seeing an alternative to the top‑down, command-and‑control model of hierarchical authority typical of public‑sector organizations. Although continued work must be conducted with public‑sector organizations, we found that the VBD opened the organization to at least begin discussing the possibility of discovering new, more participatory and empowering ways of working to provide products and services to its customer base. We found that VBD provided what is embodied by the spirit of reinvention ‑ that is, to start with a blank page and invent from nothing, thereby causing discontinuous change within an organization and an organizational culture.
In terms of the Goss et al. (1993) model of managing the present from the future, we have clearly completed Steps 1 and 2 by assembling a critical mass of key stakeholders (both internal and external) and, most important, by doing a vision‑based organizational audit. Although we have not engineered an organizational breakdown, KCMG leadership declared one that helped launch the project by getting everyone's attention at the all‑hands meeting in January 1995.
Creating urgency to discuss what is not working within a public‑sector organization seems only to be acceptable when the very survival of the organization is threatened. In this agency, the funding paradigm was being altered as a result of the GPRA. Inside the new funding paradigm, business as usual would lead to closure. This issue of organizational survival generated the opening in which to begin to look at new ways of providing products and services to customers‑a finding reported by Goss et al. (1993, p. 98). Given the reductions in workload implied by the new Farm Bill signed by President Clinton in March 1996, this declared breakdown in the beginning of 1995 seems prophetic in retrospect.
Conducting the organizational audit as a VBD was a very powerful tool that allowed for frank discussions within management about business practices that were not working without triggering the defense mechanisms of the executives. Given that the vision statement in itself articulates a break from past management practices, the executives were able to observe objectively the extent of inherited business practices that are no longer applicable in today's business environment.
Testing other parts of the overall organizational transformation model such as the viability of breakdowns and breakthroughs is beyond the scope of this article but is being tracked as the KCMG project unfolds. Breakdown, in this context, refers to the happenings that occur daily in the life of an organization that interrupt employee commitment to fulfill the organization's future. It has been well reported in the literature that for any change to occur, unfreezing of the current mode of operation must occur this process of unfreezing can be generated by causing intentional breakdowns within the culture, which, in turn, generate chaos such that people are required to think beyond the business‑as‑usual solutions. In this particular organization, the executives have been confronted with demanding business circumstances for such a long period of time that it is unfathomable to them to introduce engineered breakdowns within the organizational culture.
In the future, we expect, according to our organizational transformation model, more chaos and uncertainty within the culture as the process of inventing new ways of working unfolds. Although education and training are being delivered in the beginning of 1996 to prepare the executives for dealing with the chaos, it is unclear how the internal organization and the organization at large will respond to the turbulence generated from the organizational transformation model. At the very least, in terms of Goss et al.'s (1993) ideas applied so far to the KCMG, there has been a shift from "distrust and resignation toward an authentic, powerful partnership" (p. 108). The next steps for this organization include the challenge of keeping those committed to the effort engaged in the face of threats to their commitment inherent in breakdowns. Also, in this new domain of leadership, KCMG managers are recognizing the need for additional education that impacts the two elements of communication: powerful listening and committed speaking. Finally, the development and training in leadership for reinvention is not being limited to only KCMO's top management. The charter challenges leadership at all levels, and courses as of May 1996 have been offered also to project leaders.
Public‑sector organizations are known for their hierarchical structure and bureaucratic mode of operation. In these centralized, top‑down bureaucracies with a command‑and-control environment, we found that the initiative, inventiveness, and creativity of the workforce was almost totally lost because of barriers perceived by workers but not top management. The one thing that top management in a command‑and‑control environment cannot dictate is local initiative. For the federal government and the Department of Agriculture, it is ironic that the president is encouraging agency heads to reinvent their agencies to be customer driven, yet the entire effort is dependent on the local workplace‑level initiative to act. At the very least, VBD creates an opening for transforming exclusively top‑down structures in public organizations into more participatory, two‑way streets in which local invention, not only innovation, becomes possible.
The Meaning of a Vision-Based Diagnosis
Review of the Literature on Reengineering and Reinventing
Magma as a Model of VBD
A Case Study at the Farm Service Agency
Mobilizing for Transforming Change
Appendix and References