Client Articles: Vision-Based Diagnosis
Review of the Literature on Reengineering and Reinventing
What is missing from this form of change is internalization of the capacity to change. Reengineering is something that is done to an organization rather than done with it. Thus it aims at radical change rather than sustained development and learning. Conventional reengineering does not aim at creating a learning organization.
Like the literature on organization development and change, generally, the idea of reinventing government does not differentiate between incremental and discontinuous change. Both change approaches can produce significant improvements. Some governmental organizations, however, seek immediate and radical improvements of a kind that does not accrue from incremental change. It could be argued that forces in the public sector are such that fundamental restructuring of governmental institutions is required to break out of the assumptions of entrenched, centralized, topâ??down control that eventually throttle change efforts. Drucker (1995, p. 289), for example, in his most recent book notes that reinventing government is only the latest version of change efforts that periodically arise to make government more efficient and responsive. He cautions against patchwork and arbitrary layoffs: Reinvention will produce "no results unless there is a radical change in the way the federal government and its agencies are managed and paid" (p. 289); he urges fundamental rethinking of functions.
Where does one turn to get new wine in new bottlesâ??for ideas about fundamentally reformulating one's organization? Drucker (1995) gives examples of rethinking or true reinvention in both the public and private sectors, but there is an absence of conceptual tools and practical ideas for bringing it off. If one wanted to take the idea of inventing seriously in the sense of rethinking or discontinuous change, what knowledge base is available for organization and management based on invention? Such an approach to discontinuous change could provide the kind of leverage needed to break through to new ways of public organization and management.
Someone wanting to build on theory and research concerning discontinuous or transformational change in organizations would not have found much in the literature until quite recently. As Porras and Silvers (1991) found, for example, in their recent assessment of organization development, "[t]he literature on organization transformation was quite limited, reflecting the newness of the area" (p. 70). This had practical consequences when a study team in the USDA reviewed what was published about transformational organizational change. They found more practical examples than general theory (Sanders & Faulkner, 1994). One of the most striking examples of organizational transformation they identified was at Magma Copper, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.
By the end of the 1980s, Magma was financially weak and facing open hostility from its unions. There was danger that the company would not survive the hard bargaining of the type characteristic of the southern Arizona copper mining industry, in which in the early 1980s, a long and bitter strike led to breaking a major union. By the early 1990s, Magma had dramatically turned things around, and laborâ??management cooperation was showing up in such dramatic bottomâ??line improvements (Boblander & Campbell, 1993; Elden, 1994; Sanders & Faulkner, 1994) that the business press declared Magma to be "revolutionary" (Miller, 1992, p. 30) and "a metamorphosis in the desert" (Miller, 1992, p. 27), and the Clinton administration heralded what happened as an example of how to improve productivity.
Recent research at Magma revealed that although a variety of organization change strategies was employed, there were significant results being achieved by going beyond the conventional model of incremental change. What came out of this inquiry was a description of a model of change as invention rather than as adaptation, or what we have called a model of organizational transformation relying on VBD in contrast to organizational development. (What follows is a brief summary of the model; for a more complete description, see Elden, 1994.)
The model was developed in a fieldâ??research setting at Magma to explain the dynamics of the change process there. It was developed together with and confirmed by people in unions and in management who were actively involved in transforming their company but had no conscious, formal model they were following. The initial request from top management was to explore the feasibility of benchmarking as a way of contributing to what was already seen as a successful change process. What we found in tracing back the successes was that people had invented their own new solutions rather than importing them from other companies. The context at Magma was that anything might be possible. People were challenged to "think outside of the 9 dots"â??that is, to think in radically new ways. There was an openness to new ideas for improvement. This culture opened up the possibility of invention.
The Meaning of a Vision-Based Diagnosis
Review of the Literature on Re-engineering and Reinventing
Magma as a Model of VBD
A Case Study at the Farm Service Agency
Mobilizing for Transforming Change
Appendix and References
Like the literature on organization development and change, generally, the idea of reinventing government does not differentiate between incremental and discontinuous change. Both change approaches can produce significant improvements. Some governmental organizations, however, seek immediate and radical improvements of a kind that does not accrue from incremental change. It could be argued that forces in the public sector are such that fundamental restructuring of governmental institutions is required to break out of the assumptions of entrenched, centralized, topâ??down control that eventually throttle change efforts. Drucker (1995, p. 289), for example, in his most recent book notes that reinventing government is only the latest version of change efforts that periodically arise to make government more efficient and responsive. He cautions against patchwork and arbitrary layoffs: Reinvention will produce "no results unless there is a radical change in the way the federal government and its agencies are managed and paid" (p. 289); he urges fundamental rethinking of functions.
Where does one turn to get new wine in new bottlesâ??for ideas about fundamentally reformulating one's organization? Drucker (1995) gives examples of rethinking or true reinvention in both the public and private sectors, but there is an absence of conceptual tools and practical ideas for bringing it off. If one wanted to take the idea of inventing seriously in the sense of rethinking or discontinuous change, what knowledge base is available for organization and management based on invention? Such an approach to discontinuous change could provide the kind of leverage needed to break through to new ways of public organization and management.
Someone wanting to build on theory and research concerning discontinuous or transformational change in organizations would not have found much in the literature until quite recently. As Porras and Silvers (1991) found, for example, in their recent assessment of organization development, "[t]he literature on organization transformation was quite limited, reflecting the newness of the area" (p. 70). This had practical consequences when a study team in the USDA reviewed what was published about transformational organizational change. They found more practical examples than general theory (Sanders & Faulkner, 1994). One of the most striking examples of organizational transformation they identified was at Magma Copper, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.
By the end of the 1980s, Magma was financially weak and facing open hostility from its unions. There was danger that the company would not survive the hard bargaining of the type characteristic of the southern Arizona copper mining industry, in which in the early 1980s, a long and bitter strike led to breaking a major union. By the early 1990s, Magma had dramatically turned things around, and laborâ??management cooperation was showing up in such dramatic bottomâ??line improvements (Boblander & Campbell, 1993; Elden, 1994; Sanders & Faulkner, 1994) that the business press declared Magma to be "revolutionary" (Miller, 1992, p. 30) and "a metamorphosis in the desert" (Miller, 1992, p. 27), and the Clinton administration heralded what happened as an example of how to improve productivity.
Recent research at Magma revealed that although a variety of organization change strategies was employed, there were significant results being achieved by going beyond the conventional model of incremental change. What came out of this inquiry was a description of a model of change as invention rather than as adaptation, or what we have called a model of organizational transformation relying on VBD in contrast to organizational development. (What follows is a brief summary of the model; for a more complete description, see Elden, 1994.)
The model was developed in a fieldâ??research setting at Magma to explain the dynamics of the change process there. It was developed together with and confirmed by people in unions and in management who were actively involved in transforming their company but had no conscious, formal model they were following. The initial request from top management was to explore the feasibility of benchmarking as a way of contributing to what was already seen as a successful change process. What we found in tracing back the successes was that people had invented their own new solutions rather than importing them from other companies. The context at Magma was that anything might be possible. People were challenged to "think outside of the 9 dots"â??that is, to think in radically new ways. There was an openness to new ideas for improvement. This culture opened up the possibility of invention.
The Meaning of a Vision-Based Diagnosis
Review of the Literature on Re-engineering and Reinventing
Magma as a Model of VBD
A Case Study at the Farm Service Agency
Mobilizing for Transforming Change
Appendix and References