Gil Rendle of the Alban Institute describes the system perspective on change in congregations.
Sometimes problem solving is the best way to deal with an issue, but it should not be the only tool we have. There's an old saying: "If all I have is a hammer, everything else looks like a nail." We need other tools for addressing challenges in our churches.Maybe instead of trying to solve the problem, we need a different course of action. We need to stop looking at every indication of resistance to change as a problem that needs to be solved. It may instead present an opportunity for deep and rich theological conversation. It can become a time for the entire congregation to grow and learn together through hearing one another. (excerpt)
Congregational Resource Guide Article: Leading a Congregation through Change
"Often, congregational leaders want to “fix” their congregation, meaning correcting complaints and making it "perfect" for everyone. Instead, I suggest a healthier response: to work toward faithfulness rather than happiness. I advise them to go back to their mission statement or their understanding of their congregation's call to ministry and develop decisions that support such a position."
The Illusion of Congregational “Happiness”
Gil Rendle, Senior Consultant, The Alban Institute
From Congregations: The Alban Journal.
Volume XXIII, Number 3, May/June 1997, Pages 14–17.
Volume XXIII, Number 4, July/August 1997, Pages 14–17.
Why is it that, at the end of so many books and seminars, leaders report being enlightened and wiser, but not much happens in their organizations?"
Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business offers "16 rules to help you make things happen in your organization."
Excerpts:
The reason that we've fallen into this knowing-doing gap is this: Doing something actually requires doing something! It means tackling the hard work of making something happen. It's much easier and much safer to sit around and have intellectual conversations, to gather large databases, to invest in technical infrastructure -- and never actually implement anything....No matter how smart you are, you can't preplan everything and then roll out your program. What you want to do is to try some stuff and see what happens. And by the way, "enlightened trial and error" is the perfect antidote to the cynicism that exists in many organizations whose people have seen programs come and go....
People don't want to make mistakes, and the best way to avoid making a mistake is to continue doing things exactly as they've always been done. Companies get trapped in a kind of circular logic: "We do what we do because it's the best thing to do. And it's the best thing to do because it's what we've always done."
Source: Why Can't We Get Anything Done?
A case study of Tom Valerio's efforts to reinvent CIGNA Property and Casualty, illustrating some basic principles of implementing change.
The four principles:
"In any change effort," says Valerio, "the real work comes in closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be."
From an article about the remaking of a business school, some principles for establishing change.
The basic ideas:
Source: Learning and Change - Roger Martin
The Enduring Skills of Change Leaders
by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
An article by one of the most astute business researchers and writers, Rosabeth Moss Kanter. As with many leadership articles, this one focuses on business organizations, but the chief challenges she proposes -- globalization and technology -- affect congregations and congregational members' lives in ways that make these ideas applicable to the congregation, too.
Excerpt:
Change -- adept organizations share three key attributes, each associated with a particular role for leaders.
- The imagination to innovate. To encourage innovation, effective leaders help develop new concepts -- the ideas, models, and applications of technology that set an organization apart.
- The professionalism to perform. Leaders provide personal and organizational competence, supported by workforce training and development, to execute flawlessly and deliver value to ever more demanding customers.
- The openness to collaborate. Leaders make connections with partners who can extend the organization's reach, enhance its offerings, or energize its practices.
Managing Transitions : Making the Most of Change
by William Bridges
Following Bridges' book Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, this book deals more with how organizations -- and their leaders -- can do in an organization undergoing voluntary or involuntary change. He builds on his three-stage model of transition, introduced in Transitions.
Amazon.com: buying info: Managing Transitions : Making the Most of Change
William Bridges - author of Managing Transitions (one of my favorite books on organizational and personal change) - and consultant Susan Mitchell explain a model of change that addresses why organizations don't "Just Do It."
Excerpt:
In years past, perhaps, leaders could simply order changes. Even today, many view it as a straightforward process: establish a task force to lay out what needs to be done, when, and by whom. Then all that seems left for the organization is (what an innocent sounding euphemism!) to implement the plan. Many leaders imagine that to make a change work, people needed only to follow the plan's implicit map, which shows how to get from here (where things stand now) to there (where they'll stand after the plan is implemented). "There" is also where the organization needs to be if it is to survive, so anyone who has looked at the situation with a reasonably open mind can see that the change isn't optional. It is essential.Fine. But then, why don't people "Just Do It"? And what is the leader supposed to do when they Just Don't Do It -- when people do not make the changes that need to be made, when deadlines are missed, costs run over budget, and valuable workers get so frustrated that when a headhunter calls, they jump ship.
Leaders who try to analyze this question after the fact are likely to review the change effort and how it was implemented. But the details of the intended change are often not the issue. The planned outcome may have been the restructuring of a group around products instead of geography, or speeding up product time-to-market by 50 percent. Whatever it was, the change that seemed so obviously necessary has languished like last week's flowers.