Applying Change Models to Energy Regime
In concurrence with my earlier post where I mentioned bringing more of my own expertise to this blog, I thought it might be a good idea to apply a way of balancing different aspects that come to play in managing change to the question of energy regime change.
In my work with Proven Partners we often use an adapted version of the 7S model, proposed by Peters and Waterman in the early eighties. Talking about change in organisations usually is about ‘hard stuff’ like strategy, structures and systems. And often much less about ’softer’ stuff like management styles, culture, and people. However, to create change in a meaningfull and effective way you have to take all those aspects into account.
I think using this model to look at energy regime change also helps to untangle the jungle of discussions and debates where a lot of arguments and positions, based on one of the six aspects, gets attacked by others who predominantly use other aspects of the six as arguments. Those discussions are not getting anywhere as both parties are not able to understand the other’s position, as it is framed in a language that isn’t theirs, and at the most works as a red flag.
So let’s list them, and add them to my list of categories as well. In that way I can order both the information I share here from elsewhere, as well as signal where my own writing is ‘coming from’ at that point.
The six aspects to balance are:
Strategy: actions you plan based in accordance with your mission and objectives in response to current or anticipated changes in your environment
Structures: How are functions, people, responsibility and exchanges arranged, how are things coordinated?
Systems: both procedures and ‘hardware’
Management Style: how does management act (not talk), how are symbols used, is meaning constructed, where is the attention?
People: Their individual skills and values, the way people are introduced into groups/orgs, socialization processes
Culture: values, beliefs, norms and attitudes prevalent in a group, shared values, guiding principles
All these six aspects are subordinate to the mission and objectives the change is supposed to support and help achieve. In this case the objective would be my own reasons for being interested in energy regime change: empowering everybody by literally empowering them through self generated energy, from natural renewable resources.
So from now on I will try to sort the contributions along the lines of this model.
Photo credits: Chess by hans s, Dome Structure by DoctaBu, Coal Power Plant by Bruno Rodrigues, People Walking by Botasdeagua, Lincoln Memorial by Kathy Dodd, Native by JP Puerta, all under Creative Commons license.
This weblog is written by Ton Zijlstra (Enschede, Netherlands). I'm a knowledge management and change management consultant.
