The world is becoming more complex, unpredictable, and interdependent. Change is emerging and becomes more emotional. Problems related to change cannot be solved simply by technical solutions but require people to adapt themselves. Therefore, organizational development (OD) requires not only research-based diagnosis, but also more human-centric dialogues to realize the meaning of change. With a dialogic OD approach, OD consultants facilitate self-organizing in the group to generate discourses, narratives, stories, images, and symbols to construct meanings of the change(Bushe & Marshak, 2015).

This dialogic approach shifts the focus of handling change resistance to making meaning of the change, which help foster the commitment to change. In a context of complex change, dialogic OD facilitation could be the key to success.

Organizational Changes in the VUCA Context

In the era of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity), the organizational changes become complex and continuous. Recession, trade uncertainty, pandemic, economic sanctions, disruptive technologies, cybersecurity, climate changes become concerns for many leaders in the world. To deal with these complex problems, best practices in the past may not work. According to Cynefin Framework for decision making, the cause-effect relationship of complex problems is nonlinear and even unknown. Managers cannot figure out the patterns by rational analysis, but only in retrospective (Snowden & Boone, 2007).

We view the VUCA world as a complex adaptive system (CAS). In CAS, a small change in one aspect of the system can create a large chain reaction, affecting the complete system. Examples of a CAS include economies, ecologies, weather, traffic, social organizations, and cultures, etc. (Morgan, 2006). In CAS, agents are free to interact in unpredictable ways to generate system-wide patterns. Over time, those emergent patterns influence the behaviors of the participating agents. For example, under the Covid-19 pandemic, many of us have to work from home, students have to study from home. In this social restrictive context, people need to adapt to communicate and collaborate online to learn or work. This digital transformation in communication, learning, and collaboration is fast-tracking and unpredictable. Over time, people could use different kinds of ICT (Information & Communication Technology) solutions in their daily lives.

Facilitating Self-organizing in Dialogic OD Intervention

Facilitation with dialogic OD interventions could be an effective way to help the organizational members to understand the patterns and generate appropriate responses to tackle with the problems. Generative intelligence and commitment in the group facilitation process could be the key to open the door of complex problem-solving.

The nature of self-organizing is a socially constructive process. If suitable OD interventions could be identified and implemented, it will mitigate resistance to change as well as spread out bigger impact to the whole organization to achieve the desirable outcomes of the change. Olson & Eoyang (2001) uses organizational boundaries to explain how self-organizing is able to manage complexities and unpredictability.

Boundaries in an organization may include departmental functions, team culture, office layout, and other aspects. When the organization is operating continuously, it establishes boundaries, in which agents work in the system to form certain patterns and status quo. Predicable outcomes and clear expectations appear. When a change happens and surpasses the boundaries, the expectations change, which makes prediction impossible. Agents are unsure of what to do and their status quo break after time. They begin to re-organize according to the conditions that exist. Spontaneously, new patterns emerge around the issues and ideas that influence those conditions. When patterns emerge, new organizational boundaries are established. Adapting from Olson & Eoyang (2001)’s self-organization process, the author summarizes the mechanism in the following figure.

Case Example

Our client company CMC (pseudonym) was founded 50 years ago. Changes for growth in CMC are slow, steady, and modest. These conditions foster a traditional organizational culture best described as conservative, lacking initiative, risk-averse and indecisive. Stability, status quo, inertia, and conformity have been institutionalized as rigid organizational boundaries. In the era of VUCA, the management team is aware of a need of transformation into an agile organization capable of adaptability to the changes. There are two options of transformation: emerging approach of change or episodic approach of change. Due to strong organizational inertia, adopting an emerging approach can reduce the resistance to change, however the change may be too slow. Alternatively, adopting an episodic change might break through its conformity, the pace of change will be faster, and the impact may be more drastic. But it may cause strong resistance, induce negative emotions, and risk the existing work harmony. Between these two polarized approaches, facilitating dialogic OD interventions could be a balanced approach.

Dialogic OD interventions provide a real-time platform for a large group of organizational stakeholders to exchange ideas and feelings. Its socially constructive process helps minimize the resistance to change and effectively develops consensus on what people want to commit. Facilitatinga dialogic process creates an open environment for organizational members to affirm each other’s ideas and emotions, share visions, and create a ground for collaborative exploration of what they desire its organizational future. The act of affirmation in the generative dialogue helps participants appreciate the understanding of each other’s points of view and co-create meaning from differences. It avoids dissatisfaction or disconfirmation feelings in the change process.

In CMC’s case, a 5-phase roadmap using dialogic OD interventions has been planned to drive the cultural change:

Phase (1): Facilitating a workshop for top management team to dialogue and co-construct the future direction of the organization, identify the critical success factors and derive the aligned corporate culture. Facilitation tools include appreciative inquiry, brainwriting, image cards, multi-voting, and commitment chart.

Phase (2): Facilitating workshops for the management team in different cities further expand the cultural values in terms of behavioral descriptions and the delivery approaches. Facilitation tools include appreciative inquiry, world café, action planning, and commitment chart.

Phase (3): Launching mass communication briefings to enable dialogues among employees to instill a positive mindset to the change, uncover concerns, and seek commitment to the cultural values. Facilitation tools include appreciative inquiry, game-based activities, and commitment chart.

Phase (4): Conducting culture training as a change catalyst to speed up the institutionalization of the values by customizing learning cases and interactive design.

Phase (5): Sustaining the change momentum by communication and reinforcement means to encourage the desirable behaviors and good performance.

Conclusions

In the era of VUCA, organizational change is not easy to plan and manage. Commitment to change rather derives from the collective meaning than compliance, because members in the organization affect each other’s thoughts and behaviors. In a complex context, the organizational change is an unpredictable complex adaptive system. Through dialogic OD approach, change is socially constructed in a whole system. It enables self-organizing to construct the desirable future, empower people, and reduce resistance to change. Facilitating dialogic OD interventions could be the bestto use when the organizational inertia is strong but in a context of VUCA world.

References

Arrow, A., McGrath, J., Berdahl, J. (2000).  Small Groups As Complex Systems.  USA: Sage Publications.

Bushe, G. R., & Marshak, R. J. (2015). Dialogic Organization Development: The Theory and Practice of Transformational Change. Oakland CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Dooley, K. (2004).  Complexity Science models of Organizational Change and Innovation.  In Poole, M and S Van de Ven (eds).  Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation (pp. 354-373). New York: Oxford University Press.

Eoyang, G., (2010). Human Systems Dynamics.  In W. J. Rothwell, J. M. Stavros, R. L. Sullivan & A. Sullivan (Eds.), Practicing Organization Development (pp.465-475).  USA: Pfeiffer.

Morgan, G. (2006).  Images of Organization. USA: Sage Publications.

Olson, E. E., & Eoyang, G., H. (2001).  Facilitating Organization Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Snowden, D., & Boone, M. (2007). A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making of the circumstances they face. Harvard Business Review Journal.