A decade of organisational transformation in Australia: what works and what doesn’t.
The title of this article takes its name from the anonymous Chinese saying:
“We are like a big fish tossed from rapids, flopping wildly to find its way back into the stream. The fish never asks where the next flip or flop will take it. It senses only that its present position is intolerable and that something else must be tried”.
Could Australia’s love affair with organisational change and transformation programs be likened to that big fish trying to find its way back to the water? Are we flipping and flopping from one program to another, unsure why, sensing only that something new must be tried? How do we choose what to try next?
As part of my Master’s degree, I looked at a decade of change programs in Australian organisations. My research asked two questions: Has organisational transformation in Australia been successful?, and Are some change methods more successful in Australia than others?. The research spanned a decade of change initiatives in over 6,000 Australian organisations. Here’s what I found.
It’s not all bad news
Despite widespread claims that 70% of major transformation projects fail, Australia’s track record is, on average, better than this. Overall, 40% of change initiatives in Australian organisations failed, and 60% were successful. Success was measured in terms of how well the initiative met its original objectives, and how well it achieved the desired changes in the short-term, and in the long-term.
However, 60/40 is fairly hit-and-miss, so it warranted further investigation.
Some methods are more successful than others.
In a nutshell, transformation programs that were aligned to the principles of behavioural management and that adopted a contingency approach to change were significantly more successful. Significantly more – that is, 85% successful compared to 30% for those that aligned with scientific management principles and followed a prescriptive or ‘one best way’ approach.
For a deeper understanding of what this means, visit the Management 101 Refresher, below.
In summary, transformation initiatives that focused on inclusiveness, empowerment, and cultural change were by far the most successful. Initiatives that focused on top-down implementation of new systems and processes with only minimal attention to the people and cultural issues were the least successful.
What this means
Organisational change initiatives that are prescriptive and propose a “one best way” approach are highly likely to fail in Australian organisations, particularly if they focus more on systems and processes than on people, and particularly if they are imposed in a “top-down” manner.
Alternatively, initiatives that focus as much on the people issues as the process issues, and that address change as a bottom-up inclusive process, are much more likely to succeed, particularly if they adopt an empowering, learning organisation approach.
Otherwise, we are like the big fish that has been tossed from the rapids.
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| Management 101 Refresher: This quick refresher is important to understand the context of the findings. The field of management and organisation can be thought of as three overlapping eras, the early, scientific management era (1900-1940), the middle, behavioural management era (1930-1980), and the present, or hybrid era (1970 onwards). Scientific Management: drawing from the work of Frederick W. Taylor in his Principles of Scientific Management and of Henri Fayol in General Principles of Management, scientific management theory centres on ways to improve productivity – think of the infamous ‘time and motion’ studies. It is a top-down approach (led by management) that focuses on systems and processes, and assumes that given certain conditions, workers will behave in certain ways. Behavioural Management draws from the work of Lyndall Urwick, Mary Parker-Follett, and others including Elton Mayo and his renowned Hawthorne experiments, which found what was considered to be an astounding discovery at that time: that human relationships – between supervisors, subordinates and peers – had a stronger effect on productivity than either economic benefits or the organisation’s physical environment. Douglas McGregor’s Theory X / Theory Y also belongs to this era. Theory X follows the traditional scientific view of management based on direction and control, whereas Theory Y follows the human relations school of management based on inclusion and empowerment. Chris Argyris’s open-system theory and subsequent developments such as double-loop thinking align with Theory Y, and form an intrinsic part of what has become known as the learning approach to organisational development, or Learning Organisations. Present / Hybrid Era: The “modern” management movement continues to evolve by integrating and building on existing theories. Amongst the numerous methods of organisational change and development, some techniques have allegiance to the principles of scientific management; other programs more closely align to behavioural management. Some hold that there is “one best way” to transform organisations; others take a contingency approach. Contingency theory holds that all major factors in a situation should be considered before making a decision. The contingency approach proposes there is no one best way to do organisational change and development. Rather, it supports the view that the effectiveness of techniques varies from one situation to another, and this provides the foundation for designing and managing organisations on a case by case basis. Contingency theory stresses the need for appraisal and analysis of the entire organisational environment prior to any intervention taking place, in order to determine what interventions might be most effective for the particular circumstances of the organisation in question. ——————————————— |
