Five Ways to Respond to Change: A Broad Classification of Change ‘Mindsets’

What you see depends on how you look

In this post I want to explore the role of ‘mindset’ in defining how we, and those around us, respond to volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in and around the organisations in which we work. Our ‘mindset’ is the group of assumptions we make that form the basis of out feelings about, and actions within, the world around us; it drives how we ‘see’ the world and how we respond to it. Arising from our weltanschauung, it can unconsciously drive the choices we make and the behaviours we adopt. In relation to our response to organisational change, there are five broad classes of mindset which can be anthropomorphised as, the Administrator, the Engineer, the Scientist, the Autocrat, and the Monk.

The Administrator

The Administrator know that this change is essentially the same as the ones that have come before, therefore tools and techniques developed to deal with these previous changes can be applied successfully to manage this one with minimum adaptation. It is people adopting this mindset that assert the primacy of proven frameworks and “Best Practice” in an organisation’s management of change. They place great emphasis on the full adoption and application of a published ‘methodology’ such as PRINCE2 or SAFe. This approach is successful if the current situation is largely identical to previous ones.

The Engineer

The Engineer knows that this change is different in detail to all previous changes, but that the application of expertise and experience will find a solution. The Engineer knows that careful analysis, thorough debate, detailed design, and skilled delivery will navigate a successful change. This mindset asserts the primacy of a systematic approach to change rather than the application a copy-book solution; the primacy of experts ‘working the problem’ over ‘boilerplate’ answers. This approach is successful if you have involved the right experts with the right expertise.

The Scientist

The Scientist knows that this change is novel, unique, and that there is little, if any, previous experience, let alone expertise, to fall back on. But the Scientist believes in the power of ‘The Method’, that an iterative, incremental, data-driven process of experimentation will deliver a successful change. This is a careful approach to managing the change, measuring the impact of partial solutions, and adapting further responses in the light of the evidence. The weakness of this approach is that it is slow and creates ‘piecemeal’ solutions.

The Autocrat

The Autocrat knows that it is pointless to spend valuable time analysing and ‘understanding’ the problem; that decisive action is required. The key is bring the situation under control; to assert order so that the change can be managed. Where speed is of the essence, the Autocrat seeks to rapidly supress the growing confusion by placing emphasis on clear leadership and lines of authority, on detailed plans, objectives and key results. The weakness of this response is that it relies on complete compliance and that it still requires the development of a solution once control has been restored.

The Monk

The Monk knows that we do not yet know, nor might we ever know, the type of change that we face and that rushing into an approach risks failure. This is a difficult strategy because it requires the acceptance of the 'unknowableness' of the situation; its “aporia”. Aporia (‘a-‘ ‘poros’, without a path) is the confused/puzzled state of mind where the path to a solution is nor clear. This is an uncomfortable, even threatening position to be in, especially when those around us a demanding that we provide a clear and simple solution. Aporia is the ‘Agile Mindset’, accepting that any framework, process, model, expert, data or plan is probably wrong and that we will almost certainly need to abandon them sooner rather than later. This leads to the “Aporic Affirmation”; we don’t know what we are doing…and that’s okay!

This has also been published on www.jnew.uk along with my other posts and a collection of training materials and other development offerings.