Page 139 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Chapter 8 ■ Sustaining organizational effectiveness
the idea. Yet if the idea is novel it may be ill thought out and may not present a
good ‘fit’ with the hazy and incomplete data. Thus rejection is easy. We should
recognize that finding reasons to say ‘no’ is easier than finding reasons to say
‘yes’ – particularly if we are poor risk takers who are intolerant of ambiguity!
4 Inability to incubate: an unwillingness to ‘sleep on the problem’ often because
there seem to be pressures for solutions: ‘We must have a new pricing policy
because the sales department is pressing for one’. In planning the process of
managing change we should plan enough time for ideas to incubate.

Cultural blocks

1 Taboos: issues which cannot be discussed and therefore cannot be faced are
taboo. For example, at International Engineering (see page 142) it was impos-
sible to question whether or not the admitted technical excellence of the com-
pany was relevant for its new markets.
2 Focus rather than fantasy: Adams forcefully makes the point that psychologists
have concluded that children are more creative than adults. This might be
explained by adults being more aware of practical constraints. However, as he
says, ‘another explanation, which I believe, is that our culture trains mental
playfulness, fantasy and reflectiveness out of people by placing more stress on
the value of channelled mental activities’. Worth thinking about!
3 Problem solving is a serious business: linked to item 2 above is the notion that
humour has no place in problem solving. And yet humour is often based on the
process of associating apparently unrelated ideas. Creativity is the same in that
it often involves the association of unrelated ideas or structures. Adams argues,
therefore, that humour is one essential ingredient for effective problem solving.
4 Reason and intuition: we often seem to believe that reason, logic and numbers
are good and that feelings, intuition and pleasure are bad. Adams suggests that
this is based on our (west European?) puritan heritage and our technology-
based culture (which raises the question of how this point applies in cultures
without a puritan heritage). This has been complicated by the tendency to

assign these characteristics to sex roles, namely, that men are logical, physical,
tough and pragmatic while women are sensitive, emotional and intuitive.
Creativity demands a balance of these characteristics.
5 Tradition and change: traditions are hard to overcome, particularly when people
do not reflect on their traditions and their present problems/dilemmas
together. We need tradition – it is on our traditions that much of our personal
commitment and motivation is based. We need to respect tradition and we
also need to recognize the need for change. Adams distinguishes primary and
secondary creativity: primary creativity generates the structures and concepts
which allow the solution of a family of problems; secondary creativity deploys
these structures and concepts to develop and improve particular solutions. He
argues that primary creativity demands more intuition, humour, feeling and
emotion; secondary creativity seems more likely to be associated with logic
and reason – as the structures already established are deployed systemati-
cally to solve specific problems within a now well-understood field. Secondary

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