Page 150 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Organizations and rationality
Top managers evidently believing that declining revenue was only temporary.
Low levels of trust.
Beer et al., 1988

Here we have the ‘blockages’ to change all over again.
Argyris goes on to argue that characteristic solutions to these problems seem
purposely to avoid the problem. Thus a structural solution will not deal with the
real issues, nor will a solution which emphasizes clearer definition of roles and
‘better’ communication, because neither deals with the causes but rather
attempts to deal with symptoms. His main idea to deal with these problems is to
get participants to ‘map’ how decisions are actually made as a means of recog-
nizing their own ‘skilled incompetence’. He refers to work by Putnam and
Thomas (1988) on a performance-related pay system which was ineffective
because too many people received high ratings.

CASE
STUDY CAC Consultants

The ‘problem’
CAC Consultants is in the business of marketing highly sophisticated knowledge and
professional skills, particularly in the field of project management. The key to the firm’s
success lies in the professionals and the skills they develop and deploy. Attracting and
keeping first-rate professionals is a key issue, and senior partners hold strong opinions
on it. The company comprises a chairman and six senior partners (each responsible for
a major area of business activity) and 14 junior partners, each reporting directly to either
the chairman or a senior partner. In addition some 40 professional staff and 60 support
staff are employed, all organized into teams within the major areas of activity.
Some senior partners believed that career development was needed to attract high-
quality young professionals. Another group had serious doubts about this, believing that
the firm could attract people of the right level of skill. In any event, these people believed
that it was impossible to appoint additional senior partners because of the impact of that
on the income of the current partners. Finally, it was felt that career development would

retain only the less able professionals; others would ‘naturally move on’.
Both groups of senior partners recognized problems, however. For some the problem
was how to attract and retain able young professionals. For others it was how to moti-
vate effort and commitment from them in order to increase company income.
The former saw the solution as lying in that of career development, the latter in the
field of recruitment procedures. It was decided to hold a one-day meeting of senior part-
ners to discuss the problem. Prior to the meeting there had been much discussion with
individuals, often attributing various views or motives to others. People were seen as
unfair, emotional, ‘empire building’, overreacting or overprotective. At least one senior
partner had been attributed as using career development as a means of rewarding a jun-
ior partner working for him.

The ‘meeting’
At the meeting one senior partner proposed that regular reviews of individuals be carried
out and that the senior partners should agree a policy regarding career development ➔

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