Page 182 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Disciplines for the learning organization
and of seeing reality objectively. As such, it is an essential cornerstone of the
learning organisation – the learning organisation’s spiritual foundation.’
3 Mental models: these are about ‘learning to unearth . . . internal pictures of the
world, to bring them to the surface and hold them rigorously to scrutiny’.
4 Build a shared vision: this is about everyone holding a shared vision for the
future. Leadership is the key to creating and communicating the vision.
However, Senge sees leadership being about creating structures and activities
which relate to a person’s total life activity. The leader creates vision but is pre-
pared to have it reshaped by others.
5 Team learning: teams, not single individuals, are the key to successful organi-
zations of the future and individuals have to learn how to learn in the context
of the team.

The key observation here is that when an organization faces increased complex-
ity in its environment (caused perhaps by competitive and technological change)
there is a need to rethink. This implies a ‘mind-set’ shift such as that referred to
above.
How can this mind-set shift happen? Hurst (1995) argues that, faced with com-
plexity, a performance organization needs to become a learning organization if
change is to be achieved. To this end an emphasis on recognition, networks and
teams replaces tightly defined tasks, control systems and rigid structures. One of
the necessary conditions, Hurst argues, is crisis, i.e. a clear failure of the status
quo which cannot be rationalized away, hidden or denied. He argues that all
organizations go through an ecocycle comprising eight stages:

1 Strategic management.
2 Consolidation.
3 Crisis.
4 Confusion.
5 Charismatic leadership.
6 Creative network.

7 Choice.
8 Innovation.

Without needing to deny that some organizations will fail, what Hurst’s model
implies is a renewal process through which an organization recreates itself – more
specifically in which people rethink what they seek to achieve, with whom and
how, and thereby recreate the organization. Whatever else this may be, it is cer-
tainly a learning process.
How does this ecocycle model relate to the coping cycle model discussed in
Chapter 13 (see page 241)? In effect the coping cycle model deals with the
process associated with a single change whereas the ecocycle model presents the
same ideas (i.e. initial shock, denial and confusion followed by adaptation and
change) in a circular fashion in order to add the dimension of renewal.
Thus we can see that over the medium term change can be part of an overall
renewal process. Moreover, we have seen that for this to happen organization

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