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3 The transformation perspective

Introduction

For 25 years I have engaged in teaching, writing, researching and consulting in
the field of organizational change. Throughout that time I have taken the view
that the implementation of change is difficult, time consuming and often
requires ‘mind-set’, culture and value change. I have also believed that the route
to such changes lies in behaviour: put people in new settings within which they
have to behave differently and, if properly trained, supported and rewarded, their
behaviour will change. If successful this will lead to mind-set change and ulti-
mately will impact on the culture of the organization.
I have viewed the strategic change literature with a degree of scepticism in at
least one respect. Much of the literature at least implies that the strategy bit is
easy. This view holds that it is only when we get to implementation that the fun
starts. This is natural enough. Corporate history is full of organizations which
proved unable to implement strategy. Hamel (1996) convincingly argues that
strategy is only easy when the process of strategy formulation limits the scope of
discovery, the breadth of involvement and the intellectual effort expended. If the
focus is on planning to convert market research into next year’s budget then

strategy is about programme, not about the future of the organization longer
term. And yet many organizations are changing the ‘rules of the game’ within
which they operate. The boundaries of industries are shifting. New entrants are
revolutionizing industries. When computer companies enter education they
bring an impetus towards revolutionary change. When retailers act as banks by
offering cash at the checkout they do the same. When consumers can get a credit
card from General Motors or where insurance is sold by telephone, we are look-
ing at fundamental reconfigurations of industries. Thus it is that a book on how
to change organizations must look at how organizations themselves have been
and are being transformed. Part of the focus of this book is to examine the new
forms of organization now emerging which are fundamentally different to the
traditional hierarchical model. We seek to understand how and why they are
emerging and how change can be handled within and through these new orga-
nizational models.

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