Over the last couple of months I have become increasingly interested in the topics of organizational culture and change management. The major cause of these newly found interests was the ever growing frustration I was feeling when faced with my inability to understand (what seem to be at the time) the “irrational” behavior of many people I worked with. Mainly, I could not understand why people were so determined to resist change and continue to use “what I\we have always done” ways of doing things.
Reading books from Kotter and Schein has opened my eyes to a whole new world shaped by beliefs, values and deep assumptions. Up to this point, being a technologist, I held the unconscious and deeply rooted assumption that an organization could be rationalized and controlled; none conformance could be managed simply through governance. Hence, changing the organization was merely a question of careful planning and methodic execution.
Today, I realize that my old Tayloristic view of organizations was outdated; it’s underlying “machine” metaphor was to simplistic in that it was incapable of capturing all the subtle but important psychodynamics which exist and drives human actions and interactions.
Reading books from Kotter and Schein has opened my eyes to a whole new world shaped by beliefs, values and deep assumptions. Up to this point, being a technologist, I held the unconscious and deeply rooted assumption that an organization could be rationalized and controlled; none conformance could be managed simply through governance. Hence, changing the organization was merely a question of careful planning and methodic execution.
Today, I realize that my old Tayloristic view of organizations was outdated; it’s underlying “machine” metaphor was to simplistic in that it was incapable of capturing all the subtle but important psychodynamics which exist and drives human actions and interactions.
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