Managing polarities, as well as solving problems, is a key to effective organizational change. Real Time Strategic Change (RTSC) is a principle-based approach to achieving rapid, sustainable, organization-wide change that also helps manage polarities.
'Rapid' means thinking and acting as if the future were now. 'Sustainable' means that an organization is able to adapt and continue to be successful as new realities emerge over time.
The stability and consistency of the RTSC principles provide a solid platform and a blueprint for an organization’s change journey. Each of the six RTSC principles supports organizations in better understanding the nature of key polarities involved in any change management effort, and how to manage them effectively.
Principle-based Real Time Strategic Change
Let’s see how the RTSC principles support the oil company, from the case study on page 2, in managing the multiple polarities inherent in its move to a culture of diversity and redesigning its assessment process to reflect that shift.
- Real Time: This principle challenges people to think and act as if the future were now. The oil company could benefit from early warning signals from the team redesigning the assessment process.
By adopting desired ways of working as they were developing the improved assessment approach (i.e., being flexible and respectful with people who were different), the team’s own work could become an early prototype for the emerging culture. And if over-focused on a particular pole, they likely would realize that the plans they were developing would be as out of balance for the company’s managers as they were for themselves.
- Preferred Future: This principle reminds people to pay attention to bringing the best of the past and present with them while at the same time they build the future they desire. The "politically incorrect" managers, who raised objections to the new performance assessment process, are actually calling attention to traditional strengths of the organization: clear direction setting and a performance-based culture.
Going beyond the Burning Platform – Vision trap, this principle focuses the oil company on a compelling future for the entire organization – engaging those who care for each side of the key polarities identified above.
- Creating Community: This principle encourages people to join together as strong individuals while at the same time becoming a strong community, and vice versa. A key question related to this principle is: "What kind of community do we want and need to be?" In the oil company story, members of the organization deserve a basic level of respect; however, earned respect via individual competence and ongoing personal development are also required for the organization to continue thriving.
- Common Understanding: This principle ensures that informed decisions are made through inviting diverse viewpoints while at the same time establishing a larger collective organizational intelligence. The minority viewpoints expressed in opposition to the new assessment process in the oil company highlight the importance of exploring the implications of potential actions from multiple perspectives.
Paradoxically, raising diverse viewpoints – and encouraging these supposedly opposite voices – proves to be the best path to developing an informed assessment process.
- Reality is a Key Driver: This principle guides decisions and actions through people focusing in on specific issues and opportunities that provide significant leverage for change. They simultaneously scan for relevant information amidst the complex, wide-ranging, and often messy realities of change.
Focusing in on the reality of not fully tapping the potential of its diverse workforce is the catalyst for the oil company’s decision on a new culture and the redesign of the manager assessment process. The team’s staying open to new realities, different from their own, during the redesign leads to a better assessment process, with greater ownership from all managers.
- Empowerment/Inclusion: This principle focuses on empowering individuals and teams through inclusion and delegation while clearly defining where power will be retained where it currently resides. In the oil company story, including people who are directly impacted by decisions regarding the new assessment process is the insurance policy needed to ensure the final product’s quality.
This level of inclusion is empowering to people representing opposite poles, and leads to support for and ownership of both the desired culture and the redesigned assessment process by a critical mass of managers.
