Organizations tend to travel two paths as they age. In fact, they typically have one foot in each path. These are the paths of Efficiency and Innovation. This two-path aging process is typical of advocacy organizations as well as targets. The two paths have very different implications for much of the decision-making that goes on in the organization, and we need to approach targets somewhat differently depending on how much the target invests in each of the two paths.
The Path of Efficiency
This path tries to accomplish organizational outcomes with the least amount of effort and cost possible. The upside of this path is the preservation of what are always scarce resources. The downside is that each step on this path makes the organization more brittle and less able to respond effectively to novel disturbance or threat. Brittle systems are efficient precisely because they simply do not change. If the distress from the disturbance is too great, brittle systems break.
It is typical, and only partially avoidable that systems become more brittle as they age. Once the brittleness is part of the organization fabric, actual efficiency takes a secondary place in the scheme of organizational management.
The Path of Innovation
This path tries to accomplish organizational outcomes with a workflow that is different in assumptions from the one currently being used. A typical reason for walking the path of innovation is that the mission of the organization has degraded over time, and a new way of organizing mission outcome effort is needed to change it. Other reasons for innovation include important changes in the organization ecosystem, new laws that affect the mission outcomes, changes in the culture of the staff as a result of simple changes in staffing, funding issues, and similar disturbances in the Force.
It is typical, and only partially avoidable that systems become less innovative as they age. Partly, this is because as any system ages, more resources must be put into maintenance and repair ( to maintain and repair efficiency, as it were). Innovation becomes more difficult largely because innovation demands slack in the system for it to be successful. Slack tends to reduce when repair and maintenance expand.
How Path Choices by a Target Affect Change Strategy
In Summary: Brittle systems need to be stressed and Innovative systems need to be nudged in a better direction.
In both cases, your targets need to experience novel disturbances. That means that your advocacy group or organization has to be good at innovating in your change tactics.
The use of innovative tactics is generally the introduction of novelty into the target, forcing the target to address that novelty one way or another. Novelty needs its own post.
Next Post: Novelty as a Change Tool
