Ever wondered why managers struggle to overcome resistance to change? Why institutions consistently talk about improvement but cannot increase operational efficiency? And why do some sectors perform so badly when compared with others?
Tensions Management is a better way to overcome resistance to change, as it addresses social and technical factors simultaneously.
Dr Russ Lewis is now working with institutions globally to apply the lessons learned from industry and technology to transform their performance. He has a proven record of transformational technology transfer in business and has recently been awarded a doctorate for his research on the human factors of digital transformation.
Collaborators will apply Tensions Management techniques to solve real issues in their organisations as part of a global action learning research study. The knowledge applied is not new, but the approach is. Here is an invitation for leaders and managers interested in taking part in this research.
Context
As the digital divide continues to grow, universities, healthcare, charitable and public sector services are at an increasing disadvantage. Their purpose and revenue models differentiate them from the commercial sector. Since they experience financial pressures that are neither competitive nor existential, they have responded differently.
The result is that three levels of performance are now apparent:
‘Laggards’ are characterised by:
- Very inefficient and somewhat ineffective processes
- Legacy use of IT (disconnected systems & siloed information)
- 1970s levels of siloed and bureaucratic organisation
- Employees that lack agency, or are described as ‘quiet quitters’
We know that radical transformation is a lengthy and emergent process. It typically takes years to be absorbed by a critical mass of senior management and practiced by the majority of functional teams. Organisations that are struggling to perform now, are in desperate need of learning how to level-up and improve performance. Indeed, they are so far behind the convertors, that the next technology wave (AI) is already happening. This is a difficult challenge that crosses disciplinary and departmental boundaries internally and requires interchange across sectors and geographies.
Aims and Approach
The aim of these collaborations is to research and formulate the tools needed to improve organisational performance by transferring and developing knowledge from ‘convertors’ to ‘stragglers’, especially those in the public and third sectors.
Resistance to change is a resolvable tension. That is, improvement is achievable by focusing on managing the tensions in the organisation, rather than ‘fixing’ its people.
The research will develop a framework managers can use to create the conditions that 21st century employees need to succeed. This is subtly different to environments optimised for what was ‘semi-skilled labour’. That subtlety represents the difference between current and desired ways of working. For example, The OU currently provides standardised products and desires personalised student experiences. Previously successful ways (predict-plan-control) cannot produce this outcome at scale, but self-organising teams can. New ways of working depend on new ways of managing, which depends on what managers believe. Whilst tension remains between legacy beliefs and more recent theory, change is not possible, and organisations will struggle to perform.
Despite the rather gloomy rhetoric in the UK, there is considerable scope to improve service performance massively, without spending any money. If anything, additional funding tends to get in the way of learning. It discourages inclusive practices that help people value neuro, cultural, and worldview diversity. For example, using employee’s knowledge to map the end-to-end value stream brings people together to appreciate their department’s work as part of the whole system and provide a focus for improvement. A technique adopted in the early 2000s, it takes just two hours to reveal wastes and delays that otherwise continue to remain hidden.
Russ Lewis and his contemporaries led the digital revolution that created performance imbalance and now invites you to join him in taking responsibility for levelling it up, safely and at scale.
Literature
Tensions management is a new area of research that has emerged from paradox, ambidexterity, and management studies. It is interdisciplinary (human complexity, systems thinking, science and business) as well as socially inclusive (collaborative action learning and microfoundational approaches). Russ’ doctoral research (2024) establishes the connection between contextual ambidexterity and transformation. It builds on Battilana et al.’s (2019) ‘embedded agency’ and Uhl-Bien and Arena’s (2018) synthesis of ‘leadership for organizational adaptability’ and aligns with the tensions Strode et al. (2022) found in organisations transforming to agility. In combining both social and technical aspects of change, the tensions management approach aligns with Argyris’ (2000) Model I (defensive, employed) and Model II (learning, espoused) and action learning interventions.
Partners and beneficiaries
The Health Care Systems Engineering group have agreed to a long-term partnership. The group, led by NHS surgeon and systems engineer Dr Simon Dodds, shows practitioners how to reduce the time it takes for patients to progress through clinics by improving process design, then helps them teach those techniques to colleagues.
Our first beneficiary will be a leading UK-based children’s charity. They want to work with us as they lack the Agile-Lean, operations and product management and data skills needed to operate effectively and efficiently in the digital environment. This is a common problem in their sector.
Whilst this a business-informed project that will benefit the UK economy by helping organisations transition to more productive ways of working, we will continue working with industry partners globally. Eg., an international airline fabrication consortium struggling with problems arising from adopting Agile, or a global credit scoring firm, where HR are struggling to resolve internal tensions and deliver much needed ‘culture changes’.
References
Argyris, C., 2000. Flawed advice and the management trap: how managers can know when they’re getting good advice and when they’re not. New York: Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Battilana, J., Leca, B., Boxenbaum, E., 2009. How Actors Change Institutions: Towards a Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship. The Academy of Management Annals 3.
Lencioni, P., 2002. The five dysfunctions of a team: a leadership fable, 1st ed. ed. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Lewis, R., 2024. Transforming large organisations: Towards a theory of management for business agility. Middlesex University
Uhl-Bien, M., Arena, M., 2018. Leadership for organizational adaptability: A theoretical synthesis and integrative framework. The Leadership Quarterly 29, 89–104. Strode, D.E., Sharp, H., Barroca, L., Gregory, P., Taylor, K., 2022. Tensions in Organizations Transforming to Agility. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 69, 3572–3583.
Photo by Dominic Kurniawan Suryaputra on Unsplash
