Is a good model for change "To Drive Change?" Peter Senge in a tape called "The Dance of Change" talks about how we cannot drive change, we need to nurture it. His example is growing plants to produce flowers and food. We cannot drive them to grow, we need to nurture them and cultivate them and look after the weeds and other things that threaten their development.
I think that type of model for change is much more healthy than one of a top driven change that forces people to change. As Dan Pink asserts in "Drive", in complex systems change is motivated by peoples intrinsic desire for change and personal satisfaction as opposed to external motivators.
The Senge tape, Dance of Change, talks about the many barriers to a change process. One interesting barriers is that innovators are seen as counter-culture and are isolated in the organization. Apparently the people at Ford who introduced the Taurus where treated so badly by the rest of the organization that they left Ford. Even though in the long run, the Taurus was a major contributor to Ford's survival.
The Dance of Change talks about the difficulty of creating a learning organization. I had always wondered why we see so few, if any, real learning organizations. Commitment to lifelong learning starts with individual and must be supported by the culture. How many organizations have that culture?
