INSIGHTS · CHANGE
Slicing the elephant
There is a great deal to change, at least an elephant’s worth. Why large subjects cannot be carried across in one piece.
The elephant and the zoo
Imagine an elephant has to get from the zoo in Leipzig to the zoo in Halle without any equipment. There is the carrot, and perhaps you are an elephant whisperer. But only one thing reliably helps: cutting it into portions you can carry, and a great deal of manual transport work. It simply is not simple.
In the first conversation it is already on the table
“We want to adjust our strategy, ideally in a half-day workshop.” With that, the second elephant is immediately in the room — the one from the other saying, the one nobody talks about. Anyone who wants to work out a strategy that genuinely changes the organisation and leaves the space of its existing premises needs time and sweat. Both.
You have a conflict in the system? It is unlikely to dissolve in one conversation. It probably has a use that stabilises the system. You want to train your managers? For a real shift of perspective and a build-up of capability, a year is realistic. What is new needs repetition. Playing the piano is the result of practice, even with great talent.
And after the year we are done? Perhaps you are. The system is not.
The swing of the pendulum
Organisations put paradoxes into the room. If one of them is resolved in one direction — by centralising the HR functions, say — the counter-movement follows with some certainty: enabling functions back to the sites. Some call that movement pointless. The wise let it pass them by and become the centre of the pendulum.
Seen systemically, the oscillation is the iterative loop through which an organisation keeps bringing its inner world back into balance with an outer world that is moving too.
Where the value lies
Stretching out the time, putting a foot on the brake, the additional question, keeping a decision open: that is what external support is for. Every decision reduces complexity and thereby takes possibilities away.
What remains is the question of where to set the carving knife so that the transport stays strenuous but feasible. So that the elephant in Halle is better off — until it discovers that the meadows in Leipzig are the greener ones after all.
All texts
IN BRIEF
- Large subjects travel in slices. The half-day workshop for the strategy is an attempt to carry the elephant in one piece.
- Conflicts have a use. One that survives a conversation probably stabilises something in the system.
- Braking is part of it. Asking again and keeping things open costs time and is part of the work.
LET’S TALK