WORK SYSTEMS AFFILIATES BLOG

Physics Says You Can't Change Organizational Inertia - Now What??

  

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There seem to be quite a few questions out there in organizational development land about organizational inertia. "How do you change it?" is a big one.

This got me thinking about my high school physics class. Yes, it was many, many moons ago, but Mr. Nicotera would be proud to know that deep in my gray matter, I knew that you can't just change inertia, as it is a constant property of matter, whether at rest or in motion.

Search for yourself (lot's of conflicting info out there), but here's a quick physics lesson as it relates to inertia:

Inertia is the property of matter (more specifically, mass) that is the resistance of an object to change it's state of motion or rest. The resistance to change is constant. The only way to change inertia is to change mass.

I am going to suggest that instead of talking about organizational inertia, we re-frame the problem as one of organizational momentum. When a force is applied to a mass, it gains velocity, and when you work through the brainiac formula with a lot of Greek letters in it, the result is momentum.

Now, momentum can be changed, but not without great effort and thought, at least when it comes to an organization. Momentum is actually a system property, and within a given system, doesn't change. A force outside the system must act upon the system for a long enough period of time to have any effect on changing the momentum.

Here's where systems thinking can be useful, and where most change efforts end up asking that question "How do we deal with organizational inertia?".

From the mini physics lesson above, here are three concepts related to successful change in an organization:

1. You can't effect change by standing in front of something that has great momentum, attempting to stop it. You'll get flattened. (My early playground and late corporate experience jives with this, trust me, it's true)
2. A force outside the system must act upon it in order to change the properties of the system. This happens whether you like it or not, think about the impact of this recession on your business.
3. The only type of systemic change that takes 10 minutes is catastrophic in nature. Otherwise, you must apply the outside forces for a long enough time to make change stick. This is where our patience (or lack thereof) works against us and leads us back to the forums asking about organizational inertia.

So what are the forces outside your organization that can change it's systemic momentum? In systems thinking speak, we refer to these as hidden or unknown variables.

Here are some ideas for identifying these forces, best directed at the senior-most executives and board of directors in your company. Project managers, human resource professionals and middle managers can apply these principles in their respecive solar systems, but will be limited on changing the entire galaxy known as your company.

1. Create and execute a disciplined "sense and respond" routine that includes business activities you are not in currently and an external view across unrelated industries or market segments. Look for anecdotal and intuitive observations that might indicate a future shift. With real-time network technology like Twitter, you can encourage staff to "listen" and pass potential tidbits to you.
2. Be with your customer or end user and see what they do and don't do with your product. This is not a lunch date nor a sales call, this is you and your leadership team going to End-User Land and being curious about everything that surrounds your product in the user's world. Ask questions of clarification, take note of the answers (or lack thereof) and don't try to fix or sell anything during these observations. Just learn.
3. You and your leadership team should report your findings back to your workers. Have them react to the findings (again, utilize the network technology) and be open to everything. Don't provide solutions to what you saw, just the raw information and maybe some conclusions, but take no action other than having staff beat the report around to make it stronger.

Once you have a solid group of forces (a.k.a. variables), you can begin to build different models that show influence on your business and between each other. You'll discover even more unknown forces to your models.

Your job as top executive is not to have all the answers, it's to be able to scan the horizon for possible opportunities where you can use your current strengths to enter new, growing markets. Once you identify a possible shift, your team is more capable than you in creating a response, but you must lead them.

You will have to run interference for the new idea because your cash-cow-of-the-moment creates the momentum that continues everyone on the same path. Inertia, or the resistance to change the current state of motion, applies here. By applying new force in a new direction to the current mass of your company, you will change the momentum and achieve new growth.

People will be so excited about the new opportunities that the questions about inertia will be replaced with questions like "How are we going to hire 300 people in the next two months?!"

Bottom line: Look for ways to gain momentum, forget inertia and always respect gravity!