Reformat and reinstall approach to organizational change rarely works

Re: the Harvard Library Town Hall event that happened yesterday:

I'm starting from the assumption that the library's management are extremely competent, that what happens and unfolds is what they intended, and is in line with their goals and objectives. (I should also mention that I do not envy them in their task.)

Chris Bourg (whose summary is linked to above), noted that:

The general sentiment on twitter is that the senior administrators at Harvard Libraries handled this very poorly — that the town hall meetings produced more questions than answers. Rather than serving to keep staff informed, they served primarily to created significant anxiety.

While I agree entirely with this sentiment, there is a perspective from which management's handling of this isn't poor at all, but an accepted approach to organizational change.

The Harvard Library is embarking on a massive organizational change, impacting much of the library. Organizational culture, "how things are done around here", is likely to be a major obstruction to change. Organization culture resides primarily (but not entirely) in people. In teaching about organizational change, I've often joked that the extreme tactic to bringing about organizational change is to fire everyone and hire new people. The Harvard Library hasn't gone that far, but it is clear that they have decided to bring about the needed organizational change in a short amount of time, and the impact on their people, their careers, and their personal lives is not very high on the list of priorities.

If you look at the resource page the library has created to support their staff through the transition, it is clear that management already has 100% of the details worked out. However, they are specifically choosing not to share these details with the people affected. As a result, everyone is subjected to the same fear and uncertainty; everyone is snapped out of their daily routine, their future shattered.

At this point, everyone is anxious, seeking resolution and certainty, grateful to anyone who can provide it.

From what I understand, the details of the changes will only be available in the spring. Months away. Long enough for the anxiety to build to a level where some folks will choose to resolve the situation by leaving and finding work elsewhere. Regardless of their value as librarians, these folks would have been an impediment to organizational change anyway, so having them leave now will make later change management that much easier.

Then, when the details are revealed, of those who are still there, those who do not have to reapply to their positions will be extremely grateful, and ready to move forward in the new organization. Those that are let go and offered the chance to reapply for position in the new organization will be highly motivated to conform to whatever requirements the new positions and structure requires.

Some positions will remain unfilled after this process. Management gets to bring in the kind of people they want.

The library moves forward with the transition, with the people best suited for the challenges that lay ahead, motivated and ready to do what it takes for the Library to succeed.

That's the theory at least. It rarely works that way. Organizational culture is highly resistant to change. As long as you keep most/some of the people, no matter what you put them through, you will not succeed in reformatting the organization and reinstalling the organizational culture that you want.

Instead, the organizational culture will absorb the change and be transformed by it. People will not forget how they were treated, and the entire history of what happened and how people choose to react to this mistreatment will become embedded in the culture. It will persist beyond the presence of any one person or group of people. It will be passed on to new hires who were not subjected to the transition process. And it will manifest itself in behaviours that are, shall we say, not aligned with management's plans for moving forward.

I strongly believe that people are an organization's most valuable asset, and any organization that fails to realize this and treat them as such will likely see a good portion of its energies devoted to dealing with or compensating for internal problems instead of focusing on achieving its own goals.

Things may end up working well for the Harvard Library, but I'm afraid that by choosing this approach to organizational change, the administration has made the task before them that much harder, the mountain a little steeper, a little higher, then it was or needed to be.