At its core CM is about tackling, overcoming or at least adjusting the status quo of an organization.
Status Quo: “the existing state of affairs (at a particular time)” or “the situation as it currently exists.”
Linguist and literary critic Roger Fowler discussed the concept of status quo as being the common sense of a period of time. Common sense becomes habitualized when ideas of a given time are firmly established in the people’s conscience. Fowler warns that this habitualization can lead to a collective social thought that increasingly becomes uncritical. Fowler suggests it is the function of art to defamiliarize the status quo and to force society to look critically at the ideas that are accepted as fact. (http://tinyurl.com/7m4q3z).
In our case- it is the function of CM to defamiliarize the status quo and to force the organization to look critically at the ideas, structure, process, culture and interactions that are accepted. CM at the highest level (figuratively and literally) is an art. In fairness to those who will cram it into the above list it is also a science (albeit one pleasing to the sponsors and practitioners more than the stakeholders).
External Influence
If you are a stakeholder within a given status quo you likely are familiar and comfortable with the situation as it currently exists (in general). You most likely do not have a discerning eye from that place outward. Status quo gets its strength from time and repetition. So what you need to begin to look at and effect change is a way to see the current situation differently. You need to be “defamiliarized” (http://tinyurl.com/dz7y5b for a description). To do so requires the discerning eye of an external influence. Put into the spin meter (since it is that season) you cannot defamiliarize without an external influence, by extension you cannot have effective change management without an external consultant.
Courage
This years buzzword.
And funny how the leadership coaches and the elementary schools seem to have the same buzz focus (here is Faith’s post http://tinyurl.com/28y8q4o buzz travels like water).
Just stepping out of the status quo (SQ) box and taking a new perspective through guided defamiliarization accomplishes nothing- except to make you feel uncomfortable. To move change, to chip away at SQ takes courage. It takes the kind of courage you need to overcome your own complacency; it takes the kind of courage you need to call out Group Think, routine, familiarity and habit.
Your goal is to make the familiar appear strange.
A hint- your familiar likely looks strange to that external influence, use them for courageous support.
The ties that bind
Organizational status quo is shellacked with gorilla glue in multiple areas. Someone created each of those systems (whether process or structure). Someone is politically (I mean the internal kind although it could be both) tied to every bit of SQ. There is a leader responsible for familiarity and there should be some with the opposite approach. Status Quo typically supports individual effort, expect to deal with many individual ties.
Time
Time can help when external influences force an adjustment to SQ. Time can hurt when it has preceded your effort to change. Time can help when it is on your side for smooth transition to end states (either because stakeholders are ready for fast or because, if needed, you have the time to go slower). Time reinforces, but also helps erase.
