Chapter 3

Patterns of change
1
Patterns of change
In order to survive and prosper, organizations need to be able to
recognize and respond to changes that can affect the supply of inputs or
demand for outputs.

ENVIRONMENT

© PhotoDisc/Getty Images\Siede Preis

Organization
Inputs transforms inputs Outputs
into outputs

Feedback

• Some organizations are better at this than others. They are

proactive and search out potential threats and opportunities
• Others are more reactive and only respond when there is a
pressing need to do so.

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 2
Adapting to change: the gradualist paradigm
The gradualist paradigm posits that organizations adapt to opportunities and
threats by engaging in a process of continuous incremental change.
• Continuous adaptation helps to maintain alignment with the environment

• Over time, the stream of incremental changes can cumulate to transform

the organization
Change in the environment
Change

Continuous incremental
adaptation
Time

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 3
Adapting to change
Change
While this response to change
(continuous incremental adaptation)
may be the ideal, it is the exception
rather than the rule.
Time

Many organizations are slow to adapt because internal forces promote

inertia.
The result is strategic drift and a growing
misalignment with the external
environment.
Eventually misalignment forces the
organization to engage is some form of
radical transformational change.

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 4
The punctuated equilibrium paradigm: an alternative
view of how organizations change
Organizations evolve through the alternation of periods of equilibrium,
in which persistent ‘deep structures’ only permit limited incremental
change,
and periods of revolution, in which these deep structures are
fundamentally altered.
Change in the environment

Change

Short
revolutionary
periods of
radical
discontinuous
change
Long periods of equilibrium
Time

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 5
Deep structures
Deep structures are the fundamental choices that determine an
organization’s pattern of activity.
Football analogy
The game-in-play describes activity in periods of
equilibrium when the coach and players can make
changes that will affect team performance
(improve the way they play the football). © ImageSource

The rules of the game represent deep structures – taken for granted
and difficult to change (keep everybody focused on football rather
© GETTY than alternative games).

Deep structures act as forces for inertia that work to maintain the
status quo.

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 6
Equilibrium periods - focus is improving efficiency and doing things better

How a game of football is played may change over

the course of a match, but there is a consistency that
is determined by the nature of the playing field and
the rules of the game (the deep structures).

Forces for inertia include:

• Cognitive biases that restrict attention to thinking ‘within the frame’.
People fail to give sufficient attention to the possibility of doing
things differently or doing different things.
• Motivational barriers, often related to increasing returns from doing
more of the same and a fear of loss, especially with regard to the sunk
costs (see Chapter 1).

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 7
Revolutionary periods
Organizations do not shift from one ‘kind of game’ to another through
incremental steps.
Inertia and deep structures maintain the state of realignment

equilibrium until misalignment reaches the point

where the only way forward is for the organization to
transform itself via an episodes of revolutionary Revolutionary change
misalignment
change.
This episode of revolutionary change realigns the organization with the external
environment but, because of forces that inhibit continuous adaptation, the state of
alignment is short lived.
The revolutionary episode is followed by another period of relative stability that
triggers yet another episode of revolutionary change, and the process continues to
unfold as a process of punctuated equilibrium.

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 8
The possibility of anticipating the need to change

Can organizations break out of

this pattern of punctuated
equilibrium and avoid the need
for urgent transformational
change?

They can, but only by making

the organisation continuously
adaptive over the longer term.

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 9
The continuously adaptive organization
Continuously adaptive organisations experience
the kind of ongoing incremental change that is
described by the gradualist paradigm
(unconstrained by deep structures).

It involves repeated patterns of:

 Learning and new insights which facilitate changes in the way the
organization responds to problems and opportunities
 Improvisation that leads to a continuous modification of existing
work practices
 Translation that involves the editing and imitation of ideas as they
travel through the organisation

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 10
Reactive and proactive responses to change

Firms cannot ignore changes in

their external environment
Transformation
forever. Eventually they have to or
adapt if they are to survive..
failure

But some firms are slower than others to recognise the need for
change and/or slower than others to take action. Their response is
reactive rather than proactive.

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 11
 Lead times and time pressures
It is more difficult to manage change when the need for change is urgent.

 There is less time for planning

 It is more difficult to involve people
in the process
 There is less time to experiment and
search for creative solutions

©PhotoDisco/Getty Images/Stephen F. Hayes

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 12
 A typology of change
Combining notions of incremental and revolutionary/discontinuous
change with the way an organisation responds to change (proactive or
reactive) provides a useful typology for classifying types of change.

Incremental Revolutionary/discontinuous
(doing things better) (doing things differently or doing different things)

Proactive
(Anticipatory) 1. Fine Tuning 3. Re-orientation

2. Adaptation 4. Re-creation
Reactive

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 13
Implications of these different types of
change for change management
practice
1. Focus for change effort

2. Locus for change: who will manage the process?

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 14
 1. Focus for change efforts
With incremental change the aim is to improve the alignment between
existing organisational components in order to ‘do things better’.
Task
Structure Culture
People
With revolutionary/discontinuous change the aim is to seek a new
configuration of organisational components that are aligned to external
circumstances. The outcome may be that the firm ‘does things differently’ or
‘does different things’.

INPUTS New ways of OUTPUTS

required to support
the transformed
transforming inputs required by external
stakeholders
business into outputs

© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed. 15
2. Locus of change
The intensity of change (indicated by the stress, dislocation and trauma
associated with change) affects the point in the organization where the
leadership for change is located.
Transformational/discontinuous High intensity change
change is more intense than
incremental change, and reactive
Executive-led change
change tends to be more intense than
anticipatory change.
Most intense
Re-creation Change through delegation
(Project managers and
Re-orientation external consultants)
Adaption
Tuning
Least intense Change managed by
local leaders

Low intensity change

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© John Hayes (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th ed.