Managing Organizational Change Part 3: Identifying Solutions

With nothing as ubiquitous as change in our society and world, this blog is the third in our four-part series on effectively identifying and managing change in your organization.

Now that you have identified the problem and the type of problem, we move to the next phase: generating solutions.

For a technical problem, you just need to make sure that you have the correct problem identified, research possible solutions, pick one, implement it, and move on. You can usually solve these types of problems using your authority, although the suggestions in the next post about getting your staff involved still apply; because they operate closer to the problem, you want their input on whether or not your preferred solution will work. Drawing on the example in the last post, if you need a new donor database, make sure that the people who will use it find it relatively easy to use and that it will provide the types of information they need. Keep in mind, however, that many people resist change so listen carefully to their objections, knowing that you will likely never find something that everyone likes.

Solving adaptive problems, on the other hand, requires that you exercise leadership. Identifying and implementing adaptive solutions takes much more time, persuasion, and learning than technical solutions do, and using your authority to solve these types of problems usually spells disaster.

As an adaptive leader, you need to first continue to encourage constant learning and questioning of all staff. The next blog talks more about creating a culture of learning in your organization. Suffice it to say that if staff up and down the hierarchy do not continue to learn about their environment and your sector and always ask how they can better meet your mission or do things better or more effectively, then effective change will never occur. The same applies to developing solutions. If they only know what you currently do and how you currently operate, they will not have the knowledge to draw upon to develop or dream up new solutions. Remember the definition of insanity: Doing the same thing and expecting different results.

As your staff continues to learn – and once you identify the problem, work with them and other interested and invested parties to clarify what matters most to them and the people they represent. When you take the time to learn what people want and what they value, you can work together to develop solutions that meet the needs and values of most people. While you cannot necessarily satisfy everyone, when everyone can articulate their needs, you can more easily find areas of conflict and areas of commonality which helps generate workable solutions.

In the process, ask yourself which stakeholders must adjust their ways to make progress on this problem. Inviting them the table assures that you continue to work with your staff – and key external people – rather than forcing change on them.

Finally, as you develop solutions, reward experimentation – even failure – as the best solution usually comes not by implementing something known, but by coming up with something new and different. That comes through experimentation and talking through the “crazy” ideas.

Now if only problems neatly divided themselves into “technical” and “adaptive,” this would become much simpler. But, of course, the world does not work that way. Instead, many of the problems that you encounter likely have both technical and adaptive elements to them. Most people stop with the technical solutions and wonder why the problem persists – or got worse. Continuing with our housing example, a technical solution exists: build more affordable housing. While a necessary part of the solution – we cannot solve the housing crisis without enough affordable housing options, it will not truly solve the problem until you mitigate the causes of housing insecurity, such as low educational attainment, under employment and unemployment, access to quality childcare and health care, fundamental financial literacy – the list goes on. Solving these problems requires an adaptive solution.

You need the ability to recognize the complexity of these problems and work with the appropriate people to identify and implement workable solutions – and continue to assess those solutions to adapt them as the environment changes and/or you find they do not work or no longer work.

Intrigued and want to read more about adaptive leadership? I highly recommend the books by Ronald Heifetz, beginning with Leadership without Easy Answers.