Where the paths meet – or diverge…

There are certain things that have been common to lots of the change and culture projects I’ve been involved with over the past few years.  One of the biggies is that the projects usually cut across traditional department boundaries.  (If they don’t, then they should…)

Typically, they include HR, management development, communications, organisational development, change management and others.  Yet usually, they’re all headed in different directions, talking different languages and – obviously – thinking about the problems from different – and diverging – angles.

Management development are off training everyone on something relevant, communications are creating intranets and newsletters that talk about the new principles, etc, etc.  Everyone walking their professional path – not even parallel, but generally diverging – in the hope that their individual route to the end destination will coincide with everyone else’s.

Bad enough in a complicated (cf Dave Snowden’s framework) situation, but disastrous in a complex one – with emotional, non-rational human agents…