Managing Change in Charities: DMT Academy Lecture

lIn this video, from the DMT Academy (the Dunhill Medical Trust’s research and innovations excellence programme, bringing together leaders in the field of research and charities), I talk about leadership, management, and change. I’m particularly interested in the conflict you find during change, often born of the inherent contradictions that you find in organisations.

I share some of my own experiences, as well as giving some perspectives from theorists. But beyond theory, my emphasis is on recognising what's happening around you as a leader, and there are some practical suggestions to start you off in dealing with it.

One of the main reasons for my focus is that matters of interpersonal conflict for CEOs are so rarely addressed. You're expected to just to turn up and be 'resilient'. When conflict happens, you're set up there at the front, with not much guidance as to how to deal with it. That needs to change. And I hope this might help.

Change in charities

Charities are in many ways like any other organisations, but they also have some features and qualities that make them particularly tricky in terms of change. First, the change is so constant because there is no security. A friend once said to me when I was starting out that in small charities, ‘you don't manage an organisation, you manage change.’

There are also myriad stakeholders. Not least, you have two customers: funders and beneficiaries.

There's never enough money - often you're cutting things, stopping projects, and that means you're always going through loss. This affects people emotionally as well as practically.

We often have quite nebulous objectives. Let me be clear – I actually don’t always worry too much about that. We work in a very human field which inhabits a world of soft edges. But because of that, it can be hard to know when enough is enough.

And perhaps worst of all is the patchwork quilt of restricted funding - a Frankenstein's monster of funds for every project, and services turned into projects for the sake of a funding bid. Each limb has a different owner, and that in itself is constantly changing.

Standard Change Models and Beyond

So first, I look at standard models for change - Kotter and the PDSA model. These are handy frameworks to check your change work against. And looking at these might help you decide the overall strategic approach you’re going to take. Top down or bottom up? Waterfall or agile?

But then there's the human stuff which is really important, and can’t be too well addressed in these kinds of models, which, in some ways, are just project management tools. Those aren’t enough for leaders.

The Human Side of Change

Most models often focus on rational, linear processes. But we need to consider 'irrational' interpersonal aspects of organisations. To understand conflict and people, and the level of resistance and denial you can find. You can then integrate with traditional change management frameworks.

I've been very interested in the work of the Tavistock school of organisational consulting. They combine psychoanalysis, organisational psychology, open systems theory - although don't worry, we won't get too theoretical here.

But one of their key understandings is that organisations aren't always rational - because human beings aren't either. And so much in organisations is unconscious, not just on an individual level, but in the organisations itself, which has a sort of shared unconscious. It has collective patterns, beliefs, and behaviours of which it's not consciously aware. And it's often coming up with 'solutions' to problems it sees which are more based on primal needs - feelings, desires, and especially, anxieties.

Act like a therapist or an anthropologist

Understanding this stuff can make you a better leader. If you try and think of an organisation trying to 'work things through,' you can take on an almost therapeutic role to help people actively understand, to reflect. And to help them understand how they're feeling, but also to challenge some of those feelings and how they're directed. I often ask myself – and encourage others to ask, ‘What is this really about?’

But there's also something powerful about taking the approach of an anthropologist or ethnographer: stop for a moment. Look around the room. Feel that feeling in your gut – what is it? Look at the people. Ask yourself, as if you were studying a group of people you’ve never met before, with their own customs and practices, and beliefs. And ask yourself, 'What is actually going on in this room'? Not only is it valuable for working out how to address things. It also gives you a moment to come out of that high pressure environment and just look in - and see that however it feels, it's not all on you.