Principal Investigator Wanda Orlikowski
Faced with inevitable change, effective managers plan carefully as they lead their organizations through uncharted territory, like a conductor directing an orchestra in perfect harmony. But change does not always lend itself to the careful precision of well-rehearsed orchestration. Indeed, the organizations most responsive to change are often the ones that replace the orchestral model with a new one -- the jazz combo.
For when the bounds and scope of change are uncertain, an organization often needs not pre-determined plans but flexible improvisation. The maestro’s careful direction should give way to the ad hoc creativity of a group’s accomplished practitioners, who improvise within a set of rhythms and chord changes, but without a precise and pre-defined composition.
The improvisation approach differs markedly from past approaches to change. The most familiar model describes change as a process of “unfreezing” the organization, undertaking the change and then “refreezing” -- in effect, re-establishing a new status quo. By this line of thinking, then, the change process has a clear beginning and a clear finish, when things go “back to normal.” In practice, however, events rarely unfold as expected, and might never return to “normal” as originally imagined. Precise planning works for stable, well-understood, and clearlybounded projects. But the orchestrated approach rarely succeeds when uncertain conditions undermine the ability of central planners to foresee all consequences. It’s hard to plan for the unknown.
To understand why improvisation is important, consider the three types of organizational change. Most organizations are familiar with anticipated change. In fact, companies embark on all projects with some grasp of how they expect events to unfold. Critical factors and phases are mapped out in a detailed timeline, with well-defined expectations, milestones and contingencies: these are the planned-for transformations that encompass anticipated change.
At some point, however, it is likely that managers, employees, customers, partners, or some other constituency will begin to make adjustments and adaptations that veer from the anticipated. This is emergent change, the unplanned-for practices and actions that arise spontaneously from what is happening on the ground. Technologists might think of this as innovation at the user level.
Opportunistic change also includes realizing when unforeseen capabilities emerge. One software company introduced a Lotus Notes-based system to improve its customer support capability. This anticipated change -- the implementation of a real-time incident-tracking system -- successfully helped to log customer calls and maintain a history of issues and customer problems. Later, the firm realized that the accumulating database of solved cases could be adapted to serve as a training tool for new hires. The company leveraged the system for new purposes that it did not originally foresee -- it improvised when it saw a new opportunity.
Clearly, there are times when emergent or opportunistic changes are less likely. Think of Intel’s “copy exactly” approach that attempts to precisely replicate its chip fabs wherever they are built. That’s a useful model when you can pinpoint in advance precisely what should be copied, and you have some confidence that conditions will not require local adaptation.
Create a Learning Environment -- In fact, a learning environment is a precondition for improvisation. One company sends employees to visit its global locations, so they can learn from each others’ innovations and practices. “Steal with pride,” it tells them. People informally develop ways of working that could have great value if shared. When managers encourage employees to improve practices on their own, rather than mandate a strict flowchart of activities, they can nurture emergent change. And managers have to be on the lookout for emergent outcomes, and learn how and when to leverage them.
Encourage Flexibility -- If improvisation is to be encouraged, then senior managers also need to allow some flexibility in budgeting and timetables. Again, small-scale experiments can help by reducing upfront commitments and by helping to define the costs and benefits of a larger-scale roll-out. Just as important, employees’ evaluation criteria should accommodate improvisation. Employees should not be penalized for experimenting—and possibly failing. And they should be rewarded for developing innovative emergent practices in the face of this change. When everyone recognizes that conditions are uncertain and the rules of the game are being created in the playing, plans become effective guidelines rather than rigid prescriptions for action. These lessons in improvisation are relevant even when there is no internal “change project” per se. eBay’s evolution from a marketplace for Pez dispensers is a perfect example. When Pierre Omidyar founded eBay in 1995, did his business plan map out how he would create a leading global enterprise in a decade? Hardly. Users of eBay have been improvising and leading the development of eBay ever since. The normal way of doing business at eBay is to seek out emergent change and turn it into new opportunities.
Improvise Today for Success Tomorrow -- That type of improvisation makes an organization more adaptive when marketplaces shift, technologies develop, companies globalize or the landscape changes in other unexpected ways. And an improvisational approach is best facilitated by combining planning with ongoing experimentation and learning. Budgets, timetables and reward criteria should reinforce the ability of individuals to improvise in a way that allows the organization to keep right on playing amid change, without missing a beat.