individuality is even more difficult to provide because the universes have themselves become more complex, the number of “individualities”
to be taken into consideration has never stopped rising alongside the simultaneous appearance of increasing numbers of contradictions between the end results that are needed in order to satisfy everybody.
Even “best practices”, so popular because they make it possible to learn from the experience of others, have become more methodological than substantive: in an article published by the Harvard Business Review, Jerry Stermin and Robert Choo20show how, in terms of change, com- panies could benefit enormously from the experience of non-profit organizations. Analysing what they call “the power of positive deviancy”, they tell the story of an association working to reduce mal- nutrition in Vietnamese children: having seen that the children of one village community seemed better fed and more healthy, they tried to find out why. They quickly realized that this community had different behaviour patterns, with regard to both what they ate and how often they ate. They therefore tried, with some success, to extend these deviant practices to the surrounding villages. However, they concluded that it was not the types of food – eating more or less fish or greens – which formed the basis of the problem, but the reasoning, that is, the demonstration that it was possible to do things differently from what tradition seemed to have established once and for all. In modern busi- ness language, we might call that experimentation.
three deputy managers share out the day-to-day tasks: the technical manager looks after everything relating to the factory’s core activity, that is, production and maintenance, which he controls so jealously that even the factory manager himself thinks twice about going round the workshops; the administrative and financial manager watches over com- pliance with management rules in force within the group, which he is expected to see applied in a manner that is strictly identical for all pro- duction units; finally, the manager in charge of human relations manages labour relations, within the scope of a national collective agreement and a company agreement covering day-to-day administration – agreements which were negotiated at branch level for the first and at group level for the second – without the factories having been particularly involved in these negotiations between partners who already knew each other well and didn’t have to spell things out for each other.
In this context, it is clear that it is the technical manager who really holds the reins of power.22He is the one with exclusive control over what is the factory’s reason for being, over how it is evaluated and therefore over the conditions for its survival. And even more so because this exam- ple is seen at a time when, faced with the group’s need to adapt its tech- nical resources, head office still has the prerogative of privileging sites which it considers to be the most cost-effective. Like all actors, the tech- nical manager uses this power with a view to career management which, after all, is the driving force for any organization: in order to achieve what he wants, that is, carrying out production under optimal conditions while ensuring the full development of industrial equipment, he needs to
“buy” all his teams or, in other words, obtain for them dispensations from the group’s rigid rules, whether in terms of promotion, grading or remuneration. In order to reach his goals, he applies constant pressure on his colleagues whom, at the end of the day, he considers more as subor- dinates than equals. Meanwhile, they have no intention of allowing themselves to be “manipulated” in such a way, and so, although they understand what is going on, they hide behind central procedures, thus making things ever more complicated, ever more difficult to achieve and negotiate – an autonomy which the technical manager is always seeking to put through as profit or loss. In brief, this is a classic example of the
“bureaucratic vicious circle” that we are able to observe.
Systemic reasoning enables us to understand the consequences of this game, at the end of the day without any great surprises, at the level of the flat glass division itself: central management “functional staff” feed on these local conflicts which help to legitimize their action, and find that their correspondents “on the spot” are partners who are always Change, Yes, but Change What? 87
looking for more of these rules and procedures which protect them from the absolute power of technical logic. To put it briefly, each level reinforces the next without anybody, throughout the progress of each particular decision, anticipating the overall effect of all the micro-decisions.
Added to this is an inflationist drift, linked to the dissociation betweenreal power andformal power. The factory manager’s position of extreme weakness leads him to seek compensations elsewhere than in the effective management of a unit from which, to all intents and pur- poses, he is excluded. In order to legitimize his role, he has virtually no other means than to always be asking central financial management for more investment, more financial resources, which will allow him to demonstrate that he is capable of playing a positive and active role in the day-to-day running of the factory. However, there are eight factories in this division, which means eight managers all developing the same strategy of asking for additional financial resources.
We should note here that this is a constant in the life of organiza- tions:when a line manager lacks the organizational resources to be a relevant actor in the universe that he is supposed to be directing, he always asks for more physical resources, whether in financial or human terms. This is why the dissociation mentioned above, between real power and formal power, poses a problem that is not aesthetic or moral, but entirely practical: it leads to an ever-growing need for resources – not for objec- tive reasons of real needs, but for reasons that can only be qualified as systemic.
In the case that we are looking at, it is thus the eight factory managers who are placed in the same situation and thus develop the same strategy of “always more”. To get what they need so as not to disappear completely from the game, they manipulate the information that they transmit in support of their various and varied requirements. But the actors who are in charge of allocating resources have finally ended up understanding the game. Incapable or perhaps unconcerned about carrying out the necessary corrections and arbitrations themselves, they allocate resources in line with a bureaucratic logic which enables them to minimize their own risks.
At the end of the day, more has been spent without the resources allocated being suited to real situations and without anybody being really satisfied.
The organization “consumes” huge quantities of resources without in fact seeing an increase in its efficiency. This simple observation helps to anticipate to what extent it is a change in the methods of functioning, that is, the way in which the actors “play”, which will become the cru- cial factor in the process of transformation.
Many will see themselves in the quick presentation which has just been made: there’s nothing original about this example. However, incidentally, it helps people to understand some of the very real mechanisms behind the non-control of costs that management accounting tools do not always allow them to grasp. But going beyond this observation, if one investigates possible solutions, one might well reach the conclusion that this universe needs centralization as well as decentralization: centralization, because breaking out of the inflationist vicious circle that is revealed would presuppose transferring control over the factory’s “core activity”, in this case responsibility for servicing and maintenance; but decentralization as well because, while central departments are padded out to such an extent, they will always need to produce more standards and to find allies who will use them as resources in their local strategies.
Here are two useful and amusing anecdotes to illustrate the above.
When the technical manager at the biggest factory was himself made factory manager, he immediately requested, and was granted, that the job of technical manager be abolished in his new unit. In the same way, when the results of this diagnostic work were shown to the group’s CEO, he showed himself to be dubious about the need for drastically reducing staff levels in the central human resource department … until the day when he saw, under the windows of his own office, situated in a well-to-do suburb in the capital, twenty or so workers from a factory located somewhere far away in the distant provinces fiercely demand- ing an increase in their job grading coefficient, for the reason that the person in charge of such questions in the factory had led them to understand that such a decision could only be made at the highest level.
You might call this active learning.
It is not therefore mainly through the use of substantial models, which are nonetheless very popular among managers and directors, that one can manage the problem of change. In any case, it is common knowledge that most of them have already fallen by the wayside, although this does not seem to stop people from suggesting new ones.
Their therapeutic value, which comes close to how paediatricians describe their role – that of reassuring mothers – cannot be denied. But that is not enough on its own to legitimize its exclusive use on a daily basis. We will therefore be forced to turn towards methodology, that is, reasoning, and accept that progress will be slow and sometimes hesi- tant, without the hope of covering all aspects of a process of change, and without the possibility of escaping from all those lucky or not so lucky surprises that this process is certain to hold.
Change, Yes, but Change What? 89