When the Wind Blows

We are an organizational society. Every one of us is a member of dozens, perhaps hundreds of them. If you doubt that, think about it for a moment. We belong to political parties and jurisdictions, governmental, business, educational and religious groups and units, families and social  clubs. In all probability, if we did a census, we would find more organizations than people.

There has long been a remarkable lack of agreement about the nature of organizations; what arrangements produce the desired results, how, why and when they work and in particular, what to do if you’re dissatisfied with their character, performance or behavior. Thousands of books and case studies, hundreds of journals, newsletters and magazines, and dozens of university professors, research projects and courses attempt to answer these questions and offer reliable guidance.

Still, even in those disciplines and professions, like management and consulting, specifically aiming to solve those problems, there is near universal agreement that most of the time, even when things work pretty well, we’re not sure why, and when they don’t, we don’t have a reliable way of improving them. All in all, “It’s a puzzlement.”

But Maybe Not.

The island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the Southeast coast of Massachusetts, covers only about 100 square miles, stretching about 20 miles from East to West, and 10 from North to South. Despite its small size, there are consistent and very obvious local differences. For example, there is a striking contrast in appearance of the oaks that cover the island. Those along the South shore are short, bent and sparsely leaved. Along the North shore, in contrast, the oak trees are tall, straight, and thickly leaved. What accounts for these obvious differences?

In a word, wind, which blows more or less steadily, from the Atlantic Ocean across the South shore, losing most of its strength before it gets to the North shore. Continual exposure to it makes a big difference to the oaks in its path. They all start the same way, growing tall and straight, but over time, they bend to fit the wind and they adjust their growth in ways that are unpredictable in detail but very predictable in general.

There are also “winds” in organizations, and they produce similar results. Those winds are the continuing but often slow-acting and unrecognized effects of the organization’s structure, by which I mean not only the boxes and lines on organization charts but everything in the organization that’s left when all the people have been removed from consideration. This also includes, for example, in-boxes, memos, offices, desks and locations, assignments, contracts, reputation, relationships etc.

All of these tangible (non-human) factors create a kind of wind in the sense that their consequences are always developing, they make certain outcomes more likely, and their effects accumulate over time. In the short run, their effects are small, often unnoticeable. As a consequence, deliberate change can be brought about relatively easily in the short run, but is eventually overwhelmed by the accumulated effect of these structural winds.

This is what is generally seen in organizational change initiatives. At the beginning, managers can do pretty much as they wish, but these effects erode after the early adjustments are made. Lasting change requires not only a good beginning and an appropriate direction, but deliberate adjustment of the organizational winds, to encourage the early changes and sustain them in the long-term.