This document provides an overview of a complex process approach to organizational change, particularly in educational institutions. It discusses how traditional managerialist approaches to change oversimplify organizational complexity. A complex process approach recognizes that organizations are complex systems consisting of interacting parts. Change involves different processes like adaptation, fine-tuning, new directions, and transformation. It also acknowledges that change occurs through both planned and emergent processes. The document advocates for building organizational capacity for change through principles like diversity, decentralized control, enabling constraints, and professionalism rather than technical compliance.

1. A COMPLEX PROCESS
APPROACH TO
ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE
PHIL WOOD
JUNE 2017

2. Leads to:
• ‘Working with the shadows’
‘Colas has shown how the liberal war on humanity’s psychic powers of imagination has effectively entailed
the will to pathologize all political utilizations of the imagination as fanatical and mad (Colas, 1997)’
(Chandler and Reid, 2016)
A Short Introduction
• The mechanisms for organisational management and change are well
established
• Mangerialism
• Reductivism
• Use of simplistic accountability structures, lots of numbers and league
tables
• Welcome to the TEF
‘The paradox is that the accountability fervor meant to assure performance can
have direct and indirect consequences that undermine it.’
(Halachmi, 2014)

3. In Creating Organisational Change What Are We Dealing With?
(in the context of universities and schools)
• Large organisations
• Complexity
• Variety
• Shifting aims/objectives and philosophies/values
• Outcomes might be important, but to begin to understand how to get there – need to understand
processes
• Organisations are still all too often hierarchical with remote leadership
• In education we have the rise of the ‘philosopher king’. Has led to a research and literature more focused
on leaders and managers than on organisations.

4. The Nature of Change
Do we understand the varied nature of change?
ADAPTATION:
react and
preserve
FINE TUNING:
build and improve
NEW
DIRECTION:
relocate and
regenerate
MAJOR
TRANS-
FORMATION:
release and re-
create
Scope and scale
of change
Rate of
occurrence
Discontinuous
through
sudden and
dramatic moves
Continuous
through small
steps and
adjustments
Within the
existing
framework
Outside the
existing
framework
From Iveroth and Hallencreutz, 2016 (based on Marshak, 2002; Nadler and Nadler
1998)
• Complex
• Different processes and
contexts
• Planned? Emergent?
• Do we stop to think about this
in preference to:
- collecting medals?
- being seen to be busy?
• Are we risking hyper-
accelerated standstill?
(Baudrillard)

5. A view from the top??
A view from the bottom??

6. Complexit
y
Process
Philosophy
Pragmatis
m
Guiding Principles for A Complex-Process Approach to
Teaching(….) and Organisational Change

7. Thinking about teaching(….) in HE – Moving beyond the TEF
• TEF makes the same mistakes as many of the other government generated systems.
• Want easy simplicity, numbers feel good, need grading to create a market
• Is the focus really on developing quality in teaching(….) and learning(….)?
• Need to understand the complexity of teaching(….)
• Need to put changes of teaching(….) in an organisational context
• So what do we need to do if we are going to create great environments for teaching (…) and learning
(….)?
• First of all recognise that teaching doesn’t occur in isolation – it is innately intertwined with learning,
curriculum and assessment (as a foundation), experienced by students and teachers.

8. A Holiploigic View
‘Holiploigy is the emergent enactment of the processes of
educative experiences. It is based on the complex
interaction of curriculum, teaching, learning and
assessment as enacted by tutors and students, mediated
through philosophies, contexts and research. These
emergent processes foster the growth of expertise in both
tutors and students.’ (Wood, 2017)

9. So what does this require?
Development of these processes across a
large organisation must be a mixture of
planned and emergent change
Leaders in control but not in control
(Streatfield, 2001)
DIVERSITY
NEIGHBOUR
INTERACTIONS
RANDOMNESS COHERENCE
DECENTALIZED
CONTROL
REDUNDANCYspecialization
trans-level learning
Enabling constraints
Based on Davis and Sumara
(2006)

10. Organisational Environment
Ecological Mechanistic
Networks Hierarchy
Emergent – non-linear Planned - linear
Narrated Dictated
Professional Technician
Dialogic space Information-led
Sense-making Evaluation
Time for reflection, dialogue and Hyper-accelerated standstill (zombie
innovation)
Communal Individualistic
Embrace of risk Certainty and decay
Confident, rapid and flexible reaction to
events through organisational networks and
trust
Rapid but often inflexible reaction to events
due to organisational hierarchies and fear
blame

11. Making Time for Change
• Real change is difficult
• We’re really good at play acting change
• Leads to zombie innovation
• We need to reclaim slow-time
• Change takes professionalism and
expertise
• Building networks and new ways of
working both within and beyond the
organisation
• Failure is a part of risk-taking and
change but some organisations operate
through tick-lists and fear

12. Rather Than Chasing Medals….Building Insight, Knowledge and Praxis
Some possible ways forward:
- Greater use of sensemaking
‘Sensemaking is the ability or attempt to make sense of an ambiguous
situation. More exactly, sensemaking is the process of creating situational
awareness and understanding in situations of high complexity or uncertainty
in order to make decisions. It is “a motivated, continuous effort to understand
connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to
anticipate their trajectories and act effectively” ‘
Klein et al 2006 in Snowden http://cognitive-edge.com/blog/what-is-sense-making/

13. - Mixed methods approaches using
- Learning analytics
- Interviewing
- Focus groups
- Questionnaires
- Student work/feedback/forward
- Data mining
- It’s how we use these to create positive opportunities for dialogic space/time
- In considered/contextually relevant structures
- Emergent processes
- Link to professional growth dialogues rather than performance management
- Emergent strategies at different scales (coherence and freedom) rather than adverts dressed up as
strategic plans

14. A Holiploigic Studio
• Transdisciplinary
• Teams of experts with deliberately different
worldviews
• Building contextually driven dialogues
• Creating rich rhizomes of understanding and
application
• Focus on dissemination and support for others
• Process, not target, led
• Dissolving of the damaging ‘theory-practice
gap’ meme

15. Some final thoughts
• We’ve tried managerialism for 30 years. What has it achieved?
• Need new ways of working
• Need new ways to understand and enable change
• In education – leadership central BUT should be subordinate to organisation
• Paradigm of complexity is gathering pace – is it the way forward?
• Collaboration and community rather than individualism
• Ways of understanding ourselves and others in dialogic space to bring positive change
• Painting the incomplete complexity as opposed to working with the shadows

16. Halachmi A (2014) Accountability Overloads in M Bovens, R.E. Goodin & T. Schillemans, The Oxford Handbook of Public
Accountability, Oxford University Press.
Chandler, D. & Reid, J. (2016) The Neoliberal Subject: Resilience, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Rowman and Littelfield
Iveroth, E. & Hallencreutz, J. (2016) Effective Organizational Change Leading Through Sensemaking. Routledge
Davis, B. & Sumara, D. (2006) Complexity and Education: Inquiries into Learning, Teaching, and Research. New York: Routledge.
May C and Finch T (2009) ‘Implementing, embedding, and integrating practices: An outline of Normalization Process Theory.’ Sociology 43(3): 535–554.
Wood P (2017) ‘Overcoming the problem of embedding change in educational organizations: A perspective from Normalization Process Theory.’ Management in Education 31(1): 33-38.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2012) ‘Giving Teaching Back to Education: Responding to the Disappearance of the Teacher.’ Phenomenology & Practice, 6 (2), 35-
49. http://www.ul.ie/eps/sites/default/files/Biesta%202012.pdf
Biesta, G.J.J. (2015) ‘The Rediscovery of Teaching: On Robot Vacuum Cleaners, Non-Egological Education, and the Limits of the Hermeneutical Worldview’. Educational Philosophy
and Theory http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/10587
References
Related publications
Tor Hernes, T. & Maitlis, S. (2010) Process, Sensemaking, and Organizing. Oxford : Oxford University Press
Wood, P. (2017) ‘Holiploigy – Navigating the complexity of teaching in Higher Education.’ Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education.
http://www.aldinhe.ac.uk/ojs/index.php?journal=jldhe&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=421
Biesta, G.J.J. (2017) ‘Education, Measurement and the Professions: Reclaiming a space for democratic professionality in education.’ Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49 (4), 315-330
Rescher, N. (2000). Process philosophy a survey of basic issues. [Pittsburgh]: University of Pittsburgh Press

17. https://padlet.com/learningspace2/mmxy8hh13l17
www.complexchange.org
http://hereflections.wordpress.com
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