The Hidden Connections

In recent years, the nature of human organizations has been discussed extensively in business and management circles in response to a wide-spread feeling that today's businesses need to undergo fundamental transformations. Indeed, organizational change has become a dominant theme in the management literature, and numerous business consultants offer seminars on "change management." Over the past ten years, I have been invited to speak at quite a few business conferences, and at first I was very puzzled when I encountered the strongly felt need for organizational change. Corporations seemed to be more powerful than ever; business was clearly dominating politics; and the profits and shareholder values of most companies were rising to unprecedented heights. Things seemed to be going very well indeed for business, so why was there so much talk about fundamental change? However, as I listened to the conversations among business executives at these seminars, I soon began to see a different picture. Top executives are under enormous stress today. They work longer hours than ever before, and many of them complain that they have no time for personal relationships and experience little satisfaction in their lives in spite of increasing material prosperity. Their companies may look powerful from outside, but they themselves feel pushed around by global market forces and insecure in the face of turbulences they can neither predict nor fully comprehend. The business environment of most companies today changes with incredible speed. Markets are rapidly being deregulated, and never-ending corporate mergers and acquisitions impose radical cultural and structural changes on the organizations involved — changes that go beyond people's learning capabilities and overwhelm both individuals and organizations. As a result, there is a deep and pervasive feeling among managers that no matter how hard they work, things are out of control.