Since the business environment is in a constant state of flux, and we require the strategic level of an organization to monitor and respond to external requirements and future requirements, it should come as no surprise that organizational leaders are often championing change. Organizational operators, on the other hand, must create stability in order to deliver products and/or services efficiently and effectively. The tension generated between the need for change and the need for stability can be healthy in its effect on organizational performance, or it can be deadly. The difference is largely a matter of degree, i.e. how much tension is generated, and of the approach to managing the tension.
Managing strategic tension is a critical role for the coordinating level of the organization. The coordinators must bridge the gap, what Jim Haudan calls the canyon, between strategic intent and successful execution. Although we tend to think of these roles - strategic, coordinating, and operating - as loosely equivalent to executive, middle management, and front line, we might be better served by recognizing that each person in an organization can contribute something in all three roles. Certainly, executives should primarily assume strategic roles, and front line workers are the operators, but high-performing companies benefit by blurring the role boundaries.
One of the best sources for monitoring the business environment is the front line, the people who touch the customer, who interface with competitors, who answer to regulators. Some of the best ideas for how to respond to changes in the business environment will come from those most affected by the changes. The ability to bubble up strategic input from the front lines to the executive suite creates a tremendous advantage in managing strategic tension: the people who will be affected most by a given change have had a role in generating that change.
Leaders who understand the realities at the operating level of the organization tend to shape their desired changes in a way that heightens the chances for successful implementation. Leaders who have worked their way up know operating level realities because they have experienced them first hand. "Managing by walking around" is a practical concept: you are much more likely to understand operating level realities by getting out and observing for yourself than by remaining forever holed up in your executive suite. Also, leaders must wage an active and ever-vigilant war against the idea that "bad news doesn't travel upstream". If you want the truth, you must encourage the truth tellers; If you want to remain deluded, go ahead and slay the messenger.
Effective coordinators need a Zen-like capacity to function at the strategic level and the operating level at the same time. By understanding both points of view, coordinators can help identify common ground, they can encourage effective dialogue, and they can help align change efforts and operating efforts to be more reinforcing and less conflicting. Coordinators need to champion change to operators while facilitating the removal of barriers in the domain of executives. Effective coordinators ensure organizational learning that fosters the sustaining capability of change management.
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