Implementing Change – Including, Dictating, Confronting
Reading in the booklet “On Change” by K. Parvathi Kumar I came across three sentences – some food for thought:
- Changing times demand strategic changes in the vision.
- ‘Heterarchy’ enables implementation with greater vigor than ‘Hierarchy’.
- A decentralised plan enables better implementation of change. “Center everywhere. Circumference nowhere”, is the Aquarian dictum.
At my job as well as in group cooperation of voluntary work I often experience that myself and other people tend to get frustrated if their point of view is not included in “hierarchical” top-down decisions, from the “more important” to the “lesser” people. The “upper ones” tend not to perceive the perspectives of the “bottom”. It demands often a much greater effort to include than just to dictate. But the danger of dictating is that I feel estranged and lose my commitment, resulting in inner emigration and anger.
I’m trying to learn to directly speak about delicate points. I just read an article in a magazine about Jakob Kellenberger, president of the ICRC in Geneva and former diplomat (see blogpost), that he is is always speaking cleartext in negociations: “I always directly start speaking about the problem. I am convinced if the other has the impression that you don’t dare to speak about the difficult points he thinks that you don’t feel confident with the matter or you fear confrontation.”
