Military and Change Management
Conundrum of change explained change will be
ever complex process that’s impossible to fully control or predict. The
prolonged uncertainties on change complexities have provoke us to make change
that’s more make sense to our organization. Tiring and complex models,
frameworks and concept plunged organization in rat race to embracing change in
no time. I disagree in some way about explaining movement from current state to
desired future state in linear change process, change would rather work and
move in continuum. The logic is future state would soon be appeared as current
state due to span of time, with new
people in flux into organization and changing of environment. What could be the
ideal is to embrace change that uphold the pillar of sustainability and
continuous growth. We should learnt not be content of our status quo, because
the wheel of change may put us again at below.
Democritus, a Greek philosopher concludes that
change only happen in their positioning and space, while Heraclitus in his
famous analogy of life to the river wisely saying that ‘no man ever steps in the same river twice, for tits not the same river
and his not the same man.’ Both universal and fluid entities theories
unravel the deep understanding the whole purpose of change. Covey mentioned
that change is the journey to reach the goals of certain purpose, and we must
hold to our objectives compass so it will always redirect us whenever we
deviate from right way. Covey again asserted that people don’t make the change
but principles does. As long as we hold tightly to the underpinned principles,
they change is always on his way.
Another paradox is the gap in defining the
outcome of the change. It is very critical decision in realizing change especially
involves creativity and innovation because of different perspectives in change
result. For instance, the British
Railway in the verge of implementing the computerized system for its train
operation, received multiple respond from different stake holders especially
the worker’s union. They finally success in implementing the system after
engage in long participative communication to realizing the importance of the
system for the organization. Beer and Nohra (2000) in ‘cracking the code of
change’ bravely stated the brutal facts that about 70% initiative fails. When
there is no silver bullet or magical wands on how to manage change
successfully, its urging that organizations embraced some distilling principles
of change to resort paradoxes and ongoing ambiguity. Six distilling principles
required organization to fathom are learn from the past, maintain peripheral
vision, exploit and explore, diversify, games changes and be mindful of larger
scale change.
Effective leaders always provide advantages to
changes and determine the efficient of the change process. Kotter argues that there is some tension
between the leadership and management terms. Management while carrying the set
of process, leadership in different aspect creates vision of the future, the
strategies to get there, motivates and inspires to make it reality. Leaders
always grab hidden opportunities and extensively set the standard that
compatible to the organization.
Change need back to reality, going to its root
and foundation. Organizational change would be less success if the individual
within resist to change or disunite. How
collective we are but the substance always the individual particles. To
endeavor and strive change as a team there must element of integration and
coherent of purpose. I do agree it’s always practical and demanding to answer
‘how’ to change (theories, framework) but in reality, what really propel the
process of change is the question ‘why’ we need to change.
Military and Change
Having served in
defense sector for almost 20 years, I observed the ever-changing facets of
change that the ministry ever trying to embrace and embed. Long term-vision and
periodical objectives intermingle which ponder as prerequisite of modernization
agenda of change. Ironically, at the
height of certain level of change, there was still slogan ‘back to basic’ for
the organization to revert and this realize how important for the organization
to stay rooted of its core belief. I always have stern stand that there should
be no compromise over basic requirements of defense operational. Even defense
has lately considered as most highly reduce budget compare to other sectors,
but cost reduction over deployment and operational capabilities impede the
whole organization credibility and consider undermining type of change. We
always believe that change is catalyst for any organization survivability but
consistency of performing foundation roles of defense cannot be put at
peril. Business organization have their
products values for financial outcome, but military service agendas offer
product of sovereignty with no pecuniary values to compare.
‘Organic’ aspects of military organizations
In general, and common
understanding, military organizations uphold mechanistic form of organizations.
It’s complex, formal and specialized with tightly controlled roles. Procedural
and rules are imminent in executing conventional operations and this inevitable
when man and machines are integrated to accomplished objective and mission. In
what aspect that this vast, regimental organization can be informal and focus
to ‘rejection of the one best way approach’ (contingencies theory)?
When man and machine
are modus operandi of securing organizational objections and missions, socio
technical system (STS) plays important role to ensure how effective objectives
can be achieved. This had respond to more organic form of approach in military,
and how significant innovation and responsiveness to today revolutionized
threats. At strategic level, military organizations need to be flexible to
overcome unpredictable threat and roles of military personnel no longer revolve
around ‘bread and butter’ but has expand to more global environment demand.
The implementation of
National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS) is one novel initiatives towards
innovation, creativity and responsiveness of armed forces. The participative
evolution combined with charismatic transformations illuminates the critical
need for each governmental sector combined as teams to prosper national
progress and development. Even in term procedural and execution still concrete
mechanistic form, but the whole effort strategically promotes to more organic
form of military organizations.
Military Organization Structure and Promotion of Innovation
The way how organization is designed
contributes to conduciveness in nurturing innovation and creativity. In turn,
it would lead to rapid process of change in the organization. Organizational
change must take into consideration of its structure to subsequently create the
environment that allow the whole change process to take place. It’s almost
impossible to decide the most appropriate organization structure that already
exist since dinosaur like military, but to understand the way organizations are
organize could spare some insight to military commander to exercise his command
that could ignite some creativity dynamic. According to Draft (1998) in order
to enable growth and seize opportunities in the organization, the managers have
to deal with challenges involved in organization design. The six element that
involve design decisions are work specialization, departmentalization, chain of
command, span of control, centralization/decentralization and formalization.
Among the six-key element mentioned above, we
often associate military with the tall structure in chain of command. For
instance, in Army organization structure, the Chief of Army will be at the top
of the hierarchy and commanded the vast operational, training administrative and logistic division. This
conventional setting is prevalent and common in commonwealth defence
organizations. But in some flexibility, there are specialized small unit or
brigade that directly report to the Chief of Army such as Special Force, Quick
Reaction Force and Army Aviation because of their exclusive nature of
operations. In another word, the military organization support both span of
control, flat and tall structure. Military also noted as its multi-layer work
specialization in order to successfully conduct the assigned operational
mission. For instance, in Army Brigade consists of different task
specializations, the infantrymen (fought the battles as frontlines),
Artillerymen (giving fire supremacy and support in the battlefield), Engineers
(provide mobility and survivability) and signaler (provide communications). All
the different specialization was grouped as sub unit (departmentalization) and
formed a Brigade organization structure.
How does the military promote innovation in
their original organization structure? From my observation military always
maintain its tall regimental structure in its operational and administrative
approach. Existed organization structure doesn’t hinder the cultivation of
innovation and creativity as long it’s not interfere with defence government
control of the service, the chain of command or disciplinary process.
Innovation where emphasized throughout the organization levels, new ideas are
welcome to be implemented by organizing innovation awards annually. Total
Quality Management (TQM) become the key focus in the organization in order to
provide Army with a team that is solid
and balanced in terms of equipment, modern armaments and high technology. At
larger scale, National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS) is highly implemented, where
it’s an inter-government department initiates to work cooperative and
strategically to boast national economic outcome.
Failure of change?
Do we still stand for
larger and conscript defense force? Or we have to tremendously downsized our
organization for better manage of change? Why now the security guard of
restricted military camp shifted to privatized company to play the roles? What
are underlying rationale behind this change, intended, unintended or partially
intended? This questions remains in black box our change agents in defense
sector. Are the organizations respond to newly accepted trending of change or
its consequences of failure to change in military realm?
Mejar
Shamyl Shalyzad bin Shamsuddin (3006611)
51
RAD, Kem Syed Sirajuddin,
Gemas,
Negeri Sembilan.
REFERENCES
Buchanan, D. and
Badham, R. 2008. Power,
politics, and organizational change: Winning the turf game. Sage.
Covey, S.R.,
1989. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Dawson, P. and Andriopoulos, C., 2014. Managing
change, creativity and innovation. Sage.
Jabri, M. 2012. Managing organizational change:
Process, social construction and dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan.
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