Change

【Topic 1: Problem Solving.  Subtopic 1.3: Change】

WHY does a problem arise? 

Will McWhinney in his book “Paths of Chance” (1997) has insights to the question.  A simple answer is “change”. Change, because there are always people who have different opinions (worldviews) overturning your solution.  So, solution to a problem can be an endless cycle.  Other characteristics of a problem situation are: they are systemic, or organic, such as a medical disease, hard to come out a definite solution.  You may improve the situation but never perfectly resolve it.

Reality of Change.  Why people have different worldviews?  Of course, this can be attributed to the fact that different life experience influences individual view towards reality of the world.  However, the root cause is four basic human personalities called “DISC” from pop psychology: Dominance (D), Influence (I), Stability (S), and Compliance (C).  The following table explains and exemplifies these characters.  An individual may be inclined towards one personality, but seldom go extreme of only one personality.

Mode of Change.  A corporate problem is often caused by people with above personalities, or mixed personalities of a group of employees, e.g. pairwise, in six modes: analytic (Sensory + Unitary), participative (Sensory + Social), imperative (Mythic + Unitary), emergent (Social + Mythic), inventive (Mythic + Sensory), and influential (Social + Unitary).  A trio or more people can form groups that again have the DISC personality, because of the group’s leadership, followers, culture & courage.

Path of Change. 

In fact, theory of change not only provides the reason why a problem arises, but also provides directions for resolution.  Another architype, path of change, uses strategy to solve complex business problems.

• Path of revitalization: a top-down approach to descend an order from top management to revitalize the company and solve problems.

• Path of renaissance: a bottom-up approach to organize a meeting and use collective intelligence to solve problems.

• Joint Paths: (1) Initiate social rites, (2) coming into employment, (3) Retreat

• Reduced paths: (1) Creative path, (2) System Analysis, (3) Pluralistic Development, (4) Dialectical Paths.

Each of these paths can be drawn in a coordinate graph with various curves in it.