Sir Francis Bacon, the father of the measured scientific method, once said "knowledge is power". The Janson Change System for organizational and personal development, illustrated below, is based on the Newtonian observation that some part of everything, energy, always changes. Time is the measure of change, and energy divided by time equals power. Einstein measured that anything that has mass has an equivalent amount of energy, which means that anything that has mass is also always changing, and has an equivalent amount of power. These change agents are changed by power, and these change agents can change using their power.
As organizations and individuals are agents of change, they are changed by everything, and they can change everything, by setting and achieving goals. When subjected to change, organizations and individuals provide a value to prevailing change using words and/or numbers. Depending on the value that they give prevailing change, organizational and individual behavior often mirrors the value that has been assigned to the change. The performance of the behaviors following the valuations of change measures whether or not the organization or individual had the power to affect change in the manner they intended (they achieved their goals) to adapt, survive, and grow. Returning to Sir Francis Bacon, knowledge is the sum of all valuations of changing power. A comprehensive presentation of change, value, behavior, and performance, and their respective limitations are presented at http://www.changevaluebehaviorperformance.blogspot.com/, summarized in the diagram below.
The purple and red arrows in the diagram above illustrate some of the larger and smaller change agents in the observable universe, respectively, and the values given to those changes, using words. The smaller change agents in the red arrow, which include organizations and individuals, can mostly affect how other smaller agents of change will change. The larger change agents, the purple arrow, can change smaller change agents, but smaller change agents mostly can not affect how larger change agents will change, a function of the scale of their power to affect change. The larger a change agent, the more power it has to affect change, as more mass or energy equates to more power. The smaller a change agent, the less power it has to affect change, as less mass or energy equates to less power. Not suprisingly, the current socioeconomic system, which affects how organizations and individuals change, has established an ownership system of all change agents on Earth. The more mass or energy (collectively known as assets or resources) an organization or individual owns or controls, the greater the power the organization or individual has to affect how things will change.
Summarizing the above diagram, the below diagram illustrates the relationship between change and organizational and individual change agents. On the left, is the causal or reactivity model, where larger and smaller external and internal agents of change cause organizations and individuals to change, causing them to react to the change. In thermodynamics (physics and chemistry), for every action, there is an equal an opposite reaction. On the right, is the effectual or proactivity model, where organizations and individuals intend to affect how things will change, by setting and achieving goals.
Below, the Janson Change System is presented a little differently from the first diagram on this page, illustrating how this system can be used to manage both causal and effectual change. With regards to causal or reactive change, consider a manager and worker relationship where the worker is perceivably toxic to the manager for the first time. The manager experiencing this change can value things positively, negatively, or alternatively. As behavior often mirrors the value that individuals and organizations give to change, a positive valuation on the part of the manager will likely result in positive behavior on the part of the manager towards the employee, in hopes of a positive performance. A negative valuation will likely result in just the opposite, negative behavior on the part of the manager towards the employee, and possibly negative performance of the employee going forward. An alternative valuation on the part of the manager and the following behavior might be neutral, and so the manager might not consider the toxic behavior as positive or negative, perhaps because the manager is a much more toxic person than the employee. Another alternative valuation, the manager might consider that the behavior of the employee is both negative and positive or balanced, and so the resulting mirrored behavior of the manager might be both negative (confront the employee about their toxic behavior in the short-term) and positive (training the employee in emotional and social intelligence to minimize future toxic behavior and/or dismiss the behavior in the long-term).
Notwithstanding, using this system allows individuals and organizations to create a learning history of causal changes, a learning history of the valuations given to those causal changes, a learning history of the behaviors that followed the valuations, and a learning history of the performance of the behaviors following those valuations, allowing for trend identification of what worked (keep, acquire), what didn't work (modify or discard), and what could work (possible future solutions or innovations), to continually improve the performance of organizations and individuals.
Note, that the negative and positive pathways above were associated with negative and positive behavior in the example, but a more pratical application of this model would be to use the negative and positive signs as the poles of polarized valuations requiring balancing, for example, centralized versus decentralized, mechanistic versus organic, formal versus informal, vertical versus horizontal, introversion versus extraversion, sensing versus intution, feeling versus thinking, judging versus perceiving, et cetera.
With respect to using the Janson Change System for effectual or proactive change, or intending to change something using goal achievement, the same diagram can also be used to keep track of the changes that were intended, how the change (goal) was valued (framed goal, researched goal, and analyzed goal research), what actions or behaviors were taken (designed goal, developed goal, and implemented goal), how the actions or behaviors performed (evaluated goal), and how successful they resulted in the desired change, again allowing for trend identification of what worked (keep, intergrate, or acquire goal or goal components), what didn't work (modify, innovate, or discard goal or goal components), and what could work (possible future solutions or innovative goals), summarized below.
A number of commonly used tools can be used to facilitate the intent to change using goal achievement, as illustrated below. These do not represent all of the possible tools to achieve goals, but do provide a framework for using commonly used tools. Adding tools to each of the four compartments of the toolbox will allow organizations and individuals to pick the best tool(s), based on the nature of the goal or change that needs to be achieved.
To further facilitate the achievement of these goals, the following worksheets were developed. These worksheets can be used to take all knowledge or any word that describes an agent of change, to be plugged into the blue box, to develop, achieve, and improve goals around that agent of change. The template version of this worksheet is found below, and an example of how this template could be applied follows.
To illustrate how to use this template to create goals around all knowledge or words that describes a change agent, the Janson Change System worksheet is applied to a graduate business course concerned with organizational learning management, structured idea management, innovation, and organizational development, respectively. These worksheets were originally developed to serve as a tool to turn all business management theory into systemic tools that could be used in the workplace, by inserting any big concept (composed of smaller concepts) or small concept (part of bigger concepts) into the dark blue area of the box. The development of system tools using knowledge takes a layering approach below, beginning with large change agent concepts, and then increasing the number of templates until every small change agent concept has been systemized. This system could easily be applied to all knowledge or words that describe a change agent that an individual or organization might want to keep track of to develop goals around, making this a very flexible tool to accomplish all possible individual and organizational goals, purposes, visions, and/or missions.
To begin using this tool, add the knowledge concept(s) or word(s) that describes a change agent, or change agents, into the dark blue box, so in this case we are concerned with developing goals around organizational learning management, structured idea management, innovation, and organizational development, for the purpose of developing organizational learning management, structured idea management, innovation, and organizational development systems for an organization, as illustrated above. In other words, we want to systemize knowledge, and develop the above tools to manage our systemized knowledge. This change management tool can be used to develop, manage, and execute any change, goal, business plan, program, or project and for any subject.
Once the knowledge that requires systemization has been added into the dark blue box, then SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely) goals can be developed for each large concepts in the dark blue boxes, with the end goal(s) in mind. For example, for organizational learning, one or more short and long-term goals can be added under the dark blue section that reads "Frame Goal", under the value section. Then this tool can be used to keep track of the research, analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation, integration, and innovation of the short and long-term organizational goal(s). Then the same can be done for structured idea, innovation, and organizational development management, creating a systemic roadmap for an organization or individual. Note, part of setting realistic goals is understanding the labor required to service all of the goals, and so the smaller the labor availability, the fewer goals should be developed, so that enough time can be committed to the actualization of each goal.
Next, using the 6Ws tool (5Ws + 1H), more specific planning is required. Continuing with the organizational learning example from above, the next thing to figure out is who is the best person to frame organizational learning goals, who is the best person to research organizational learning goals, who is the best person to analyze organizational learning research, across the row, until you determine who is the best person to innovate organizational learning management goals. Then once the goal is framed, the next row examines why does the organization need to frame, research, analyze, design, develop, implement, evaluate, integrate, and innovate that particular goal (a time to reflect on the opportunity cost of pursuing that goal versus another more worthy goal, a time to prioritize, justify, and align goals with purpose, vision, and/or mission). The next two rows examine where and when the short and long-term goals and/or their components need to be achieved. The next row looks at how the framing, research, analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation, integration, and innovation of the goals needs to be achieved, to understand and challenge the process of best acheiving the goal. The last row looks at what resources, assets, change, power, and/or energy need to be applied to frame, research, analyze, design, develop, implement, evaluate, integrate, and innovate the goal(s), given the who, why, where, when, and how the goal need to be achieved. Again, the same needs to be done to systemize structured idea, innovation, and organizational development management goals to create the best possible roadmap for goal achievement. Last, this tool allows for the performance of the goals, the who, why, where, when, how, and what to be assessed over time to create learning histories, to be able to identify trends, to improve what worked (keep, intergrate, or acquire goal), what didn't work (modify, innovate, or discard), and what could work (possible future solutions).
The next step to systemizing knowledge for the purpose of having a tool to facilitate intending to change using goal achievement is to break the larger knowledge or change agents into smaller components, and repeat the process as illustrated by the next four diagrams.
The next step is to further breakdown this knowledge or change agents into smaller components, and again systematically repeat the process. The graduate course I teach in organizational learning management, structured idea management, innovation management, and organizational development management employs 240 key concepts or tools, each of which would be provided its own template, so an additional 240 templates, to systemize all of the tools, so that goals could be developed, managed, and executed for each of the 240 tools, to develop a comprehensive organizational learning management, structured idea management, innovation management, and organizational development management program for an organization. Note, the bulk of these terms can be found in WikOD, a wiki focused on organizational development, innovation, and ideation, http://www.wikod.blogspot.com/
Previously mentioned, this is why labor capacity needs to be carefully considered, and why goals need to be prioritized and limited, to be able to have enough time to properly implement this detailed program. A sole proprietor or very small business owner would find it nearly impossible to develop, manage, and execute this detailed a program, a function of labor capacity. Notwithstanding, the 240 key concepts or tools are often broken up into even smaller concepts, between two and 10 additional tools, each requiring goal and resource management.
Last, from a "Balance Value Engineering" perspective (a significantly modified balanced scorecard strategy developed by Frederick Janson), the organizational learning, structured idea, innovation, and organizational development management programs designed above, collectively termed balanced innovation engineering (business growth - driven by learning, ideation, innovation, and organizational development), represent one of four large departments required to drive a successful organization, where the other three are balanced stakeholder value engineering (marketing - driven by creating value, for stakeholders before, during, and after every transaction), balanced systems engineering (operations - driven by Work Breakdown Structure Programs and Six Sigma process improvement), and balanced profit engineering (finance - driven by opportunity cost financial modeling and valuation). The following diagrams show how the Janson Change Management System can be used to systemize balance engineering. Again, any word, idea, theory, KPI, or other tool can be monitored and can be changed using this change management system. KPI Library provides over 5000 key performance indicators (KPI), each of which could be monitored and changed using this system.
All Rights Reserved, Frederick Janson, 2012.
