Making a Difference: Strategies and Real Time Models to Transform your Organisation

Citation

Robinson, G. (2000), "Making a Difference: Strategies and Real Time Models to Transform your Organisation", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 32 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2000.03732ead.002

Making a Difference: Strategies and Real Time Models to Transform your Organisation

Making a Difference: Strategies and Real Time Models to Transform your Organisation

Bruce NixonGilmour Drummond Publishing1998£19.95

Keywords: Strategy, Modelling, Organizational development, Management development

I have met Bruce Nixon on two occasions, both of which were since he wrote this book. Bruce would have no reason to recall either of these meetings, since we merely "happened" to be in the same place at the same time. But I gained the impression that he is a gentleman (gentle-man) in the most positive sense of the word - a person with a big heart and a generous spirit. Therefore, I approached his book with pleasure.

However, I also wished that he hadn't given the book its subtitle, since the word "transformation", it seems to me, is set to become one of those debased and abused words and phrases, such as "excellence" "total quality" and "world class", that seem to delight publishers but fail to make much difference to organisational value in practice. The "T word" is used, in an organisational context, to mean a whole range of change processes from large-scale organisation structural change; change of mind-set, culture or values; transpersonal or spiritual development; or all of these in bewildering combination.

Right at the end of the book, Bruce Nixon quotes from a personal note written to him by Harrison Owen, the developer of "open space technology", to the effect that "transformation is happening, it is not something you do, [it is occurring] not because we have figured things out, but in spite of the fact that we haven't". But this important point, as I have noted, Bruce saves until the end. This is a pity because the sub-title implies the provision of a tool kit for "doing" organisational transformation. This is a much better book than such an implication would imply.

So, despite my pleasure, I was somewhat on my guard when I opened the book, fearing that I was in for another dose of "quick fix snake oil". I needn't have been. These are the fruits of reflective practice in action at its best. Bruce Nixon has been engaged in organisational change and development consultancy for over 30 years, both as an internal and external practitioner. During that time, he has also paid considerable attention to his own learning and development, participating in workshops, support groups and development programmes, each of which has had an impact upon his own personal and professional development and from which he has learned and then refined and polished that practice still further.

In Making a Difference, he distils his learning and experience with processes such as action learning, open space technology, future search and many other development initiatives into his own "real time management development" approach. This he generously shares with his readers, from a basic empowerment model through a whole series of practical steps that he develops over the book's 15 chapters.

These chapters cover topics that range from underlying principles and tools, and the adoption of a strategic approach, through real time management development and culture change to whole system interventions, individual and team development, support groups and networking, facilitation skills and partnership working. Each is comprehensively described and illustrated from practice.

The text is highly readable and supported throughout the book by numerous bullet point summaries, which lend themselves to notes and overheads. Similarly, he has included a number of case studies that illustrate both successful and less successful applications of the approaches that he describes.

He makes the point well that global forces increasingly demonstrate the interdependences of each and everyone of us. So that all that we who would make a difference can do is to put "a brick in the wall" of a generalised process of social, economic and technological transformation. I am a little concerned that, in providing so many helpful tables, guidelines and summaries, while simultaneously being so modest and self-effacing about the huge investment that he has so obviously made in his own learning, reflection and development, he may have made it all look too easy. In so doing, he may inadvertently have added to the array of patches in the armoury of the "quick-fix" merchants of which club he himself is clearly not a member.

The target audience for Bruce Nixon's book would appear to be the internal consultant practitioner or change agent and a growing army of independent consultants. Among this audience there will be many who will grow and develop into future Bruce Nixons. But there will also be those who will jump on to the transformation bandwagon (before it is succeeded by the next fad bestowed upon the world by some new guru).

In this respect Making a Difference brings to mind Charles Handy's argument for "proper selfishness", accepting responsibility "for making the most of oneself by, ultimately, finding a purpose beyond and bigger than oneself". Bruce Nixon would appear to be a model of such "proper selfishness".

His readers would be well advised to bear this in mind before attempting to extract his models from the book and bolt them on to their own practice. Bruce is clearly of this view. He concludes his book with a final chapter, in which he argues that serious investment in our own development provides the key to all that has gone before.

Those who neglect his advice and run off with the many "goodies" contained in this important and valuable book, without taking to heart the message of the final chapter, are likely to miss the point. This is that Bruce has clearly made such investment himself over many years. As a result, he himself is almost certainly "the difference that made the difference", in the examples with which the book is filled, though he is probably far too much the gentleman to acknowledge this as much as he deserves.

Graham RobinsonKennedy Robinson Business Development Ltd