I recently came across David Nadler’s theory (1995) - Congruence model of Change. The proposed model is an open systems model based on the proposition that the effectiveness of an organization is determined by the congruence between the various elements of the organization. Congruence is "the degree to which the needs, demands, goals, objectives, and/or structures of one component are consistent with those of the other".
In analyzing the applicability of the congruence model, the inputs towards say, for example IT-Cloud transformation initiative for an organization, include the external environment, internal resources (e.g. people, knowledge skills, technology stack) and the organizations’ history. Based on these inputs, the executive management formulates the strategy for initiating changes in the IT delivery model. The outputs are the performance of the various sectors of the organization after the changes are implemented. I took a systems approach to depict the broad considerations and tools that can be utilized to drive the transformation processes.
1. INPUTS – Causal loop diagrams can be a good choice here to truly understand the organizational environment and the dynamic system by observing variables and their cause of variations.
2. Strategy - Kaplan & Norton' performance measurement framework ‘Balanced Scorecard’ can be used to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals.
3. Process Perspective – Business Process Management is a coherent and consistent way of understanding, modeling, analyzing, executing, monitoring and optimizing business processes as well as associated resources leading to business improvement. BPMN tools offered by Oracle SOA Suite can be employed here.
4. OUTPUTS – Business Intelligence and enterprise performance management tools deliver insights to help managers make better-informed decisions and are conducive to the enhancement of key performance indicators (KPIs).
As in the turbulence models of chaos theory, the continual rotation of well planned, high level change, as seen in this congruence model, will have many smaller circles of mid level change. The smaller circles both feed off the change at the highest level and sustain it. Maintaining congruence among these smaller circles is greatly enhanced by use of project planning tools, such as SharePoint.
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