Change management 7, Thinking about changing in five colors

This was my first seminar of this series and the first time I heard prof. dr. Léon de Caluwé speak. I really enjoyed this seminar, the humoristic and entertaining way De Caluwé expresses himself was not what I expected. My colleague Mary Beijleveld did tell me about him and she told me that she was disappointed that she would have to miss this session. I was positively surprised by the way he was able to grab my attention.

De Caluwé chose a confronting and sometimes sarcastic way to explain how the five different ways of thinking about change work. But his humor softened his remarks into a story that was appreciated by the whole audience. We all had some great laughs, mostly because we recognized ourselves but also because we recognized ‘parts of our environment’.

He started off with drawing five big circles on a large white board which stretched almost the entire wall behind him. These where the five different worlds, the five different ways of thinking about change. He explained that people on a certain world could not recognize their own world and see the other people from the other world as strange thinkers that didn’t understand a thing about anything. If a statement he made in this session would be regarded as irritating, then this indicated that statement was about your planet or ‘color of thinking’.

This setting was a rich source of humoristic anecdotes and examples. I was amazed by his ability to visualize a subject as abstract as thinking about change. Apart from the fact that the model he was explaining to us used colors to indicate each of the five different ways of doing this. He was only using a black marker and a white board, by the way. This seminar got its color purely from his way of sharing his knowledge. Reactions from his audience consisted mostly of laughing next to a few questions for which he took barely half a minute to respond to. I think this was just right, considering the short time he was given to explain his story.

The 5 colors:

Yellow-Print Thinking
Yellow-print thinking is based on socio-political concepts about organizations, in which interests, conflicts, and power play are important. It assumes that people change their standpoints only if their own interests are taken into account, or if you can compel them to accept certain ideas. Yellow is the color of power (sun, fire) and a process of ‘brooding and coalition formation around a fire ‘.

Blue-Print Thinking
Blue-print thinking is based on the rational design and implementation of change. Scientific Management is a classic example. Project management one its strongest tools. In blue-print thinking it is assumed that people or things will change if a clearly specified result is laid down upfront. Due to managing, planning, and monitoring progress the change is considered feasible. Blue because of ‘blueprint = the (architectural) design or plan that is drawn up beforehand and guarantees the actual outcome.

Red-Print Thinking
Red-print thinking has its roots in the classic Hawthorne experiments which evaluated to recent Human Resources Management approaches. Change in this way is accomplished by stimulating people, by making it appealing to adjust behavior. Career paths, assessments, recruitments, out-placements, work design (task enrichment and enlargement) and employee wellness programs are all relevant interventions. Management gets up on a soap box, gives speeches and seduces people into embarking on a change. Red refers to the color of human blood. The human being must be influenced, tempted, seduced, and stimulated.

Green-Print Thinking
Green-print thinking has its roots in action-learning theories, ‘learning organizations’ Changing and learning are conceptually closely linked: the terms change and learning have very similar meanings. People are motivated to discover the limits of their competences and to involve themselves in learning situations and is aimed to strengthen the learning abilities of the individual and the learning within the organization. The change process takes time: you can’t force learning. It is a fluctuating process of learning and unlearning, trial and error. Thinking and doing are tightly coupled, not sequential (as it is in blue-print thinking): Empathy, creativity and openness are important attributes of the change agent. Green refers to ‘growth ‘as in nature and is chosen because the objective is to get peoples’ ideas to work giving them the ‘green light.’

White-Print Thinking
White-print thinking is a reaction to the deterministic, mechanistic, and linear worldview. It has its roots in chaos thinking, complexity theory, networking and complex systems with limited predictability Self-organization and sense making, removing obstacles and tapping in on people’s energy are important concepts. Open space meetings, appreciative inquire, dialog, search conferences, self steering teams. Change can only by accomplished if this is welcomed by the ones who are changing, welcome it. This not equals laissez faire. On the contrary; it demands in-depth observation, analysis of underlying drivers, and often confronting interventions. The color white reflects all colors. It allows room for self-organization and evolution. The outcome is a surprise.

This session explained more to me than the five different ways of thinking about change according to this model. It gave me answers to questions I had already forgotten. Like a prism divides white light and reveals all the different colors of the spectrum, this seminar made decisions and choices made by others and even myself, better understandable.

Like I said. I really enjoyed this session but I also learned on which planet I live. I live on the beautiful blue planet in the center of a strange universe. And I can see clearly thanks to the yellow light from not so far away.