Entrenched resistance to mature and well-informed organisational metamorphosis and (useful) new ideas is simultaneously: a concise characterisation of (the) fear of novelty, difference and change; the essential pattern and shape of (pretty much every historical instance of) organisational, political and ideological pathology; a reflection of core psychological symmetries and reflexive boundaries through which self- (or organisational) identity is defined as “in opposition to” an Other or an external reality or environment. This latter factor is probably the level at which the associated problems might be most beneficially, if indirectly and delicately or diplomatically, addressed.
Organisational patterns and symmetries are self-propagating – as a matter of physics and logical necessity as much as by volition or planning. They seek continuity. Invoking core conceptual change, but not change for it’s own sake or to placate the latest management craze, is an essential axiom of a mature systems analysis and design. Intransigence and parochial resistance to offers of (a) conceptual levelling-up are ubiquitous, endemic and inevitable. Difference may have to be translated into a language of familiarity at every hurdle – which is both exasperating and generates considerable inertia and wasted time.
Daedelus Kite 