Leadership in complex environments
2012-03-30 13:34:11
Dr. Judith Holton, professor in the Ron Joyce Centre for Business Studies, is interested in how leaders cope in complex and stressful work situations. In times of crisis and change, the right leadership can make all the difference, building coalitions, optimism, and tackling a constant stream of challenges and setbacks in organizations.
Holton’s most recent research looked at the health care sector. Managers in health services organizations face particular challenges due to the persistent and unpredictable nature of change in their environments; the result of new technologies, reduced funding, and demographic shifts. Efforts to reduce spending are particularly difficult when there is public pressure to maintain the same levels of service.
Holton, working with Dr. Gina Grandy, has just completed a major study on New Brunswick’s Horizon Health Network. The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR). In 2008, New Brunswick’s eight regional health authorities were re-organized and merged into two new authorities; one of these was rebranded as the Horizon Health Network. This restructuring led to the integration of different organizational structures, operational processes, and subcultures. The researchers worked collaboratively with organizational leaders at Horizon to understand how leadership development, particularly at the middle and senior management levels, can contribute to building a healthy post-amalgamation workplace.
The researchers conducted focus groups as well as interviews with 32 managers about their leadership roles, daily practices, and work-life balance.
“We expected to hear about the challenges of coping with such a major reorganization, but it was the impact of pervasive communications technologies and the pressures of a ‘24/7’ work culture that were most revealing,” says Holton. “Many managers felt compelled to be available anytime, anywhere via their Blackberrys, including long work days travelling throughout the province to ensure that they were more than a voice on the phone or a name at the bottom of an e-mail for their staff.
“We heard such comments as, ‘I don’t usually take lunch,’ to the darkly humorous, ‘I can’t remember the last time I took a lunch break. It was probably in the ’80s,’ to the even more troubling, ‘I think about work all the time.’”
According to Holton, managers are fooling themselves as they attempt to conceal and soften the actual experiences of their work to manage the complex changes and at the same time achieve a balance between their personal and professional well being.
“What the exercise achieved was a growing awareness that the espoused values and rhetoric of the organization were not reflected in their efforts at a personal level in their own lives,” says Holton.
It turns out it is one thing for management to promote the benefits of a healthy workplace and work-life balance, but quite another thing to actually be able to live it.
“Such struggles are often not openly acknowledged but reside within unconscious daily practices that come to dominate the subconscious mind of an organization and can impede leaders’ efforts to facilitate healthy organizational change and learning,” she says.
Holton finds the management of change in health services organizations to be a fascinating area of research where there is plenty more work to be done. She suggests the traditional approaches to change simply cannot deliver the radical change necessary in such complex and rapidly changing environments. In future research Holton hopes to look at new models and new approaches to stakeholder engagement to improve the quality of health services under increasingly limited resources.