Change efforts often fail because their is little ownership or energy for the action that's needed to make it happen. It all depends on what's important - what captures people's attention at the time. It's about connecting clear visionary objectives and values with the messy world of operational and local realities. Bridging the gap is not easy when few people are prepared to stick their neck out and try a new way of working. Seen from the top-down, front line managers and staff are seen as critical in making change happen, yet little attention is given to energising them.  They can appear resistant to change, but they are simply unwilling to engage in mindless activity or extra steps and administration that seems pointless.    

Bottom-Up Change emerges when managers work at coaching their staff and creating the best conditions they can for individual, team and organisational learning. It's about encouraging innovation at the front line, enabling employees to create solutions and ideas that will work for them, and learning what it takes to make the change real. Performance always improves when people's creative ideas and actions appreciated. Managing problems or solving them with old thinking and habits will not generate change. Doing the same things faster wont do it either. Without a change in thinking and focused action change will just not happen in any meaningful way.

This dimension is often lost, if not neglected when change is imposed from the top down. This is because performance improvement is felt to be contingent on carefully integrated planning mechanisms that link strategic goals with action on the front line. So much energy goes into securing compliance for this to happen that those at the top lose sight of the fact that it is the energy of people at the bottom that is needed to make the change happen. Often downsizing means there are even fewer people to invent new ways of working to deal with the pressure of a sudden workload increase with less capacity.  When people are scared that they may be next to go, or to take a pay cut the demand for innovation is high, but tolerance for risk is low.

"Though top level involvement is essential to organisational change, the real change leaders, who affect how the majority of people perform, come from the ranks of middle and front line managers". Katzenberg

The situation is summarised in the table below.

"Somehow we have got to find the integrating principle for our lives,the creative power that sustains our balance in motion,
and we have got to do it quickly ... The task is urgent: we must not push it into the future; we must not leave it to others; we
must do it ourselves, and we must begin now and here."
Dorothy L. Sayers  'Begin Here'.

What matters most is the quality of the local interaction between people who deal with each other on a regular basis. It is their values and preferred way of doing things that creates the hidden (real) culture - the way things actually get done. Top management may espouse a set of values, but they may not be the values in use at the front-line.  If little effort is put into dialogue that builds a shared vision of what the 'top' of the organisation wants they will find more blame than buy-in, damaging defensive routines, poor communication, low morale, wrong assumptions and a growing misunderstanding of what is wanted. What often makes it worse is the avoidance of conflict or strategies to deal with growing anxiety and tension.

Relationship management is a core skill in achieving bottom-up change. Finding out what matters to people, engaging them in a dialogue about how to work cooperatively to get what they want and to be creative in finding ways of bridging the gap between where they are now and where they want to be. It's not about solving problems its about doing things that count towards getting what's wanted.  This way the energy for change stays positive and problems are eliminated by default.

Some core capabilities for creating bottom-up change 

SENSEMAKING  to bring understanding and clarity to change initiatives.  The Change Zone contains a selection of tools and techniques that help the mind become more disciplined and better able to synthesise information, create visions and action plans, as well as seeing the benefits of behaving in respectful and ethical ways. 

DIALOGUE is a conversation that dopes not deny the value of someone else's opinion and looks for ways of adding to it with an 'and', unlike a discussion when people dump their opinions to try and convince others of the rightness f their view by intrucing it with a 'but'.

DIAGNOSING to gain a deeper understanding of how bottom-up initiatives are perceived.  The Change Zone offers techniques for thinking differently and learn how to make new distinctions and challenge assumptions and interpretations - to balance inquiry and advocacy.  

TIMING to understand the time frame of change that connects past, present and future perspectives.  The Change Zone contains articles, pathway guides and techniques to help focus and gain clarity by understanding and using the way the mind holds us in the past, experiences the moment and embraces the unknown - all at the same time. When aligned, real change can happen because facts are faced up to, possibilities are considered in context and the unpredictable is addresses with curiosity and wonder.

STORYTELLING to appreciate the power of self-organisation in thematic groups that want to talk about the things that matter to them, or protect their knowledge by sharing it with like minded people. The Change Zone contains articles and publications to show how effective leadership engages others through common concerns by using metaphor and appealing to our needs as human beings, not to slay our demons, but to put a harness on them and channel our frustrations and anxieties into positive action.

SYSTEMISING to see the relationship between parts and wholes and use the insights to inform thoughts and actions. This is the essence of effective teamworking and sustainability. The Change Zone contains a wealth of material on complex adaptive systems and articles, tools and publications on systemic thinking.  

SELF-ORGANISING to see new patterns of behaviour emerge through local interactions. This is the way self-managed teams operate. The Change Zone offers managers and teams coaching, facilitation and training services to embed more creative approaches to achieving sustainable change through Learning Labs and Skill Gyms that introduce Structural Dynamics into the creative process. 

"How people relate to one another affects what emerges in the organisation - the culture, the creativity, the productivity."
Birute Regine

Some 'bottom-up' publications