Balancing Acts: A Human Systems Approach to Organizational Change

Balancing Acts offers consultants and managers a simple, powerful way to think about change, and ascribes a four-phase iterative process for implementing change. Reviewing change initiatives from different types of organizations, Balancing Acts confronts the problems and pitfalls head-on that often arise during workplace transitions. Conklin explains why organizational change can be so difficult, and shows that by balancing a set of competing psychological and systemic challenges, interveners will increase their chance of success.

Conklin shows that human groups function as complex systems, and that a change initiative is not a linear progression toward a predefined result. Instead, change is an iterative process that involves a search for feasible and useful solutions. The book’s central argument is that while leading or supporting this search, consultants and leaders must balance four critical concerns: confrontation and compassion, participation and observation, assertion and inquiry, and planfulness and emergence.

James Conklin is an Associate Professor at Concordia University who conducts implementation science research out of the Bruyère Research Institute. For over two decades he operated a consulting company and led engagements throughout Canada and the United States in the health, finance, manufacturing, and technology sectors. His current research looks at social change and decision making during the pandemic.