Informal Coalitions in Practice

So what do the dynamics of informal coalitions mean in practice for leading organisations and teams?

The first thing to say is that you don't 'do' informal coalitions to an organisation in the way that you might seek to do such things as Business Process Re-engineering, Whole-Systems Change or Total Quality Management.

... Nor does the informal coalitions perspective offer a step-wise approach to change, such as that prescribed in Kotter's Eight-Step Process or other linear, 'n-step' models.

Instead, the phrase "informal coalitions" reflects a view of how organisations work in practice.

In particular, it highlights the critical importance of everyday conversations and interactions in bringing change about. Rather than advocating large-scale interventions, it emphasises the need for managers actively to engage with people's everyday sensemaking activities and with the patterns of behaviour that flow from these.

By taking everyday conversations and interactions seriously, it points to a number of key themes that have important implications for everyday leadership practice. Most distinctively, informal coalitions brings informal talk and interactions, power and politics, and paradox out of the shadows and places them at the forefront of change-leadership practice.

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