Leading in a Culture of Change

It's not often I get excited about a bit of change-management literature, but this one named for me a number of things that resonated with a couple of decades of involvement in church leadership. The Alban Institute - 2009-05-04 Leading in a Culture of Change. A bit that seems to give the flavour of the matter is this: "The organic nature of organizations is more apparent in most congregations, however. There is great informality in the way decisions actually get made; there is a reliance on more casual conversation and the building of consensus. Therefore, linear planning processes placed in the hands of a few most often seem alien to congregations, if not an out-and-out imposition. People may go along, because they want to be cooperative or because they do not know what else to do. Most often, though, these step-by-step processes do not produce the desired results. We’ve all heard the stories about the months spent crafting a purpose statement that gets hung on the wall or printed in the Sunday worship bulletin but has no discernable impact on the ministry of the congregation—it’s the kind of thing that happens when congregations rely on a linear process to enable organic change."
I felt vindicated that I have often tried to encourage and 'empower' (and make accountable) more informal decision-making processes. It also helped me to realised that the difficulties I'd experienced trying to follow patterns recommended by CEO-style leaders of big churches were not just down to my incompetence but rather the incompetence was trying to follow an inappropriate model.
The main thing is to realise that non-linear dynamics obtain: it's chaotic but with enough of the right kind of forces and -crucially- feed-back, a strange attractor can form giving a degree of relative stability. Of course, it also means that little perturbations can make big changes to that apparently equilibrial state!

I think this may find its way onto a reading list.

Now, how does this apply to college ... ?