Making the Impossible Possible is a 2006 book by Kim Cameron and Marc Lavine that tells the story of the mid-1990s clean-up of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility. The authors apply the competing values framework through decades of research. Their organization studies are then applied to data to understand areas of improvement. High-functioning organizations are good at making the impossible possible by efficiently making decisions that fit neatly into the competing values framework.
The book is 286 pages long, and the authors spend most of it fitting leaders at Rocky Flats into the competing values framework. Still, they describe the Rocky Flats story and the competing values framework, and Cameron, in particular, made a cottage industry by applying the competing values framework to various cases. Have you ever been a part of a high-functioning organization?
The Rocky Flats Story
Rocky Flats was a nuclear weapons production facility outside Denver, Colorado. It operated from March 23, 1951, until it was raided by the Environmental Protection Agency on June 6, 1989. That began six years of torture when the site waivered between the production of weapons and not. Rocky Flats was closed for good by President George H.W. Bush in 1995.
Throughout weapons production at Rocky Flats, nuclear waste leaked into the water table. Rocky Flats was designated a superfund site, and cleanup began. Those heading the cleanup needed to work at making the impossible possible, which is what the book is about.
The Competing Values Framework
Cameron and Levine apply the competing values framework to describe how the cleanup of the Rocky Flats weapons facility was successful, ultimately making the impossible possible. Most of the book is spent interviewing participants in the cleanup and fitting them into the competing values framework.
The competing values framework has a Y and X axis, and that makes four quadrants to fit organizations into. Ultimately, the actors at Rocky Flats succeeded in making the impossible possible by making efficient decisions. The Y-axis ranges between “Flexibility/Adaptability” at the top and ” Stability/Control” at the bottom. The X-axis ranges between “Efficient Internal Processes on the left and “Competitive External Processes” on the right. Through interviews with key leaders, organizations are coded into this framework. The framework is used to make the impossible possible.
A Cottage Industry
Kim Cameron, in particular, has made a cottage industry of writing books and articles applying the competing values framework to organizations and espousing the virtues of positive leadership. Cameron is the William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations in the Ross School of Business and Professor of Higher Education in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. He has written more than 130 scholarly articles and 15 books. He is noteworthy.
Marc Lavine is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Massachusettes. He consults with companies and nonprofit organizations on issues of change management, leadership development, organizational learning, and social responsibility. He has also served on the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations. Lavine has extensive experience leading nonprofit educational programs and social ventures. He has written a dozen academic articles and this book on Making the Impossible Possible. He did his graduate work at the University of Michigan.
Making the Impossible Possible: A Valuable Read
This is an enjoyable book that tells a highly unlikely story of how a superfund site was cleaned up, truly making the impossible possible. The competing values framework is flexible and can, as Cameron has proved, be applied to many organizations. The framework also gives important, practical lessons that can be applied in various organizational settings. These are valuable lessons for leaders and practitioners who operate in organizations.
