Change management: Introduction
Section one of the Personnel Today Management Resources one stop guide on change management, providing an introduction to the change management model, and the manager's role. Other sections.
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Change management has to be seen within the context of both personal and organisational development. This guide focuses on changes that have been decided by others. For simplicity, we refer to this as 'imposed' change. But it should be noted that while a particular change may be decided elsewhere, there may still be scope for local variation both in what is implemented and in how implementation proceeds.
The main areas covered by the guide are set out below:
- Self-development - Focusing on developing the participants' capability to handle, manage and cope with imposed changes.
- Change dynamics - Focusing on enhancing understanding of individual, team and organisational readiness for change by using force-field analysis, the transition cycle model, and organisational and corporate culture models. These approaches focus on current change issues and problems.
- Change architecture - Using real examples from telecoms, financial services and information services to examine '21st century' organisation models (the game no longer merely goes to the biggest but rather the fastest), and to the principles underpinning the creation of successful change programmes.
- Governance and accountability
- Alignment and engagement
- Performance management
- Leadership styles to support change as a process of 'extended practice'
- The role of transparency of change process.
Architectures for learning and change are created via appropriate models for:
The change model connecting the above three themes is below.
- The changing organisation - Focusing on: (i) how managers can use change management skills within their own teams, (ii) how managers can use change management skills in support of the successful implementation of an ongoing change programme.
Workshop approach
The guide should act like a workshop. It includes some simple diagnostic work on change issues and will use case studies and practical diagnostic exercises, focusing on at least one ongoing change within the organisation concerned. This should help you identify how you can support successful implementation.
We will provide some benchmarking by looking
at change architectures from
Finally, we will consider what action steps you can take after reading this guide.
Change management model
The change management model operates at both the individual and the organisational level of analysis. For the individual, we need to understand the ways they think about what can and cannot be achieved in their organisation. Change involves us going beyond what we currently know and considering cognitive maps of likely 'futures' in terms of new markets, methods, technology and so on. These are important both to understand where it is and also how to change it.
If politics is 'the art of the possible' then so is change management, other than perhaps revolutionary change - but even here an understanding of what key stakeholders feel is probably the first step to looking at whether 'revolution' is likely.
The fact is that some changes involve such a breaking of the traditional 'rules of the game' that revolutionary change becomes attractive, at least to some.
Take one example: watches. Who would have
predicted 50 years ago that
Culture analysis
At the organisational level, an analysis of culture is important. This defines what is possible in terms of change in a given organisation, given its specific history. At the heart of all analysis is learning, because change is, first and foremost, a learning process. This is connected via the change architecture - the arrangements through which we seek to engage people in change planning and implementation.
The manager's role
Organisations have experienced a lot of change in the last 10 years or so. We are beginning to understand how to do it. Those who say change is difficult or almost impossible are wrong. There are 'tools' available to help us. Remember that resistance to change is not inevitable and failure is not the only outcome. Indeed, most failures in change relate to two issues over which managers can exert at least some influence.
The first of these issues is a failure of ambition in change planning and linked to that a failure to will the change to happen.
The second points to failings in what soldiers call 'doctrine'. This relates to definitions of how to operate the various arms available to a military force in an appropriately integrated fashion. There is no equivalent term in the 'language of management' but its nearest equivalent is 'business model'.
Success or failure?
When you examine failures in change, you normally find little agreement about the business models in use. Indeed, they are rarely discussed and it is often assumed that they are self-evident. As a consequent, alignment of systems, procedures and behaviour can be seriously at risk. And this is obviously problematic during a period of change.
Success and failure in change management is more than an amalgam of attitudes and behaviour - it is also about will. The insight to see what is achievable and how that might be achieved is at least as important as the motivation to achieve and the behavioural skills needed to convince others.
Many people say that change is difficult. It is difficult to conceive because you must deal with unknown people issues and an uncertain future. And change is even more difficult to implement because without clear predictions, it is harder to track and can create a dynamic all of its own.
Everyone claims that major change is hard because of the people issues. Is this really so? Do you know of any organisation or institution that has not experienced change in the last decade or so? Would anyone seriously argue that we are not living in a period of rapid change? Is it not true that we are also living in an era through which dramatic changes of productivity, technology, brand, image and reputation are common-place?
Some will say yes to these questions but then question the longer-term consequences. What kind of society are we creating? Do we devote enough attention to the long-term consequences of what we do?
Changing times
The fact is that more and more change is being delivered. Organisations are engaged in delivering higher productivity, higher levels of activity and customer satisfaction, and so on. This is not to say that all are successful. Rather it is to note that organisations have grown volumes, activity and profitability during a period in which ever-more complex demands for customer satisfaction and business ethics have been added in the increasingly complex and diverse environments in which we operate. The challenge facing managers has grown and yet more change is being achieved. Therefore, we must be getting something right.
Some argue that people are inherently resistant to change. Whether for personal or institutional reasons, strategic change can be beset by opposition from key stakeholders, whether key professionals, other vested interests, unions and the like. And this is an important point. But it is a partial truth. Much of what we refer to as 'resistance to change' is really 'resistance to uncertainty'.
Therefore, the resistance derives from the process of handling and managing change, not from the change as such.
The overriding reason for this conclusion is the obvious point that organisations do change. If you looked at any list of the top 100 companies 50 years ago, are any of the companies on the equivalent list today? Many won't be. And those that are have changed in fundamental ways over the past 50 years.
What, why, how and by whom?
If people understand what is to be achieved, why, how and by whom, this can help. If they understand the impact on themselves, this is even better. This is not to argue that all resistance disappears. Indeed, you can argue that the more information people have who seek to obstruct change (because they believe their interests are threatened) may help them to do so. But that is a matter of handling, timing and tactics.
The point is that the arguments of many behavioural scientists writing about change are overwhelmingly partial and, at least in part, misleading. Rapidly skating over the issue of what ought to be changed, much of the writing I refer to deals in employee attitudes, satisfactions, beliefs and so on. Not that this is unimportant - but it is not the whole story.
Much of an employee's response to any proposal for change lies in its perceived relevance, credibility and likely success. If someone argues that something should change and presents a credible plan that you feel is likely to succeed, then you are more likely to go along with it.
The rest of this guide is based upon a change architecture model, which focuses on the successful implementation of change. This model is set out above and again in Section five .
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Section one: Introduction Section two: Implementing strategic change Section three: Culture and change Section four: Coping with change Section five: How to lay foundations for change
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