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2005 ã weLEAD, Inc.
Change Management – Part 1
By Tom Anderson
Change is always a
difficult, unsettling, and expensive proposition for any organization and yet the
ability to change to rapidly shifting demands and developing technologies is
essential for the success of any organization. The key to success is effective
change management. In a world that is quickly changing, with global market
competition, we need to understand the difficulties of change, the
characteristics associated with change, and what good change managers do to
reduce those risks to our organizations.
First I will discuss why change is
difficult for many people and organizations.
Every one of us sets up a daily routine to go about our day-to-day tasks
and when it is interrupted by something that caused us to change our routine we
get upset. It may even cause us to go
through the day with an attitude. When things change nothing stays the same
(
According to weLEAD (2001), our natural
reaction to change, even in the best circumstances, is to resist. The overwhelming majority of people naturally
and fervently resist change either in their personal lives or in the workplace.
We like our “comfort zone” (n.p.).
We like the security that doing the same
routine provides. Always doing the same
things and acting the same way provides a sense of security and stability. In
contrast, the process of change is viewed by most as risky, and unsettling. It
is viewed as an “entrance to a new
world” of unknown outcomes (weLEAD, 2001, n.p.).
According to the Business Process
Reengineering [BPR] (2004) Online
Change management can be viewed from two
perspectives, from those implementing the change and from the recipients of
change. Your view of change management varies dramatically if you are the
executive demanding the change versus the front line employee who may be unsure
why a change is even needed.
In many cases at the onset of a new change,
neither the executive nor the front-line employee is knowledgeable about
managing change. The executives want the change to happen now; the employees
are simply doing their job. (n.p.)
One big mistake
most managers make when attempting to introduce change is they fail to get the
valuable input of others before they introduce or begin the change process! Too
many leaders believe they can single-handedly initiate or force change upon
others without ample explanation or consensus. All this will do is to guarantee
greater resistance and resentment toward change, even when introduced by the
best of ideas or intentions (weLEAD,
2001, n.p.).
According
to
Leaders are “agents of change”, and if
change is to occur at all, it must begin somewhere and within someone. The role
of leadership is to envision a better future and become the change agent that
makes this future possible. This is true of business, community or personal
life. But it all starts with an individual choice to begin a process of change.
It has been said that we must become the change we wish to see. Many businesses
have “closed their doors” because its management waited too long to begin
meaningful change. Many others have failed because they were so unaccustomed to
change they were unable to motivate others to participate in their final
attempt toward survival (n.p.).
The failure to motivate others may be
as simple as them not understanding what it is that the organization is trying
to change.
According to Jim Clemmer
(2004):
The faster the world changes around
us, the further behind we fall by just standing still. If the rate of external
change exceeds our rate of internal growth, just as the day follows night, we
will surely be changed. To the change-blind with stunted growth, it will happen
suddenly and seemingly "out of the blue."
Change forces
choices. If we're growing, we'll embrace many changes and find the positive in
them. It's all in where we choose to put our focus. Even change that hits us in
the side of the head as a major crisis can be full of growth opportunities, if
we choose to look for them. We don't always get to choose the changes that come
into our lives. But we do get to choose how to respond. (n.p.)
With this in mind,
we as employees, also have a responsibility to understand how changes made
affect the organization and us. Many
times however, employees see change as another “management by magazine article”
type approach.
According to Roger
Gill (May, 2003):
Change
is all too often regarded as a 'quick fix'. This fails to address the
implications of the change for the organization as a whole and therefore causes
unforeseen and unacceptable disruption.
Change initiatives are often the result of the naive adoption of
management fads. Such fads frequently
deal with only one aspect of an organization’s functioning without regard to
their implications for other aspects. Awareness of the business need to change is a
critical ingredient of any change and employee buy in must come first. In a period of rapid
structural change, the only organizations that survive are the "change
leaders." It is therefore a central 21st-century challenge for management
that its organization become a change leader. (n.p.)
There is a
great deal of talk today about "the innovative organization, but making an
organization more receptive to innovation, even organizing it for innovation,
is not nearly enough to transform it into a change leader; it might even be a
distraction.(Drucker, 1999, n.p.)
Jim Clemmer (2004) tells us too many
"change management" and improvement plans are built on the same
faulty premise as strategic planning, that there is a right path, which can be
determined in advance and then implemented (n.p.).
Properly managing change is essential for a
succusful implementation and many times managers become impatient, and want
things “moved up” on the schedule.
Jim Clemmer (2004)
goes on to say:
We often hear managers declare that they have
the right strategic or improvement plan, but the reason things aren't going
according to plan is because of "execution problems." This is a
deadly assumption. While there are many
reasons for execution problems, one of the key problems is a top-down
improvement plan or "change management" program. Because of their
need for order and control, many rigid managers try to use "change
management" or improvement planning to regulate and direct the random and
chaotic events swirling around them. They aren't comfortable with letting their
improvement plan and path to higher performance unfold and evolve toward their
vision, values, purpose, goals and priorities. In other words, they think they
can start with the answers. They're not comfortable with learning. (n.p.)
Change
management should be a requirement as a manager and should not be considered as
just another thing that I have to do.
Change managers should feel confident about implementing the change
process and should also follow through with the process. While managing the process of change, change
leaders must have a positive attitude.
According to Drucker (1999):
The first step for a change leader is to free up resources
that are committed to maintaining things that no longer contribute to
performance and no longer produce results. Maintaining yesterday is always
difficult and extremely time-consuming.
Maintaining yesterday always commits the institution's scarcest and most
valuable resources, and above all, its ablest people, to nonresults. Yet, doing
anything differently, let alone innovating, always creates unexpected
difficulties. It demands leadership by people of high and proven ability. If
those people are committed to maintaining yesterday, they are simply not
available to create tomorrow.(n.p.)
Managers must not only look at the attitudes toward the
process of change but also must look at the policies that may hinder change.
According to Drucker (1999):
The first change
policy, therefore, has to be organized abandonment. The change leader puts every
product, every service, every process, every market, every distribution
channel, every customer, and every end use on trial for its life and the change
leader does so on a regular schedule. The question it has to ask, and ask
seriously, is "If we did not do this already, would we, knowing what we
now know, go into it?" If the answer is no, the reaction must not be
"Let's make another study." The reaction must be "What do we do now?" (n.p.)
Managers must have the ability to recognize problems with product lines
immediately and be able to take actions to reduce the risk.
According to Drucker (1999):
In three cases the right action is always
outright abandonment:
1. When you think the product, service, market, or
process "still has a few good years of life." It is the dying
products, services, markets, or processes that always demand the greatest care
and effort and we almost always overestimate how much "life" actually
is left. Usually, they are not dying; they are dead.
2. When the only
argument for keeping a product, service, market, or process is that "it's
fully written off." To treat assets as being fully written off has its
place in tax accounting, but for management the question should never be
"What has it cost?" The question should be "What will it
produce?"
3. When for the
sake of maintaining the old and declining product, service, or process, the new
and growing product, service, or process is being stunted or neglected (n.p.).
Managers must be able to define and understand
the change process. They must be able to
ask questions that clarify the critical factors to the changes being made.
As stated by
Drucker (1999):
For every product,
service, market, or process, the change leader must also ask, "If we were
to go into this now, knowing what we now know, would we go into it in the same way we are doing it
now?" That question needs to be asked about the successful products,
services, markets, and processes as regularly, and as seriously, as about the
unsuccessful products, services, markets, and processes. It applies with
particular force to distributors and distribution channels, which, in a time of
rapid change, tend to change faster than anything else. In one fairly big company that offers
outsourcing services, the first Monday morning of each month is set aside for
an abandonment meeting at every level of management. In the course of a year,
three to four major decisions are likely to be made on abandoning a product,
service, or market, and perhaps twice as many decisions to abandon the way
something is done. Also, three to five ideas for new things come out of those sessions.
The decisions are reported to all members of management each month. Since the
company first began organized abandonment, eight or nine years ago, it has
grown more than fourfold (adjusted for inflation), and it attributes at least
half of that growth to its systematic abandonment policies (n.p.).
Change management is also the process of continous
improvement. All areas need to be looked
at and addressed.
As stated by
Drucker (1999):
Whatever an
enterprise does, both internally and externally, needs to be improved
systematically and continually: the product or service, the production
processes, marketing, technology, the training and development of people, and
the use of information. It also needs to be improved at a preset annual rate.
In most areas, an annual improvement rate of 3% is realistic and achievable.
However, continuing
improvement requires some major decisions by an organization. It must answer
the questions "What constitutes performance in a given area? What is quality in a product?
To what extent can improvement be defined only by the customer?" Defining
performance in services is often especially difficult.
Continuous
improvements in any area eventually transform the operation. They lead to product
innovation. They lead to service innovation. They lead to new processes. They
lead to new businesses. Eventually continuous improvements lead to fundamental
change. (n.p.) Management
must support the change throughout the process and exploit success.
According to Peter
J. Drucker (1999):
It is only 70 or 80
years since the monthly report was invented and introduced into most business
organizations. Almost without exception the first page of this report presents
the areas in which results fall below expectations or in which expenditures
exceed the budget; it focuses on problems.
Problems cannot be
ignored, but to be change leaders, enterprises have to focus on opportunities.
That requires a small but fundamental procedural change: a new first page to
the monthly report, one that precedes the page that shows the problems. The new
page should focus on where results are better than expected. As much time
should be spent on that new first page as traditionally was spent on the
problem page.
As is the case with
continuous improvement, exploitation of success will, sooner or later, lead to
genuine innovation. There comes a point when the small steps of exploitation
result in a major fundamental change, that is, in something genuinely new and different.
In the next section I will discuss the characteristics associated with change
and why we must adapt to rapidly changing demands and technologies.(n.p.)
References:
Brittain, K. Brittain, S. & Brittain, D. (2003,
Business Process Reengineering (2004). An
Overview of Change Management.
Retrieved
Clemmer, J. (2004). Change Management Can Lead to Rigidity and Resistance to Change. Retrieved
Clemmer, J. (2004). Change is Life. Retrieved
Clemmer, J. (2004). Harnessing the Energy of Change Champions. Retrieved
Dessler, G. (2004). Management Principles And Practices For
Tomorrow's Leaders (Third ed.).
Drucker, P. J. (1999, June). Inc. Magazine. Retrieved
Gill, R. (2003, May).
Change management - or change leadership? Journal of Change Management, 3, 307.
Retrieved
Gootnick, M. M., & Gootnick,
D. (2000). Action
Tools for Effective Managers: A Guide for Solving Day-to-Day Problems On The
Job.
Griffith, J. (2002, June). Why change management fails. Journal of Change Management, 2, 297-304. Retrieved
Hiatt, J.
(2004). Employees Survival Guide to Change. Retrieved
LYNCO Associates, Inc. (1997). Twelve
Principles for Managing Change. Retrieved
Miller, D. (2002, June).
Why change management fails. Journal of
Change Management, 2, n.p. Retrieved January 16,
2004, from
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Mind Tools (2004). Retrieved
Shein, E. (2004,
Thomas, G.
(2001). Each Day is a Gift. weLead Online Magazine, , n.p.. Retrieved
weLEAD (2001, October). Being
an effective agent of change. Retrieved
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About
the author:
Tom D. Anderson is the Process Engineering Manager at
Donaldson Company, Inc. in Grinnell,