World Colleges Information

Organisations usher in change for a variety of reasons includ-ing but not limited to change in market, competition, econom-ic changes, change in business perspective, making people redundant, closures, mergers, acquisitions, organisational failures, global opportunities, etc. But change is not limited to physical changes that ensue the event but is more related to dealing with apprehension from various quarters of the organisation’s human resourc-es. Employees come in at the core of change. With them comes the difficulty of imparting the reason to change, making them understand the need to change, measures to implement and follow for change, etc. If people do not understand the need to change, they will fight it. Human beings are creatures of habit; it takes them time to form habits, patterns and routines and perhaps more time to change established assump-tions and conditioned thinking patterns.

Change management entails thoughtful planning and sensitive implementation, and above all, on pri-ority, involvement of the people who will be affected by the change. Change whether good or bad will be met with resistance. It is human nature; the fight or flight syndrome will check in, there will be more fight than flight because it concerns their career security and payslip at the end of the month.

Change management has at least three different aspects, including: adapting to change, controlling change, and effecting change. A proactive approach to dealing with change is at the core of all three as-pects.For change to be effected smoothly it needs to be in consultation with people it will affect. While the decision to change could be of top management, early conditioning and concurrence of every employ-ee to the imminent will make the transition smoother for everyone. Forced change will give rise to prob-lems. For things to work effectively and normally post change, the components of change (i.e. replace-ments for existing methods and concepts) need to be realistic, achievable and measurable. Every effort to change, personal or organisational, needs to answer/subscribe to the following:

What is intended to be achieved with this change and why?

How will it be known that the change has been achieved?

Who is affected by this change, and how will they react to it?

How much of this change can we achieve ourselves, and what parts of the change do we need help with?

Effecting organisational change

For an organization, change management means defining and implementing procedures and/or tech-nologies to deal with changes in the business environ-ment and the means to profit from changing opportu-nities. Important to effecting the change successfully are having a grasp on and taking corrective action on conflicting functional objectives or approaches, dif-ferent toolsets and standards and, different reporting relationships that are the most likely first outcomes of change.

What may look like a straight set of resolutions could get complex if the management gets too com-placent. An early grasp on vision, protocols and pro-cess flow is paramount. Once the flow of processes are established it comes to communicating the same effectively to the layers underneath.

Effecting personal change

Percolating the idea and ideals of change to the layers beneath are the real challenge for organisations that vote for ‘change’. While it is near impossible to gain concurrence to the idea from everyone across the floor, making them understand the importance of the decisions made is vital to effect any change at all. News good or bad needs to be shared in a planned way. Breaking bad news properly is important. How the management stands up and breaks the bad news is a test of its integrity. Breaking bad news will not

"They think change will help the organisation and top management make better and faster money"

tarnish its image but running away from the respon-sibility to do so certainly will and is therefore best not left to underlings to cope with or communicate to the rungs below them. It is solely the organisation head’s responsibility to do so.

The responsibility to change

The responsibility of the employee is to give their best to whatever they have been brought in for, not to manage themselves in the event of change. That is the responsibility of the management. It is a bigger mistake to expect employees to manage themselves in the event of a change than to have not involved them in the process.

Helping cope with change

Managers need to spend personal one on one time with their underlings to help facilitate change. Impersonal memos or e-mails are not the way to communicate during such times. How a person reacts to the con-cept of change is dependent on his/her age, position at work, health, maturity, stability, experience, per-sonality, motivation, etc. Therefore there is no single method to deal with people. Managers need to un-derstand the person they are talking to, improvise the content based on their acceptance levels and deliver the requirement in a way that can be understood if not fully accepted.

They need to work with people inside out and outside in (i.e. from their perspective to the goals of the organisation and not vice versa because the reverse will make the employee feel trapped and set him up for revolt). He will not see value in what-ever is being communicated if he and his interests are not addressed first.

People types and how to deal with them

People are divided into four temperament or hu-mour types. Personality assessment expert, David Keirsey interprets personalities of four temperaments thus: artisan, rationalist, guardian and idealist.

This matrix summarises the type of people Change Managers will have to deal with. Everyone’s sense of right or wrong and possible or impossible are dif-ferent. Communication to each of these categories of people need to be devised and modified on the spot on a one-on-one basis.

They need to be spoken to at the level of their commitment to the organisation, their belief systems and their take-home from the change. Change Managers need to be aware of the psycholog-ical contract that existed between the employer and the employee right from the time of employment till the time prior to the announcement of the change. It is the notions attached to the psychological contract that keeps the employee and the employer together. The equation or terms of the unwritten psychological con-tract changes with the proposed change. The ability to understand and manage organizational change in-creasingly depends on the Change Manager’s or man-agement’s ability to understand and manage the most important drivers within the psychological contract. Making people unhappy can change their perceptions faster than when made happy. When a leader’s behav-iour is sensitive to his people’s feelings, the change is smoother. Insensitive ‘selling’ on the leader’s part without consideration of the terms each person holds with the employer in his/her psychological contract will create large issues and will adversely affect the urgency to change.

Change management is a four step sequence. It involves:

Realisation – knowing, understanding and ac-cepting that change is needed.

Investigation - developing clarity about what, why and how change can happen.

Substitution – replacing the old with the new -creating conscious change.

Embedding - reinforcing the change at uncon-scious competence level - transformational change.

Why most ‘change’ attempts end in failure

Imposing new skills and change on people doesn’t work because of management’s assumption that peo-ple’s personal aims, wishes and needs are completely aligned with those of the organization, or that there is no need for such alignment, it is assumed that people want, and can assimilate into their lives, the type of development or change that the organization deems appropriate for them, given all their other priorities.

This results in the ‘no can do’ syn-drome.

The ‘no can do’ syndrome: to ask why people can-not see the need to change is like trying to measure water in the sea. There is no getting around it. People are not idiots. People don’t see it because they don’t want to see it – irrespective of whether there is oppor-tunity or risk. They will reject inconvenience of any kind at the first opportunity.

Top reasons why change attempts fail

• People do not like being forced out of their com-fort zones.
• People put themselves and their priorities first in which case, change will appear to them as a mere in-convenience.
• They think change will help the organisation and top management make better and faster money and for whose benefit they will have to undergo all the transition, putting in more effort.
• They don’t see a future for themselves in the changed scenario

Where ‘no can do’ complicates

People will never align with bad/misplaced-ambitions. They will see through agen-das that reek of executive greed, exploita-tion, environmental damage, inequality, betrayal and false promises. They will either bla-tantly express their disagreement, or nod and smile but do nothing about ‘changing’ which is worse. Recovery path: Re-assess and re-align your organi-zation’s aims, beliefs, integrity - all of it - with your employees. Clearly state the need for change. Pro-vide proof and examples wherever possible. Chart the plan forward and share it with them. Most em-ployees disagree because they don’t know where that leaves them. Involve them. Allow them to contribute. But gaining their confidence a second time will take more effort, patience, time and money since there is no guarantee they will hear you out after the first out-ing debacle but it is worth trying.

People cannot just drop everything and ‘change’, or learn new skills, just because the organisation says so. Even if they do want to change and learn new skills, they have a whole range of issues that demand immediate dealing with ranging from per-sonal to professional. Plus, there is no guaran-tee on how they will be compensated for adapting– money-wise, position-wise or work load wise. Recovery path: See the problem from their end. Spec-ify clearly what is in it for them. That is the only thing they are going to be interested in.

Presenting crisis as a cause to push change. To say that there is no time to re-assess and re-align the goals of the organisation with that of its people is irresponsible.

Recovery path: Never use crisis as an excuse for compromising integrity. An urgent and forced change will lead to more complications. Think through, float a plan of action and stick to it.

Harvard Business School professor, thought lead-er and author on organizational change management [Leading Change (1995) and The Heart of Change (2002)], John P Kotter’s work is a beacon for change managers. His eight step model can be summarized thus:

Set the right vision

Assemble the right guiding team who have the right emotional commitment and the right mix of skills.

Spread the urgency to change incrementally – help people make real, achievable objectives.

Communicate clearly.

Empower people – open avenues for idea exchange, remove obstacles, use feedback, recognise achieve-ments and breakthroughs.

Set short-term goals.

Persist on the new model. Encourage process and protocol.

Make change stick. Weave change into the culture. Reinforce its value and gains.

BUDDING MANAGERS

APRIL 2014 ISSUE