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Change Management
the people side of change
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Table of contents

Excerpts


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A foundation for successfully managing employee and
organizational change

Excerpts

 

 

new-change-management-book.gif (16870 bytes) Change Management is like a driving school for change agents."
Michelle Wiginton
University of Oklahoma

 

 

Chapter 1

p1

As editors of the Change Management Learning Center, we have analyzed research data from more than 1,000 companies involved in large-scale changes. We talk daily with project leaders and managers. We write weekly articles and tutorials on managing the people side of change. We review new books in this field of study. What we observe more than anything else is the need for easy-to-apply concepts and practical guidelines for managing change. Yet, up to now, a straightforward introduction to change management has not been available.

When finished with this book, you will have a basic context for change management, know why it is important and understand how it is used. As a business manager, you will be more effective as a change leader and sponsor of change. Specifically, you will be able to prevent and manage resistance to change, minimize productivity loss, avoid unnecessary turnover and increase the probability that your business changes produce the desired results.

p3

The most common barrier to success was a lack of change management. They fell short when managing the people side of change and encountered:

1. Managers who were unwilling to assign the needed resources to the project or would not allow their representative adequate time to participate

2. Managers who filtered out important messages or started negative conversations about the change

3. Employees who became distracted and lost interest in their current work responsibilities thereby impacting overall productivity and customers

4. Valued employees who left the organization

5. More people taking sick leave or not showing up for work

6. Unforeseen obstacles to the change that seemingly appeared from nowhere

7. A lack of funding for the change

In other words, things did not go exactly as planned. The unexpected happened. Not managing the people side of change impacted their success and introduced risk into their projects.

Change management can not only mitigate these business risks, but in many cases avoid them entirely. Business leaders have the potential to not only manage resistance once it appears, but to prevent it in the first place. Unfortunately, many business leaders and project teams do not appreciate their role in managing the people side of change until after resistance impacts the success of their change.

Two case studies show the potential consequences of not managing the people side of change. These case studies were selected because they highlight two common leadership mistakes: first, believing that change management is someone else’s job; second, ignoring the people side of change until major resistance stalls a project or causes the project to fail.

p11

Change management is the application of many different ideas from the fields of engineering, business and psychology. As changes in organizations have become more frequent and a necessity for survival, the body of knowledge known as "change management" has also grown to encompass more skills and knowledge from each of these fields of study. While this may be a good trend overall, the result for many business leaders is growing confusion about what change management really is.

     The purpose of this book is to bring the real meaning of change management into focus. Written for project managers, business leaders, change management practitioners and consultants, this book will provide you with a solid understanding of the principles and processes around managing change in today’s competitive environment. The overarching goal is to help you begin the journey of developing competence in managing change. With change management competence comes success in business change. One important message we strive to convey with this book is that change management does not need to be difficult or complicated. In fact the core principles are common sense and easy to understand.

     When finished with this book, you will be more effective as a change leader and sponsor of change. Specifically, you will be able to:

  • manage employee resistance to change,

  • build change competency into your organization,

  • minimize productivity losses and adverse effects on your customers during major changes,

  • avoid unnecessary turnover or loss of valued employees, and

  • increase the probability that your business changes produce the desired results.

 

 

Chapter 2

p14

Understanding the why makes you better at doing the how. Change management is not a matter of simply following steps. Since no two changes are exactly alike, following a recipe for change management is not enough. The right approach will be situation specific. If you do not understand the why, changes can fail even when standard processes are followed. Research with hundreds of project teams has shown that a "one size fits all" approach is not sufficient. To be effective at leading change, you will need to customize and scale your change management efforts based on the unique characteristics of the change.

     To accomplish this customization, an understanding of the psychology of change and guiding principles is vital. You will then be able to work with many change management methodologies and adjust your approach according to the size of the change, ultimately making your change a success.

Primary principles and concepts

The overview of concepts and ideas presented here is not intended to be an in-depth psychological analysis of change principles. Rather the focus will be on the key insights from these principles that impact effective application of change management. Case studies are included including how one million dollars in cash served as a change management tool.

p40

Summary of change principles

This chapter highlighted key change principles and how they relate to managing change in the workplace. These theories and principles are essential for managing change with situational awareness and then making the necessary adjustments including scaling or modifying the change management process. Understanding and applying these principles will help you correctly apply the techniques and processes for individual and organizational change management. In summary the key concepts are:

1. Change agents must be conscious of both a sender’s meaning and a receiver’s interpretation.

2. Employee resistance is the norm, not the exception. Expect some employees to never support the change.

3. Visible and active sponsorship is not only desirable but necessary for success.

4. Value systems and the culture of the organization have a direct impact on how employees react to change.

5. The size and type of the change determines how much and what kind of change management is needed. Just because a change is small does not mean that change management is not required.

6. The "right" answer is not enough to successfully implement change.

7. Employees go through the change process in stages and go through these stages as individuals.

To put these principles into practice, two change management approaches are necessary as introduced in Chapter 1: the employees’ perspective and the managers’ perspective. Managing change from the employees’ perspective is called individual change management. Managing change from the managers’ perspective is called organizational change management. Individual change management is often overlooked by many change management models. Individual change management includes the tools and processes that supervisors use with their employees to manage individual transitions through change. This employee-oriented component of change management is the critical ingredient that allows a project team to:

1. Help employees through the change process

2. Create a feedback loop to business leaders and identify points of resistance

3. Diagnose gaps in communications and training

4. Implement corrective action

The most powerful change management strategies combine organizational change management techniques with individual change management tools to create a robust, closed-loop process. Chapter 3 introduces the process and tools for individual change management. Chapter 4 integrates these tools with organizational change management techniques resulting in an overall process for managing change.

 

Chapter 3

p45

Individual change management is the process of providing tools and training to employees to enable them to manage their personal transition through change. This includes training for managers and supervisors to equip them with the tools they need to assist their employees through the change process.

In this chapter, a model for individual change management called ADKAR is presented. You will have the opportunity to create an ADKAR profile for someone close to you and find out how a graduating daughter unlocked the door to change for her father.

     The chapter will be dedicated to four change management objectives that can be achieved using this individual change management model:

  • Manage personal transitions. Employees can assess where they are in the change process and identify their own personal barriers to change.

  • Focus conversations. Communications with employees about the change can be separated into the stages of a change model to enable productive and focused conversations centered around their area of interest or conflict.

  • Diagnose gaps. Collective input from employees provides a diagnosis of why a change may be failing or is not as effective as planned.

  • Identify corrective action. The model provides a framework for identifying corrective actions during the change process.

p53

Too often business leaders fall into the trap of communicating broad and general messages about change. Employees’ reactions can also be generally broad. The resulting conversations are non-targeted and often unproductive. Take for example the announcement of a new software tool for customer order taking. If the change is implemented and employees believe it was not needed (i.e., they were not aware that any changes were required), then their reaction might be:

"This is a waste of time."

"Why change if it was working just fine before?"

"They never tell us what’s going on!"

“Our old system was better than this one.”

The natural reaction to change, even in the best circumstances, is to resist. Awareness of the business need to change is a critical ingredient of any change and must come first.

 

Chapter 4

p61

Businesses tend to have more managers who believe they have the right answers to business problems than managers who can effectively implement good ideas. As a leadership competency, change management is often lacking. The political environment combined with employee resistance stops many managers from being true leaders of change.

     Organizational change management is the application of a systematic process for managing change across an organization. It is the top-down, manager’s approach to taking an organization through the transition from today to a new future state.

     In this chapter we will provide an overview of a comprehensive, research-based change management process. We will discuss how individual change management tools and organization-wide tools are combined to effectively manage the change. We will also show how damage control can end up being the focus of the day if change management is started too late.

     Recall from the theories and principles of change discussion that change is a process. Managing change from an organizational viewpoint is also a process. Based on Prosci’s research in change management over the course of three separate studies with more than 500 organizations, the most effective change management process consists of three phases:

  • Phase 1 - Preparing for change

  • Phase 2 - Managing change

  • Phase 3 - Reinforcing change

p66

Phase 2 - Managing change includes the design of the organizational change management plans and individual change management activities. This second phase of change management involves the planning and implementation of:

• Communication plans

• Coaching plans

• Training plans

• Sponsor roadmaps

• Resistance management plans

Communication plan - Many managers assume that if they communicate clearly with their employees, their job is done. Recall from Chapter 2 and the principles of change that there are many reasons why employees may not hear or understand what their managers are saying. You may have heard that messages need to be repeated 6 to 7 times before they are cemented into the minds of employees. That is because each employee’s readiness to hear depends on the many factors discussed in Chapter 2.

Effective communicators carefully consider three components: the audience, what is said and when it is said. For example, the first step in managing change is building awareness around the need for change and creating a desire among employees. Therefore, the initial communications should be designed to create awareness around the business reasons for change and the risk of not changing.

These early communications should not be cluttered with details that will distract from the key messages. Likewise, at each step in the process, communications should be designed to share the right messages at the right time. Communication planning, therefore, begins with a careful analysis of the audiences, key messages and the timing for those messages. The change management team must design a communication plan that addresses the needs of front-line employees, supervisors and executives. Each audience has particular needs for information based on their role in the implementation of the change.

As a starting point, the following communication checklist taken from the Change Management Toolkit (Prosci)1 provides a summary of the most important communication topics for managing change.

Part 1 - Messages about the business today (shared during the earliest stages of the change)

• The current situation and the rationale for the change

• The business issues or drivers that created a need for change

• Competitive issues or changes in the marketplace including customer issues

• Financial issues or trends

• What might happen if a change is not made (the risk of not making the change)

Part 2 - Messages about the change (shared after employees understand the business situation and business reasons for change)

 

Chapter 5

p83

Throughout this book, the term change management has been used in relation to managing change with one or more business initiatives. But what happens when change becomes the norm? Current economic conditions have placed a premium on an organization’s ability to be flexible, quick to market, scalable and responsive to unique customer demands.

     An organization that faces constant demands to change and uses effective change management over and over with each new initiative may experience a fundamental shift in its operations and the behavior of its employees. Sponsors begin to repeat activities that made the last change successful. Managers develop skills to support employees through the change. Employees see part of their job as navigating these new changes. Each level in the organization will have internalized its role in change and developed the skills and knowledge necessary to react to constant change. The organization has become ready and able to embrace change; it has developed change competency.

 

 

Chapter 6

Change Management: the People Side of Change presents the foundation needed to effectively manage change.

The book began by creating Awareness of the need for change management and Desire to use change management techniques to avoid project failures or business disruptions. Change management is used for one reason – to ensure business success. Many changes do fail in organizations that do not appreciate and manage the people side of change. We presented research results that showed change management as the most critical and important activity for business improvement projects. We discussed the many forms of employee and management resistance and showed how this resistance can severely impair or stop a change project. Project teams that introduce change but do not use change management run the risk of missed project objectives, productivity losses, and sometimes complete failure.

One of your key responsibilities as a change agent it to be the champion of change management in your organization. You must demonstrate the importance of actively managing change and build support within your peers, leaders and reports. You must provide guidance to senior executives and managers and supervisors. You must help the organization embrace and thrive during change.

Resources are provided in the Appendices to help you...

 

 

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