7 Leading and Managing Change

Organization Development

7 Leading and Managing Change

After diagnosis reveals the cause of problem or opportunities for development, organization members begin planning and subsequently leading and implementing the changes necessary to improve organization effectiveness and performance. A large part of OD is concerned with interventions for improving organization.

Changes can vary in complexity from the introduction of relatively simple process into a small work group to transformation the strategies and design features of the whole organization. Although change management differs across situation, here we discuss tasks that must be performed in managing any kind of organization change.

Overview of Changes Activities:

The OD literature has directed considerable attention to leading and managing change. Much of the material is highly prescriptive, advising mangers about how to plan and implement organizational changes. Traditionally, change management has focused on identifying sources of resistance to change and offering ways to overcome them. More recent contribution has challenged the focus on resistance and has been aimed at creating vision and desired future, gaining political support for them, and managing the transition of the organization toward them.

The diversity of practical advice for managing change can be organized into five major activities, as shown in figure 33. The activities contribute to effective change management and are listed roughly in the order in which they typically are performed. Each activity represents a key element in change leadership. The first activity involves motivating change and includes creating a readiness for change among organization member and helping them address resistance to change. Leadership must create an environment in which people accept the need for change and commit physical and psychological energy to it. Motivation is a critical issue in starting change because ample evidence indicates that people and organization seek to preserve the status quo and are willing to change only when there is compelling reason to do so. The second activity is concerned with creating a vision and is closely aligned with leadership activities. The vision provides a purpose and reason for change and describes the desired future state. Together, they provide the “why” and “what” of planned change. The third activity involves developing political support for change.

Organizations are composed of powerful individuals and groups that can either block or promote change. The fourth activity is concerned with managing the transition from the current state to the desired future state. It involves creating a plan for managing the change activities as well as planning special management structure for operating the organization during the transition. The fifth activity involves sustaining momentum for change so that it will be carried to completion. This includes providing resources for implementation the changes, building a support system for change agent, developing new competencies and skills, and reinforcing the new behaviors needed to implement the changes.

Figure 33. Activity Contributing to Effective Change Management

Each of the activities shown in Figure 33 is important for managing change. Although little research has been conducted on their relative contributions, organization leaders must give careful attention to each activity when planning and implementing organizational change. Unless individuals are motivated and committed to change, unfreezing the status quo will be extremely difficult. In the absence of vision, change is likely to be disorganized and diffuse. Without the support of powerful individuals and groups, change may be blocked and possibly sabotaged. Unless the transition process is managed carefully, the organization will have difficulty functioning while it moves from the current state to the future state. Without efforts to sustain momentum for change, the organization will have problems carrying the changes through to completion. Thus, all five activities must be managed effectively to realize success.

Let’s now discuss more fully each of these change activities, directing attention to how the activities contribute to planning and implementing organizational change.

Motivating Change:

Organizational change involves moving from the known to the unknown. Because the future is uncertain and may adversely affect people’s competencies, worth and coping abilities, organization members generally do not support change unless compelling reason convince them to do so. Similarly, organizations tend to be heavily invested in the status quo, and they resist changing it in the face of uncertain future benefits. Consequently, a key issue in planning for action is how to motivate commitment to organizational change. As shown in figure 33, this requires attention to two related tasks: creating readiness for change and overcoming resistance to change.

Creating Readiness for Change:

One of the more fundamental axioms of OD is that people’s readiness for change depends on creating a felt need for change. This involves making people so dissatisfied with the status quo that they are motivated to try new work process, technology, or ways of behaving. Creating such dissatisfaction can be difficult, as any one knows who has tried to lose weight, stop smoking, or change some other habitual behavior. Generally, people and organizations need to experience deep levels of hurt before they will seriously undertake meaningful change. For example IBM, GM and Sears experienced threats to their very survival before they undertook significant change program. The following three methods can help generate sufficient dissatisfaction to produce change:

1. Sensitize organizations to pressure for change. Innumerable pressures for change operate bothexternally and internally to organizations. As mentioned earlier, modern organizations face unprecedented environmental pressures to change themselves, including heavy foreign competition, rapidly changing technology, and the draw of global markets. Internally pressures to change include new leadership, poor product quality, high production costs and excessive employee absenteeism and turnover. Before these pressures can serve as triggers for change, however, organizations must be sensitive to them. The pressure must pass beyond an organization’s threshold of awareness if managers are to respond to them. Many organizations, such as Kodak, Apple, Polaroid and Jenny Craig, set their threshold of awareness too high and neglected pressure for changes until those pressures reached disastrous levels. Organizations can make themselves more sensitive to pressure for change by encouraging leaders to surround themselves with devil’s advocate; by cultivating external network that comprise people or organizations with different perspective and views; by visiting other organizations to gain exposure to new ideas and methods; and by using external standards of performance, such as competitions’ progress or benchmarks, rather than the organization’s own past standards of performance.

1. Reveal discrepancies between current and desired states. In this approach to generating afelt need for change, information about the organization’s current functioning is gathered and compared with desired states of operation. (See “Creating a Vision” later for more information about desired future states.) These desired states may include organizational goals and standards, as well as general vision of a more desirable future state. Significant discrepancies between actual and ideal states can motivate organization members to initiate corrective changes, particularly when members are committed to achieving those ideals. A major goal of diagnosis, as described earlier, is to provide members with feedback about current organizational functioning so that the information can be compared with goals or with desired function states. Such feedback can energize action to improve the organization.
2. Convey credible positive expectation for the change. Organization members invariably haveexpectations about the result of organizational changes. The contemporary approach to planned change described earlier suggest that these expectations can play an important role in generating motivation for change. The expectations can serve as a fulfilling prophecy, leading members to invest energy in changes program that they expect will succeed.

When members expect success, they are likely to develop greater commitment to the change process and to direct more energy into the constructive behaviors needed to implement it. The key to achieving these positive effects is to communicate realistic, positive expectation about the organizational changes. Organization members also can be taught about the benefit of positive expectations and be encouraged to set credible positive expectations for the change program.

Overcoming Resistance to Change:

Change can generate deep resistance in people and in organization, thus making it difficult, if not possible, to implement organizational improvement. At a personal level, change can arouse considerable anxiety about letting go of the known and moving to an uncertain future. People may be unsure whether their existing skills and contribution will be valued in the future, or have significant questions about whether they

can learn to function effectively and to achieve benefits in the new situation. At the organization level, resistance to change can come from three sources. Technical resistance comes from the habit of following common producers and the consideration of sunk costs invested in the status quo. Political resistance can arise when organization changes threaten

powerful stakeholders, such as top executive or staff personal, or call into question the past

decisions of leaders. Organization change often implies a different allocation of already scare resources, such as capital, training budgets and good people. Finally cultural resistance takes the form of systems and procedures that reinforce the status quo, promoting conformity to existing values, norms, and assumptions about how things should operate.

There are at least three major strategies for dealing with resistance to change.

1. Empathy and support. A first step in overcoming resistance is to learn how people areexperiencing change. This strategy can identify people who are having trouble accepting the changes, the nature of their resistance, and possible ways to overcome it, but it requires a great deal of empathy and support. It demands willingness to suspend judgment and to see the situation from another’s perspective, a process called active listening. When people feel that those people who are responsible for managing change are genuinely interested in their feelings and perception, they are likely to be less defensive and more willing to share their concern and fears. This more open relationship not only provides useful information about resistance but also helps establish the basis for the kind of joint problem solving needed to overcome barriers to change.

1. Communication. People resist change when they are uncertain about its consequences. Lack ofadequate information fuels rumors and gossip and adds to the anxiety generally associated with change. Effective communication about changes and their likely result can reduce this speculation and allay unfounded fears. It can help members realistically prepare for change.

However, communication is also one of the most frustrating aspects of managing change. Organization members constantly receive data about people, changes and politics. Managers and OD practitioners must think seriously about how to break through this stream of information. One strategy is to make change information salient by communicating through a new different channel. If most information is delivered through memos and emails, the change information can be sent through meeting and presentations. Another method that can be effective during large-scale change is to substitute change information for normal operating information deliberately. This sends a message that changing one’s activities is a critical part of a member’s job.

1. Participation and involvement. One of the oldest and most effective strategies for overcomingresistance is to involve organization members directly in planning and implementing change. Participation can lead both to designing high quality changes and to overcoming resistance to implementing them. Members can provide a diversity of information and ideas, which can contribute to making the innovations effective and appropriate to the situation. They also can identify pitfalls and barriers to implementation. Involvement in planning the changes increases the likelihood that members’ interest and needs will be accounted for during the intervention. Consequently, participants will be committed to implementing the changes because doing so will suit their interests and meet their needs. Moreover, for people having strong needs for involvement, the act of participation itself can be motivating, leading to greater effort to make the changes work.

The Life Cycle of Resistance to Change:

Organization programs such as downsizing, reengineering and total quality management involve innovations and changes that will probably encounter some degree of resistance. This resistance will be evident in individuals and groups in such forms as controversy, hostility, and conflict, either overt or covert. The response to change tends to move through a life cycle.

Phase 1

In the first phase, there are only a few people who see the need for change and take reform seriously, As a fringe element of the organization, they may be openly criticized, ridiculed, and persecuted by whatever methods the organization has at its disposal and thinks appropriate to handle dissidents and force them to conform to established organizational norms. The resistance looks massive. At this point the change program may die, or it may continue to grow. Large organizations seem to have more difficulty bringing about change than smaller organizations. One of IBM’s business partners has said, for example, that trying to get action from IBM is like swimming through “giant pools of peanut butter.”

Phase 2

As the movement for change begins to grow the forces for and against it become identifiable. The change is discussed, and is more thoroughly understood by more of the organizations members. Greater understanding may lessen the perceived threat of the change. In time, the novelty and strangeness of the change tends to disappear.

Phase 3

In this phase there is a direct conflict and showdown between the forces for and against the change. This phase will probably mean life or death to the change effort, because the exponents of the change often underestimate the strength of their opponents. Those in organization who see change as good and needed often find it difficult to believe how far the opposition will go to put a stop to the change.

Phase 4

If the supporters of the change are in power after the decisive battles, they will see the remaining resistance as stubborn and a nuisance. There is still a possibility that the resisters will mobilize enough support to shift the balance of power. Wisdom is necessary in dealing with overt opposition and also with the sizable element that are not openly opposed to the change but also not convinced of its benefits.

Phase 5

In the last phase, the resisters to the change are as few and as alienated as the advocates were in the first phase. Although the description of the five phases may give the impression that a battle is being waged between those trying to bring about change and those resisting the change (and sometimes this is the situation), the actual conflict is usually more subtle and may only surface in small verbal disagreements, questions, reluctance, and so forth.

To better understand the phases, see the Five Phases of Resistance to Change in Action.

Regardless of how much resistance there is to the organizations change program, the change will to some extent evolve through the five phases described above.

Depending on the change program, however, some of the phases may be brief, omitted, or repeated. If the last phase is not solidified, the change process will move into first phase again. General Electric’s retired CEO, John F. Welch, has written:

People always ask, “Is the change over? Can we stop now? ” You’ve got to tell them, “No, it’s just begun.” They must come to understand that it is never ending. Leaders must create an atmosphere where people understand that change is continuing process, not an event.

The Five Phases of Resistance to Change

Phase 1

In the 1970s the environmental movement began to grow. The First Earth Day was held in 1970. Widespread interest in environmental concerns subsided during the 1980s. Some political officials neglected environmental concerns, and environmentalists were often portrayed as extremists and radicals (even antidevelopment). The forces for change were small, but pressure for change persisted through court actions, elected officials, and group actions.

Phase 2

Environmental supporters and opponents became more identifiable in the 1980s. Secretary of the Interior James Watt was perhaps the most vocal and visible opponent of environmental concerns and served as a “lightening rod” for pro-environmental forces like the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society. As time passed, educational efforts by environmental groups increasingly delivered their message. The public now has information and scientific data that enabled it to understand the problem.