An example of when I previously experienced change was when I
was a Team Captain at a Fintech organization in their call center. It
was both personal and professional, as it was me living through a
change in my career. There were about 12 Team Captains that
supported different team. We were in charge of coaching, training,
more of the growth while the Leader assisted with the performance
and areas needed to focus on, we would help the team members
with those areas and increasing their skills, not the Leader. One day
without any notice, we were pulled into a meeting with our VP of the
call center and a few of our Leader (they had the Team Captains as
their Team). We were advised our roles were no longer needed and
that we would go back on the phones, take a slight pay cut, changed
schedules starting that Monday. It was Thursday. No transparency
was provided. It was what it was basically.
Based on the change management skills covered in this course, there
100% should have been a different approach. There was no
transparency, there was no trust, there was no support from
leadership or them advising why it needed to be that way. The
ADKAR change management model could have been used but there
was no awareness, as well as zero reinforcement. The McKinsey 7-S
model also could have been used, unfortunately I did not see either
in play. These skills could have helped us as a team navigate this
change and understand more of the why, other than it was a business
decision.
It is interesting taking this course because I recently joined a new
organization and was aligned with a brand new team in Talent
Development with Onboarding and Performance Management. The
organization I am with has been around for 100 years and the team
members have a pretty lengthy tenure, I spoke with someone who
has been there for 32 years! That is not uncommon, you're either
new within the pandemic or have been around for at least 10 plus
years. What I am getting at is, fresh eyes do not always perceive the
same things that someone with eyes on that ONE specific
organization has had for 15 years. Change management is a very
tough road to navigate, and I am living through it, and have been
since starting this course. This course has helped me really
understand the dynamics of change management and provided me
tools and resources I can use in my day-to-day. I really appreciated
Kotter's view and his theory that was more focused on the challenge
which really was "...changing people's beahviour and not strategy,
systems or culture" (Hee & Shanmugam, 2019). I really am learning
that now, focusing on the behavioral changes and practicing the tools
we have been provided through this course to address those
changes. I am really focusing on the short term wins right now as
there are a lot of directions that we are being pulled with processing
change within Performance Management and Onboarding. I think
when the more tenured team members see the short term wins, they
will start to trust us as a team and help that much more throughout
this process.
I hope you all have had as great of an experience as I have through
this course! Good Luck to everyone on your journey!
References:
Hee, Ong & Shanmugam, Nanthinee. (2019). A Review of Human
Resource Change Management Strategies in the Digital Era.
International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social
Sciences. 9. 10.6007/IJARBSS/v9-i3/5713
