SOLUTIONSPRO__DUE: 10/18/2014 @ 5pm est.

What's the benefit of studying this topic?

As a manager you will be asked to lead change efforts in work units, teams and perhaps, as the chief officer of an organization. To be effective in your job you must understand work change. Knowing the change process can support you and your staff in being successful.

Review:

· Power Point addresses factors and aspects of several change models. Knowing more about approaches to change can increase effectiveness. (Scroll down to locate power point).

· Select 1 or more video clip. (See last section of this web page)

Module 8 Managing Change Successfully

Introduction: A Familiar Change Scenario

The team of a tech software project enjoyed a highly collaborative environment. Then the company's senior level directors introduced a new 5-year plan to increase performance with emphasis on all units developing marketing. The team was unanimously in favor. They committed to identifying markets given their understanding of innovation in the team's project pipeline. The team clearly assigned each team member research on these markets, which reflected the diversity of the team and options for additional expansion into various regions of the globe. A year later, the team met. Although they had concrete plans, the group had accomplished very little. There were lots of explanations, such as "We thought we could do things and still have time to keep up with ongoing work. We took first steps, but gave up, when things didn't immediately pan out." However, the bottom-line result is that this team failed in their change effort.

Is it possible that work teams often are not clear about changes company leaders are directing–that is there is not enough information about what should be changing or why? Is it likely that the tech team in the scenario you just read, and members of countless teams today do not understand what will be different when a new strategic plan is put in place? And is it that teams do not know how to discuss what will happen and who might lose? Might fear of one's own job loss become a potent factor of why change doesn't take hold? Are anxieties and frustrations impacted by a range of diverse viewpoints, and if so, what must happen to understand the resources of multi-cultures? (Note: These questions were adapted from William Bridges' research and writing on transitions).

At-a-glance definitions:

Organization development: A set of plans and actions which enable company and work unit changes in culture. These tasks and interactions focus on human and social aspects to improve capacities for adapting and solving problems. OD interventions are participatory at multiple levels within a company, government or nonprofit organization.

Organizational culture change: This phrase often overlaps the use of the term, organization development. Strategy plans and efforts emphasize the people, both workers and customers. Cultural change work is done in the organization to increase commitment and empowerment of employees and it frequently provides stronger ties between the company and its customers. Culture change of a work unit or company is difficult because it challenges established ways of thinking and embedded values. Team building is a specific activity of an organizational culture change.

Organizational change: A set of new ideas and behaviors desired by leaders. Change is likely to include culture, but it is only within the past 5 years that culture has been widely discussed as central to effective change. Organizational change is usually undertaken with the intention of developing or expanding company markets, products and services (i.e. organizational development is a subset of change).

Organizational culture: Core values, rituals, and expected activities of a company or a nonprofit. These factors answer the questions: What's important to the company and how is work done in this unit? Group norms reflect a work unit's culture. In comparison to country culture, some organization cultures are stronger than others. The balance between organization and country culture is an emerging area of research. Tensions can exist between cultural values of family and country when compared to the organization's culture. For example, workers from more collective or high context cultures are familiar with and appreciative of collaboration needed in team work. But these workers may be reporting to individualistic, high achievers who reward fast turnarounds and innovations offered quickly by individuals.

Transformation: A significant change which cannot be accomplished easily or quickly, but is viewed as important and worthwhile. Transformational change will include organizational culture.

Context of Relentless Technical and Information Changes:

"The whole 20th century, because we've been speeding up to this point, in which one year is equivalent to 20 years of progress. But the 21st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress, which is a thousand times greater than the 20th century, which was no slouch to change." Ray Kurzweil futurist, writer and inventor who has sponsored projects in the cyber arts, and in health and medicine (2012).

"Change is becoming the only constant state" (Kurzweil). The "new science" theories (chaos, complexity and, quantum theories) suggest that the environment facing business leaders today is quite different from the traditional worldview. The traditional view of reality was to see management as objective, predictable and largely linear. In contrast the "quantum worldview" sees the environment as dynamic, unpredictable, and subjective. The organization is presented as an open, changing, non-linear system, subject to forces of stability and instability.

Many organizational leaders continue to face the management problems of innovation, performance and accountability while the pace and complexity of change is at a magnitude never before experienced. This complexity includes a diverse workforce and a range of culturally driven values and expectations. The challenge to managers is daunting. What will you determine to be priorities and strategy as a 21st century manager?

Focus on Specific Aspects of a Change: Advice from Kotter

In a 2008 interview, John Kotter, author of 15 books on leadership and change, affirmed that mangers and organizational units alike are improving the success rate for strategic change. (Throughout 1980-90s, organization behavior researchers concluded that 70 percent of change strategies failed or were aborted. One of the more important factors, according to Kotter, was the need for increased attention to urgency or reasons for a change. Urgency continues today. But it is often not discussed enough because understanding urgency means looking at and explaining the darker side of "what if" scenarios, such as risks, threats, and weaknesses.

Many managers have made mistakes by not paying enough attention to the front end of the change process which centers on urgency. Instead of talking extensively about the urgent need for change in strategy, leaders often want to downplay the harder issues which include a clear examination of what happened and where/when people were not asked to be accountable. Instead, there's a human desire to talk about the potential of the team and the importance of vision. Then, when company leadership recruits expert help, there is resistance to looking back and carefully examining what was done. But with increased attention to urgency and specific reasons for a strategy change, people can believe that what you are asking is more than just words or a plan on paper. Your plan requires action. (McKinsey Report, 2010)

Keep a Change Process in Mind to Aid Your Management Focus:

Kotter offers a popular well-tested approach to structuring interactions and communication for managing a change in plans and strategy. Here you have that model with additional insight for working with a range of cultural values.

· Establish sense of urgency

· Adapted to the cultures involved. Not every culture sees urgency the same way. Some will not react to entreaties based on time. Leaders will need to find another way to infuse urgency based on cultural values.

· Create a guiding coalition

· The member of the team should include influential employees from across work units and with representatives of sub- cultures.

· Develop a Vision and Strategy

· The critical piece. Everyone needs to understand the goal and the boundaries.

· Communicate the Vision

· You cannot over-communicate. The leader needs to communicate in culturally savvy ways to ensure understanding.

· Empower broad-based action

· Empowerment must accompany the change. However, again, not every culture reacts the same way to being empowered. The responsibilities for action must be culturally bound.

· Generate short-term wins

· Everyone wants to see proof that the change will work. The more proof, the more belief.

· Consolidate gains and produce more change

· Small wins build momentum; these must be embedded and leveraged.

· Anchor changes in culture

· The leader must reframe the organization's culture based on the changes.

Observe Planning, Decision-making and Communication for Resistance:

Resistance indicators are present when a change or new plan is launched: Use to determine when to take time and add communication and discussion. For more than a decade Rick Maurer, researcher and expert on Gestalt approaches to workplace human interactions, has examined change and how to overcome resistance. Overall his approach centers on effective communication to lower resistance and build trust. The table below presents a summary of his research adapted to address a range of cultural values.

Research Trends:

There are several fields and multiple themes describing organizational change, organizational development, multinational growth, and influence of cultural dynamics. By far the larger field of research centers on the topic of organizational change (approximately 7400 published articles, 2005-12, with more than 2900 being peer reviewed. Of particular interest are a) diffusion methods across multiple work groups and b) metric applications such as Return on Investment (ROI).

Transformational change continues to be researched (2011). One of the more exciting approaches to understanding leadership within significant or transforming change is this: The possible relationship between authenticity of a leader in communication to followers so that work staff believe the change is moral–the right thing to do. Research suggests that if the leader can communicate the change in terms of the organization or work unit's ethics–ie "the rightness" of the strategy, then followers are more likely to push forward on implementation–adding to the influence of the leader as well as development of the company or organization. More important, if this research is validated and seen as reliable in future studies, these ideas point to a broader focus for leader messages in making organizational change successful.

With the growth of multinational corporations, there are subsets of studies, which emphasize change processes more useful to large businesses. A recurring theme is a more comprehensive change design with goals for not only on what changes, but also attention to diffusion within the multi-national company. A second theme is the best practice role of teams which appear to hold more capacity for nimbleness and less resistance in larger, global companies. These units may informally be inclusive without much attention to the ways they address diversity and multi-culturalism. More needs to be researched on how these diverse teams become especially flexible in their decision making.

A cluster of studies reports on specific Human Resource practices. This research topic includes issues of employee fair treatment, particularly when change strategies mean reduction of staff. More data is needed on contextual dynamics of loss from the perspective of the workforce.

As attention to change results has increased, research has also expanded around topics of success, development and performance. More than 65 research studies were published in the past 7 years (2005-12). One study theme suggests that because organizations and workers have faced so many rounds of change, there's the need to look at lessons to avoid pitfalls, particularly worker and manager turnover during the intense phases of redesign activities.

A relevant topic for this course focuses on local markets and country cultural values for plans to ensure that local and headquarter expectations are similar or compatible. Several case studies report on the dynamics of China and Brazil workforces and how change played against differences of high context and status formalities, when led by low context and more informal managers, from USA or UK. The results of these case studies suggest additional management time and resources needed for communication at initial stages of change planning.