Further Thoughts on Change
Sirkin's article on change is the latest of an excellent series highlighted in past issues of QUICK Update.
- September 2003—Hamel showed us that revolutionary change can happen in "lightening-quick evolutionary steps-with no surprises, no convulsive reorganizations, no colossal write-offs, and no indiscriminate, across-the-board layoffs in resilient organizations.
- October 2003—Rosenberg highlights eight organizational "rings" to drive change: A clear vision; Patterns in the external environment that affect the organization; Cycles in the external environment that affect the organization; Passion in your people; Focus in your people; Balance in your people; a Learning process and a Support process.
- December 2004—Locke identifies four bonus schemes that can help drive change:
- Stretch goals with bonuses for success
- Multiple goal levels with multiple bonus levels
- A linear system
- Motivate by goals but pay for performance
- February 2004—Abrahamson counseled against Repetitive Change Syndrome, which has three components: initiative overload; change-related chaos and employee burnout.
- April 2004—O'Reilly showed that "ambidextrous organizations" are most successful at launching breakthrough products and services. There, change teams were organized as structurally independent units, each having its own processes, structures, and cultures but integrated into the existing senior management hierarchy.
Overall, our favorite articles remain one highlighting reasons that change initiatives fail (Lucey; Management Services, Summer 2005) and one indicating the required conditions for successful change (Roberto, MIT Review, Summer 2005). These articles are summarized below.
Reasons that Change Initiatives Fail
Plan Phase
- Lack of clear executive vision and leadership
- Lack of effective communication strategy
- Failure to create a sense of urgency
- Poor consultation with all stakeholders
- Failure to recognize company history and culture
- Change ambition outstripping reality
Do Phase
- Absence of dedicated and fully resourced implementation team
- Lack of structured methodology and project management
- Failure to plan and manage quick wins
- Failure to fully mobilize change champions
- Lack of sympathetic HR policies
- Using an outsider to transact the change
Check Phase
- Failure to monitor and evaluate the outcome
- Failure to continually recognize and celebrate success
- Failure to engage employees
Conditions for Successful Change
Prior Enablers
- Charter—Clarify and quantify the initiative's purpose, define scope, design how people will work with one another on the program.
- Learning—Define how leaders develop, test and refine ideas through experimentation before full-scale rollout.
- Mobilization—Design symbolism, metaphors and compelling stories to engage hearts and minds to build commitment to the project.
- Realignment—Create a series of activities to redefine roles and reporting relationships as well as new approaches to monitoring, measurement and compensation.
Enabling Processes
- Structure—Reporting relationships, monitoring and control systems, and reward and punishment systems.
- Procedure—Perceptions of procedural fairness and legitimacy as the new processes and systems are introduced.
- Emotion—Fears must be allayed while enthusiasm is aroused. How people come to grips with their new roles and responsibilities.
Of course, most of these are the very "soft" issues that Sirkin et al. refer to—the ones that underlie effective change once the "hard" issues are taken care of.
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