|
A few questions:
- how many changes are happening in your organisation currently?
- how many change initiatives have there been during the past 5 years?
- what proportion of these have been completed?
- how many have been successful?
The presence of continual change is now an acknowledged aspect of organisational life, and ‘managing change' is recognised as an essential skill of any senior manager. Yet achieving effective change is still all too infrequent an occurrence; and leading an organisation successfully through major change remains an elusive talent.
Research undertaken over the past 6 years at Cass Business School found that there was a lack of organisational learning about change management at senior levels: learning was captured mostly at an individual level. Associated with this was an inability to link strategic thinking with action on the part of senior managers – to define what people at operational / customer level should do differently as a result of a particular strategy. The result was a general lack of confidence in the leadership of change: senior managers were not perceived by employees as being aware of employee issues. There was cynicism about organisation-wide change initiatives: many were not perceived as being relevant locally, and few were completed before the launch of the next one. People wanted to be able to finish a change project and do it well, rather than be diverted by the next initiative.
The number of change initiatives can overwhelm people. In a large multi-Divisional organisation there can be hundreds of changes happening at any one time – corporate, divisional and local – and the chances are that some will clash.
Perhaps one of the most useful perspectives is to consider change from an individual's point of view. ‘People resist change' is a much-quoted phrase – but it's not the real issue. It is uncertainty and ambiguity that people resist – and it's these aspects of change that cause concern. We all try to make sense of what's happening, and to work out its impact on us personally. If a change doesn't make sense to us – if we can't see the benefit - or we can't understand what we need to do differently, we are likely to either ignore or resist it. And it's the local context that is most relevant to individuals.
However, if a change resonates with us – it meets a real problem, improves service to customers, can be understood and applied in our local context – then we are likely not to resist, but to become advocates. We will invest energy into helping make the initiative successful.
The ability to understand how others might perceive change is arguably one of the most important skills in leading organisations. The Cass research identified three important capabilities to manage transitional change:
-
work with ambiguity – accept that change is complex, uncertain and evokes powerful emotions. It is OK not to have all the answers – particularly in organisations which embrace learning (it's harder when the culture is such that leaders expect or are expected to have the answers, to be in control)
-
make time for sense making – transitions are complex, people need to find their way through the uncertainty. It takes time for people to make sense of change – leaders need to have the confidence to create the space for this
-
invest in relationships – conversations are key: take time to listen and explore the opinions, views and concerns of others. Value differences, consider things from different angles – fundamental change will only be embedded if the people in an organisation understand and choose to accept it. Attempts to steamroller change will not achieve this.
And these apply at every level in the organisation. Helping people to understand and work out the implications locally and personally is the real requirement in implementing effective change in an organisation. |
