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Presentation Question PREMISE: Change is inevitable. Our organization is currently experiencing a great deal of change (people, process and policy) not unlike many organizations.

Question 1) Explain what tools and techniques you would use to ensure that staff (both union and non-union) embraces the change.

Understanding Change

The Change Curve – This powerful model describes the stages of personal transition involved in most organizational change. It will help you understand how people will react to the changes, and so you can better plan how to support them through the process.

Lewin's Change Management Model – This describes how you generally have to "break up" the current state of things in order to make improvements, using the concept of "unfreeze – change – refreeze". Our article shows the different things you need to do at each stage to support those impacted.

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Planning Change

McKinsey 7S Framework –This well-known tool helps you to understand the relationship between seven "hard" and "soft" aspects of organizations.

Hard Elements

Strategy Structure Systems

Soft Elements

Shared Values Skills Style Staff

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SIPOC Diagrams – A comprehensive tool for checking the impact of a proposed change on your suppliers, inputs, processes, outputs and customers,

Implementing Change

Kotter's 8-Step Change Model – The core set of change management activities that need to be done to effect change, and make it stick in the long term.

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Training Needs Assessment – Change projects almost always need people to learn new skills. A training needs assessment is a structured way of ensuring that the right people are given the right training at the right time.

Communicating Change

Stakeholder Analysis – A formal method for identifying, prioritizing and understanding your project's stakeholders.

Stakeholder Management – A process for planning your stakeholder communications to ensure that you give the right people the right message at the right time to get the support you need for your project.

Mission Statements and Visions Statements – Mission and vision statements are a well-structured way of helping you to communicate what the change is intended to achieve, and to motivate your stakeholders with an inspiring, shared vision of the future.

Question 2) How would you deal with any resistance to change?

The Formula for Change was created by Richard Beckhard and David Gleicher, refined by Kathie Dannemiller and is sometimes called Gleicher's Formula. This formula provides a model to assess the relative strengths affecting the likely success or otherwise of organisational change programs.

D x V x F > R

Three factors must be present for meaningful organizational change to take place. These factors are: D = Dissatisfaction with how things are now; V = Vision of what is possible; F = First, concrete steps that can be taken towards the vision;

If the product of these three factors is greater than R = Resistance,

then change is possible. Because D, V, and F are multiplied, if anyone is absent or low, then the product will be low and therefore not capable of overcoming the resistance.

To ensure a successful change it is necessary to use influence and strategic thinking in order to create vision and identify those crucial, early steps towards it. In addition, the organization must recognize and accept the dissatisfaction that exists by communicating industry trends, leadership ideas, best practice and competitive analysis to identify the necessity for change.

Employee Resistance to Change – Why?

Some of these reasons for employee resistance may include:

belief that the change initiative is a temporary fad belief that fellow employees or managers are incompetent loss of authority or control loss of status or social standing lack of faith in their ability to learn new skills

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feeling of change overload (too much too soon) lack of trust in or dislike of managers loss of job security loss of family or personal time feeling that the organization is not entitled to the extra effort

Reactions to Organizational Change

Where do your change recipients sit?

Enthusiasts

These change recipients are intrinsically wedded to the change idea. They may agree

dispassionately that the change will be of benefit to the organization, or they may

stand to receive some personal gain from the change, such as a guarantee of job

security, more status or a higher salary. Enthusiasts will use opportunities to broadcast

approval for the change and will try to convince others of its merits.

Followers

Followers range from those that are generally compliant, wishing to take the path of

least resistance, to those that are initially reticent to adapt, but eventually do so once

they accept the inevitability of the change. These change recipients will do what is

required, but no more. Objectors

Objectors

Objectors will display their resistance to change whenever the opportunity arises. They

may disrupt meetings, not attend training, take unapproved leave and refuse to carry

out instructions. Objectors will continue to use superseded systems and processes

when others are taking up the new ways of doing things. In a unionized environment,

resistance can take the form of strikes, lockouts, "work to rule", legal challenges and

boycotts.

Underground

Change recipients working for the underground have solid motivations for not making

their resistance public. They may fear direct punishment, such as termination or fines,

or more personal costs, such as ridicule or loss of status and authority. Managers who

are against the change but need to be seen to be in support of it are prime candidates

for promoting underground resistance.

What can you do now? One thing you can do in managing resistance is work with your key employees to construct a Force Field analysis diagram using Kurt Lewin's Force Field Analysis technique. This will give you a powerful indication of where you will need to devote your energies.

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Example of a Force Field analysis diagram

Tips for Overcoming Resistance to Change

Treating the forces against change is a more productive use of resources than simply reinforcing the forces for change. Choose the most powerful of the restraining forces and devote time and energy to weakening these.

Think of how you could apply the drivers for change you identified in your analysis to either weakening or eliminating an opposing force.

Show the fiercest resisters what's in it for them. Appeal to them either in terms of personal gain (such as status, salary bonus, recognition, and so on) or loss avoided (such as financial loss or job outplacement prevented).

Get customers or suppliers to explain to change resisters face to face how the current situation disadvantages them in concrete terms.

Put resisters on teams that allow them to play some decision-making part in the change process, however small.

Defuse political power plays amongst managers and other employees by conducting broad-based meetings where goals and tactics are openly discussed and introduce processes that leave little room for individual discretion.

Endeavor to look at the world through the eyes of the change resister. Listen openly and honestly to what they are trying to say. Examine your own basic beliefs and assumptions. Through engaging resisters, be prepared to change yourself.

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Question 3) What in your opinion are the most important competencies and behaviours that management staff need to elicit to make a change initiative successful.

Five tips for: Building organizational change management competency

1. Treat it as a project 2. Treat it as a change 3. Utilize a holistic strategy 4. Dedicate a team 5. Secure sponsorship

1. Treat it as a project

To successfully build an organizational competency – not just change management competency but any organizational competency – it is critical to view this work as a project. The project needs structure. It needs someone to manage the project. And it needs a team to evaluate, design and deploy the approach. “Change management deployment” should be viewed as and managed as a project.

Prosci has developed the Enterprise Change Management Deployment Process with a set of steps for designing a deployment effort. Prosci’s ECM Deployment Process is shown below.

Prosci's ECM Deployment Process

2. Treat it as a change

Prosci’s ADKAR Model describes five key building blocks of any successful change – Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement. In the change management competency building context, this would translate as:

Awareness of the need for change management Desire to participate and support change management Knowledge on how to apply change management Ability to implement required change management skills and behaviors Reinforcement to sustain change management application

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3. Utilize a holistic strategy

Building an organizational competency to manage change does not occur by simply training some people. It does not happen simply by weaving change management activities into a project lifecycle. To be successful, a holistic and structured approach much be used. Prosci’s research indicates five strategic areas that must be leveraged to build the organizational change management competency. The image below shows Prosci’s ECM Strategy Map:

4. Dedicate a team

Effective teams are representative of the organization and how changes occur in the organization. It is not adequate to simply have a small team of specialists in one functional area. Prosci's research shows that change management should have a presence in Human Resources, the Project Management Office and in business functions or units that cause change (such as IT or a Process Improvement group). The lines of business should also be involved, as managers and supervisors throughout the organization will also be impacted.

5. Secure sponsorship

Although sponsorship is the last in our five tips, it is certainly number one in terms of impact on success. Building the organizational competency – becoming flexible and durable as an organization – requires considerable work and causes considerable change. It impacts how projects are conceived and launched. It impacts how project teams move forward in their work. It impacts how senior leaders, middle managers, front-line supervisors and employees see themselves in relation to change and how they behave. With this size of enterprise-wide effort impacting nearly the entire employee base, sponsorship must be effective, active, engaged and well-positioned.