Managing Change - Coceptual Frameworks and Resistance

LO1

Managing Change

Coceptual Frameworks

And

Resistance

Explain the role of management in the change process

PC (a) the role of management in the change process

PC (b) the different conceptual frameworks used in the analysis of change

PC (c) the difficulties inherent in the role

PC (d) an explanation of what can be done to overcome resistance to change

Managing change will be more successful if management apply some simple things. Change management involves thoughtful planning and sensitive implementation, and above all, consultation with, and involvement of, the people affected by the changes. If you force change on people normally problems arise. Change must be realistic, achievable and measurable. Before starting change, the organisation needs to ask certain questions:

* What do we want to achieve with this change, why, and how will we know that the change has been achieved?

* Who is affected by this change, and how will they react to it?

* How much of this change can we achieve ourselves, and what parts of the change do we need help with?

An organisation must not sell change to people as a way of receiving 'agreement' and implementation. 'Selling' change to people is not a suitable strategy for success, unless your aim is to be bitten on the bum at some time in the future when you least expect it. When people listen to a management high-up 'selling' them a change, decent people will generally smile and appear to agree, but quietly to themselves, they're thinking, "No way, if you think I'm standing for that you've another think coming..." Instead, change needs to be understood and managed in a way that people can cope effectively with it. Change can be unsettling, so the manager logically needs to be a settling influence.

Check that people affected by the change agree with, or at least understand, the need for change, and have a chance to decide how the change will be managed, and to be involved in the planning and implementation of the change. Use face-to-face communications to handle sensitive aspects of organisational change. Managers need to communicate face-to-face with their people too if they are helping you manage an organizational change. Email and written notices are extremely weak at conveying and developing understanding.

Involving and informing people also creates opportunities for others to participate in planning and implementing the changes, which lightens your burden, spreads the organisational load, and creates a sense of ownership and familiarity among the people affected.

For organizational change that entails new actions, objectives and processes for a group or team of people, use workshops to achieve understanding, involvement, plans, measurable aims, actions and commitment. Encourage your management team to use workshops with their people too if they are helping you to manage the change. Workshops combine training, development, team-building, communications, motivation and planning. Participation and involvement of staff increases the sense of ownership and empowerment, and facilitates the development of organisations and individuals.

Workshops are effective in managing change and achieving improvement, and particularly the creation of initiatives, plans, process and actions to achieve particular business and organisational aims. Workshops are also great for breaking down barriers, improving communications inside and outside of departments, and integrating staff after acquisition or merger. The best and most constructive motivational team-building format is a workshop, or better still series of workshops, focusing on the people's key priorities and personal responsibilities/interest areas, which hopefully will strongly overlap with business and departmental aims too. Workshop facilitation by a team leader or manager develops leadership, and workshops achieve strong focus on business aims among team members.

You should even apply these principles to very tough change like making people redundant, closures and integrating merged or acquired organizations. Bad news needs even more careful management than routine change. Hiding behind memos and middle managers will make matters worse. Consulting with people, and helping them to understand does not weaken your position - it strengthens it. Leaders who fail to consult and involve their people in managing bad news are perceived as weak and lacking in integrity. Treat people with humanity and respect and they will reciprocate.

Be mindful that the chief insecurity of most staff is change itself. Senior managers and directors responsible for managing organizational change do not, as a rule, fear change - they generally thrive on it. So remember that people do not relish change, they find it deeply disturbing and threatening. People's fear of change is as great as your own fear of failure.

The employee does not have a responsibility to manage change - the employee's responsibility is no other than to do their best, which is different for every person and depends on a wide variety of factors (health, maturity, stability, experience, personality, motivation, etc). Responsibility for managing change is with management and executives of the organisation - they must manage the change in a way that employees can cope with it. The manager has a responsibility to facilitate and enable change, and all that is implied within that statement, especially to understand the situation from an objective standpoint (to 'step back', and be non-judgemental), and then to help people understand reasons, aims, and ways of responding positively according to employees' own situations and capabilities. Increasingly the manager's role is to interpret, communicate and enable - not to instruct and impose, which nobody really responds to well.

Whenever an organization imposes new things on people there will be difficulties. Participation, involvement and open, early, full communication are the important factors.

Staff surveys are a helpful way to repair damage and mistrust among staff - provided you allow people to complete them anonymously, and provided you publish and act on the findings.

Management

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