Manager's Guide to Change Management

A Manager’s Guide to Change Management

Introduction

The rapid change in the environmental factors such as competitions and technologies calls for a need to change. The main concept of this article will focus on the “planned change efforts”, which refers to series of tasks to be completed through the change management process. In order to better understand change management, the article will be separated into two sections, which are “the what” and “the how”. “The what” relates to the targets of change or the organizational components whereas “the how” refers to the different phases in the change management process. For the purpose of this article, the change management process model consists of eight phases:

1.  Form coalition and create dissatisfaction
2.  Business objective and build the coalition
3. Research organizational issues involved
4. Feedback and diagnose the problem
5. Define organizational objectives and redesign
6. Plan the change(s) to be implemented
7. Implement the changes (“intervention”)
8. Evaluate, sustain, and embed learning

 The objectives of such change efforts are to leave the business with stronger problem solving ability as well as achieving the business objective. In order to accomplish these objectives, it is also important to keep in mind of these several key success factors:

• Creating dissatisfaction and commitment to the change
• Getting to the root causes and problems
• Revision of underlying values and norms that block progress
• Achieving congruence between organizational components
• Selecting and preparing employees to perform in the new scheme
• Conducting the process as to prevent regression to past behaviors.

What is Change Management?

Before moving forward to better understanding “the what” and “the how”, we must first define what is change management. Change management is a planned process or tools that can be incorporated into an organization, departments, teams, and individuals or in another word, the organizational components (“the what”), in order to make sure of a successful transition that will result in an adoption or the realization of change. It has become a continuous effort for an organization to keep adapting and changing to survive both externally and internally.

Types of Organizational Change

Evolutionary Change 

There are two types of change, which are evolutionary and planned change. This article will focus on the planned change, however, it is also important to understand the evolutionary change as well. The evolutionary change involves implementing actions on individual and gradually affects the organization then becomes part of the culture. With the involvement of people and effective leadership to manage such change, organization are more likely to improve without the need of planned change. It is also important to keep in mind that not everyone may understand the change as it is implemented and the change may not lead the organization to reach its objectives.

Planned Change

1. Transactional

Transactional change, unlike evolutionary change, is a process of implementing constructive changes to attain strategic objectives. Transactional change focuses on trying to make an organization run smoothly by changing or shifting functions in an organization such as restructuring, redesigning of a task, or performance management systems. However, when one component changes, it may not fit well with the rest of the organization causing inconsistent and difficulty in an organization. As Jay Galbraith talked about in “The Star Model”, leaders must keep in mind the importance of alignment of strategy with structure.

1. Transformational

Transformational change usually takes into account the components of the transactional change. It includes a change in the organizational culture that is implemented over a period of time. The process is often triggered by a major shift in the external environment that requires a need of change to the strategy, leadership or culture of the organization. In the real world, these changes overlap and the future environment is unknown. The implemented changes will be enacted over a period of time, which makes it crucial for the management to be transparent and plan effectively.

Organizational Components or the Targets of Change (“The What”)

In order to plan effectively, we must first understand “the what” or the organizational components that can be changed in an organization. According to the Burke and Litwin “Causal Model of Organizational Performance and Change”, there are seven components that can be the targets of change:

• Strategy
• Leadership
• Structure
• Management practices
• Systems
• Tasks and individual skills
• Individual needs and values.

When one of these seven component changes, it will indirectly affect the culture, climate, and the motivation of the organization. It is also crucial to understand that organizations are affected by both external environment and individual and organizational performance where the external acts as inputs that goes through an organization, which leads to an output of the performance. These components should be aligned with each other in order to implement an effective change. With the complexity in measuring the corresponding relationship between these components, it is valuable to understand the various phases to take in order to implement changes and prevent future problems.

Change Management Process (“The How”)

The change management process must be personalized according to the situation and actively managed. It is also crucial to point out that even though the model is divided into phases, it doesn’t mean that it has to go in such order or that the phases can’t be repeated. For example, when an organization receives feedbacks, it can always go back to do more research before proceeding to any other phases. The change management process allows an organization to be able to look at the underlying problems and fix it without the risk of shortcuts.

The planned change efforts also put into play the “double-loop learning” mentioned by Chris Argyris in an article called “Teach Smart People How to Learn”. The double-loop learning emphasize on being able to recognize a problem then change its governing variables such as values, motives, norms that are normally taken for granted. These governing variables are much more complex to modify. However, with double-loop learning and having an organization that can solve problems by understanding the underlying assumptions, it will allow the organization to achieve higher capability in solving future problems.