Let's do it the Kotter's way....

Ok let us recap what we have covered earlier on the change management program.

Firstly, we talked about the change, the need for change and the change management program and how organization’s survival depends, in large part, on being able to successfully navigate changes.

Secondly, we also touched briefly on Kotter’s 8-Step “checklist” for managing organisational change, the SPPs and its impacts, change readiness and the resistance to change.

Moving forward as we go along, we will know that managing organizational change will be more successful if we have taken into cognizance all the above principles. In that respect, achieving personal change will be more successful too if we use the same approach where relevant. Change management entails thoughtful planning and sensitive implementation, and above all, consultation with, and involvement of, the people affected by the changes.

If we force change on people normally problems arise. Change must be realistic, achievable and measurable. Before starting organizational change, ask ourselves: 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? Having known all the cornerstone principle of change, it’s only worthwhile to go into detail and try to appreciate what Kotter’s 8-Step “checklist” for managing organisational change is.

John Kotter (See pic) says that the change process takes time and goes through several different phases in a successful change effort and that a mistake made during any phase of the change effort can have a negative impact on the organization [Kotter, John P. (1995). Why Transformation Efforts Fail? Cambridge: Harvard Business Review: pp. 59-67]. Kotter outlines an eight step process (See below) to help organizations transform. His model is useful in understanding that the change process takes time and is not something that happens overnight. It is essential for program leaders and communications staff to understand that the steps needed to support any transformation initiative take place during all phase of our initiative.

1. Establish a sense of urgency

This is key to setting the right "mood" for change, a sense of urgency works wonders specially if we can couple them with reachable short term goals designed to grab visible low hanging fruit. This is the fuel on which change runs.

2. Create the guiding coalition

Careful selection of indivuals here can go a long way in providing the continual energy for change to happen. People who are recognised as "influencers" by their colleauges can be of great value.

3. Develop a Vision and Strategy

Develop something but you are going to keep your eyes open to develop the vision and make corrections to the strategy. This allows for continual course correction which is vital, often we really don't know enough at the beginning so developing the vision and stragegy as learning happens is crucial to improving value.

4.Communicate the Change Vision

This is the key role of the Change Agent. Communicating the vision to everyone all the time makes it happen.... as people start seeing the end result more clearly in their imagination they start moving towards it. A good thing is to keep your eyes open for the non-believers and make them see that change is going to happen with or without them.

5.Empower employees for broad-based action

Sometimes involving only a few people tends to create island of influence, everyone seems to think that the change is the responsibility of a few and they go about in a business as usual manner. So the more the people involved the more certain that change is going to happen

6.Generate short-term wins

This is quite difficult to determine. Failure to do this could result on failure of the entire initiative. The trick is to identify short-term wins that everyone will recognise as adding values, one short term win can lead to another and before you know it change is well on its way.

7. Consolidate gains and produce more change

This is like mountain climbing, every time you reach higher you put a stake into the mountain and it allows you to stand on it and reach higher.

8.Anchor new approaches in the culture

Culture is a way of life, the change results can be anchored into the culture by establishing periodic reviews or including agenda items into existing review structures, KPIs, or other similar tools that go in building a culture.

Finally doing it at the end of each process is very important, I think that all of them are required in its orderly manner and its not about one being more important than the other, the important thing is to observe, learn and keep continuously correcting the course and nudging people in the right direction.

In change there is no direct cause and effect, one action in some place leads to many results in others.....Think about it for now....

Till then, have a wonderful day.

The SPPs and resistance to change...

Good morning everyone where ever you are...

To get our morning on the upbeat mode, let’s continue from where we left off. Before we can even begin to talk and discuss the application of Kotter’s widely used 8-Step “checklist” for managing organisational change, it is pertinent to start recognizing and deal with a term called “Strategic Pressure Points” and for the sake of saving some typing, we call it SPPs. SPPs are the essentially tool to identify the need for change in an organisation. It can be liken to a barometer to measure the air pressure as well as wind direction. In the context of change, SPPs will be able to tell us whether any change is likely going to take place, in what form and from which angle it is coming from. It works just as good as the real wind barometer in enabling us to prepare for storms or hurricanes. Except that what SPPs measure is less fatal to human.

Let’s use the barometer and the storm analogy once again. Now that we know how barometer works (not that you don’t before reading this Blog..), we may want to go a step further. Questions like what causes the storm, what causes the low and high pressure of air, what is the factor that drive the turbulence of air to form, etc. would be very essential for people with inquisitive minds like we all do. So under change management, we can also identify some of the key change drivers that create the SPPs.Briefly, some of the key change drivers that create SPPs include: -

• Environmental factors
• Marketplace factors
• Technology
• Customer needs
• Business diversification
• Expansion
• Need for increased profitability
• Acquisition of new capabilities
• Retention or acquisition of intellectual capital

Now, basically there are 5 characteristics of SPPs that may have an impact into every organization as follows: -

• Business Strategy - the way the organization had chosen to pursue and maintain competetive advantage.
• Organization Structure - the way the oganization divides and organizes work.
• Organizational Capabalities - the skills and capabilities of the workforce that, collectively, enable it to deliver its products or services.
• Culture - the beliefs, values, and behaviours that describe the organization's culture.
• Coordinating Systems - the procedures and methods that enable an organization to do its work efficiently and effectively.

In all, effective change leaders use their analysis of the impact of SPPs in several ways. Once the impact of change is understood, change leaders can begin to diagnose the organisation’s change readiness.

Questions like are people ready and willing to change? Are they able to carry out the transformation and deliver its intended outcomes? Are the leaders prepared and capable of leading the transformation, individually and collectively? Is our own organisation prepared for the extent of the change required? Accurate answers to these questions are essential to determining the awareness strategy and gaining agreement to specific changes.

Effective change leaders understand that individuals assimilate change at different rates. Change overload results when people are required to absorb too much large-scale change in relatively short period of time. Understanding the organisation’s level of change readiness provides insight into what it takes to plan and manage change successfully.

People willingness to change determines how quickly and thoroughly a team or organization can move forward. Change leaders must consider several areas when assessing change readiness.

• The organization’s adaptability
• Understanding the need for change and sense of urgency
• Alignment of senior leaders
• Workforce’s change management skills
• Obstacles to successful change
• Clarifying change management roles
• How well the organization has managed prior change efforts, including planning and communication activities

Change leaders should complete this readiness assessment prior to introducing a specific change. This tool is intended as a general assessment of change readiness as perceived by a change leader. The level of readiness is helpful to the extent that the change leader accurately understands the strengths of these components as they may be perceived by employees at all levels of the organization.

As such, understanding how our stakeholders will likely respond to change is the very first step in preparing to deal with intellectual and emotional reactions to change. When we embark on the journey of organizational change we will undoubtedly encounter resistance. It is the inevitable friction between where we want to go and where the stakeholders are. It is the result of many things but one thing is for sure, if we don't deal with it? It will deal with us. In summary, there are certain conditions that create resistance to change. It is therefore crucial to understand these situations and avoid them. As the rule of thumb, resistance is greatest when:

• Change is unexpected and unexplained
• Expectations are significantly disrupted
• Change in the form of new behaviors or responsibilities are imposed without adequate explanation
• Stakeholder feedback about concerns are ignored

The “desire” to support change rests at a much deeper personal level and is directly related to each individual understanding what the change means to them – not the team, not the division or the organization.

The final analysis to me is that initially, the inertia of change that is hard to overcome. Like pushing a car out of gas; very difficult at first then much easier once you get going. But once you acquire the right techniques and skills, it would not be that hard anymore. What perceived to be difficult thing is just a mind game, a mental blocker and those are intangibles. Think about it..

In future columns, I will write in greater detail about Kotter’s 8-Step “checklist” for managing organisational change. Until then, remember, the world is always changing and so should you.

Change management anyone?

It’s been a hectic week for me. Back to back Board meetings and few other outstanding works that needs equal attention as their deadlines have passed earlier. Call it bad planning if you want. But I think I’m the kind of guy who work best under pressure.. or so I thought.

Anyway as promised, I will once again share with you on change management program. To begin to understand change management, first we need to know what it means. There are many different definitions of change management if you care to google in the net. However, for the purpose of this Blog, change management can be defined as the controlled transformation of an organization from its current operational state to a future operational state.

There are currently at least two schools of thought on change and change management. The first school of thought is based on Lewin’s Three Stage Model. The Three Stage Model uses the concept of Unfreeze, Change, Refreeze, which basically has the Organization moving from stability (Unfreeze from status quo) through change back to stability (new status quo).(See link on Lewin’s Three Stage Model for more information on the Three Stage Model).

The second school of thought, is as articulated by Professor John Kotter (named by BusinessWeek magazine, in a poll of US managers, as ‘The Number 1 leadership and change guru’). Professor Kotter (who teaches Leadership at Harvard Business School) has made it his business to study both success and failure in change initiatives in business. Kotter developed a list of factors that he believes lead to successful changes, and those that lead to failure. He has devised an 8 step method where the first four steps focus on de-freezing the organization, the next three steps make the change happen, and the last step re-freezes the organization with a new culture. When people need to make big changes significantly and effectively, he says that this goes best if the 8 steps happen in order.

Here are the eight steps summarised from Leading Change by John P. Kotter:-

1) Create a sense of urgency

2) Put together a strong enough team to direct the process

3) Create an appropriate vision

4) Communicate that vision broadly

5) Empower employees to act on the vision

6) Produce sufficient short-term results to give their efforts credibility

7) Build momentum and use that momentum to tackle tougher change problems

8) Anchor the new behaviour in the organisational culture

Basically, he suggests that to ignore any of the eight stages will likely lead to failure in any change process. In other words, his message is simple:

1) To lead change, you need to follow each of the steps

2) Skip a stage and you will reduce your chances of success

Will speak of these in more details soon. Until then have a productive weekend.

Why organisational change is inevitable?

Ok. I’m back and I am going to share with you my second update.

For everyone’s information, I’ve attended a 3-day class on Leading Organisational Change (“LOC”) module from March 16 – 18, 2009 (LOC -14) at the ULC as part of the UEM-MBL program. In the short 3 days, I’ve met some new faces within the UEM Group family that I’ve never met before. Indeed, they were just awesome and it’s been a great honor to be in their group and to be able to work with them. The teamwork was just great and the level of competitiveness amongst the group when it comes to class assignments was so intense at times… I remember that I had to skip the coffee breaks just to make sure that we complete our class presentation on time. But needless to say, it worth the sacrifices.

Over the 3 days, I learnt about change and the change management issues surrounding an organization. Topics covered are:-

1) Understanding the need for change;
2) Dealing with resistance to change;
3) Leading change initiatives;
4) Creating a change-management plan; and
5) Learning from change.

Speaking of change management, I think it is now one of the most important disciplines of today’s business environment. As the forces of external factors continuously evolve around us, businesses must keep ahead of the pace or be left behind. I know that change within organizations has always been around, but the pace of change has somehow become more prominent in the last few decades. During the LOC program, we were introduced with numerous factors that force organizations to change; these include external factors like global economic downturn, changing in political landscape (more apparent in Malaysia now after the general election), global competition and technological advances, or internal factors like changing in the need for expansion drive, the need to increase profitability (as in the case of UEM Group), or change in senior management. Regulation, in particular, is the most influential. With the stroke of a pen, you can change a whole industry’s nature and many companies facing difficulties to adapt. One classic case is the long unresolved issues on the establishment of the Asean Free Trade Area (AFTA) and how the local car manufacturers are the direct “victims” of the threat of AFTA. The whole scenario and the playing field have changed overnight. They know that they have to come out with their own remedies to change in order to face AFTA as they know that nobody can escape from liberalization of car industry.

In a nutshell, change is inevitable in today business, so organizations that can handle change have a competitive advantage over their competitors. I found out from the 3-day program that the life expectancy of an organisation will be fast declining if they are not ready to change. That was very surprising. I was taught that corporations were immortal and humans were mortal. I know I was wrong.

Therefore, change management is seen as a permanent business function to improve efficiency and keep organizations adaptable to the competitive world. However, in realizing successful change in today's competitive environment, it requires thoughtful systematic and effective planning so as to provide a structured approach to change that allows organizations to discover change opportunities and better manage change initiatives.

I will be back with more insights on change..