LEADING CHANGE: THREE THINGS EXECUTIVES MUST DO

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Leading change is difficult.  Consider the modern workplace.  In executive circles, leaders often talk about employees who are not on-board, resist change, and are reluctant to try new things.  And among employee ranks, hallway conversations often center around whether or not executives really know what they're doing and whether the newest change initiative is just a passing fad.  Actually, these reactions are reasonable, given the pace that change is occurring in most of our organizations.

Consider the point made by the following chart:

THE PACE OF CHANGE
If human history were compressed into a 50 year timeline . . .

 In today’s business climate, change happens fast, and the pace is accelerating.  No wonder adapting to change is hard.  What, then, is sound practical advice for leaders who are responsible for implementing organizational change initiatives? 

There are a number of change-related theories and models that provide guidance to change leaders.  However, they can be confusing and even provide conflicting suggestions. 
In a comprehensive review of change-related theories and models several years ago, two prominent authors concluded that differences among the models and theories of change were greater than any similarities (Porras and Robertson, 1992).

However, these authors also noted that the models and theories had a common theme: all of them described the importance of establishing the right organizational conditions or climate in an organization, so that successful change can take place.  That is, they saw that the models and theories, in one way or another, each stressed the importance of establishing three things presumed essential for a successful change process.  These included:

1. Helping People Recognize and Understand the Need for Change
   This includes making people aware of external environmental factors that are pressuring an organization to change (e.g., societal, technological, economic, environmental, or political/regulatory); recognizing important organizational problems (e.g., poor profitability, lack of competitiveness, poor communication, low quality, etc.); and measuring dissatisfaction with the status quo and/or creating a more desirable or compelling vision of the future.
2. Creating Opportunities for Involvement and Participation
   Organization members must be the key source of energy for the change process.  When people are given a significant role in designing a change, the change will be accepted more readily and resistance to it will be minimized. 
3. Instilling a Willingness for Doing Things in New Ways
   This involves forging a willingness among employees to experiment with new behaviors and approaches, an openness to learning, risk-taking, and an ability to disengage from the past.  Leaders need to create opportunities so that this can happen, and create an environment where it is “safe” to practice.  It requires that organization members learn how to do things differently, not just understand that something different needs to be done.

What does this mean on a practical level?  Over the last six years, MDA Consulting Group’s research into the process of successful organizational change has confirmed that the more people understand about the change, are involved with it, and can experiment because of it, the more they report commitment to, interest in, optimism about, and confidence that change plans and processes will be successful.

At MDA, we looked at specific behaviors and concrete activities that are systematically related to establishing these change conditions.  Below is a sampling of our research findings. If executives and other change leaders focus on doing the following things, we believe their ability to implement successful and lasting change in their organization will be significantly strengthened.

Behaviors and Activities that Create the Right Conditions for Organizational Change

Recognizing and Understanding the Need for Change

1. Teaching people about the changing needs of customers.
2. Helping people learn about practices that cost the organization money and time.
3. Helping people learn about how the competition does things differently.
4. Helping people learn about the needs and opinions of employees.
5. Helping people see support for change among their peers and coworkers.

Creating Opportunities for Involvement and Participation

1. Involving people in change project-planning meetings, including deciding how change 
   would happen in their unit.
2. Appointing people to serve on teams or committees formed to affect change.
3. Involving people in creating a new vision for their department or work group.
4. Inviting people to meetings where change plans are reviewed and discussed.
5. Soliciting ideas and opinions that are listened to, accepted and make a difference.

Willingness to Experiment with Change

1. Reinforcing people for taking new and different approaches.
2. Discussing new ways of doing things with others.
3. Having a clearly laid out plan in place for the project.
4. Expecting managers to explain the change process to their staff.
5. Modeling new ways of doing things the organization values.

This seems straightforward, but given the lack of time most executives have, it is just not that easy.  Nonetheless, strong leadership from executives leading any organizational change may mean ensuring that these things happen. 

In all of our studies, strong leadership was found to be critical to successful large-scale change.  People reported that they wanted to hear the CEO and senior executives describe their vision and goals for the change process, and communicate their support for new ideas and different ways of doing things.  After all, it is the action of top management that commits an organization to a change effort.  Top management decides when to initiate change, what the change should be, how it should be implemented, who should be involved, and who should be responsible for organizing and directing the change process.

Designing change is hard.  Implementing change successfully is harder.  If you would like to discuss designing and implementing change in your organization, contact MDA Consulting Group.

If You Want to Read More

Beckhard, R., & Harris, R. T. (1987). Organizational transitions (2nd ed.). Reading, MA:  Addison-Wesley.

Kotter, J.P. (1996).  Leading change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Lawler, E. E. (1992). The ultimate advantage: Creating the high-involvement organization.
 San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mohrman, A. M., Mohrman, S. A., Ledford, G. E., Cummings, T. G., & Lawler, E. E. (1991).
Large scale organizational change. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Nadler, D. A. (1998). Champions of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass..

Porras, J. I., & Robertson, P. J. (1992). Organizational development: Theory, practice, and
research. In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 719-822). Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.

Worley, C.G., Hitchin, D.E., & Ross, W.L. (1996). Integrated strategic change. Reading, MA:
 Addison-Wesley.