Lecture 8: Change Management

Question 1

What is change management?

Answer 1

E.g Bookseller to now a website

Change is a large concept. Having a change management especially in large organisations.

It is costly, complex.

Impact systems, shareholders, consequences to governenment,

Can be a small change - e.g part of a team

Question 2

What are 7 areas interconnected within Change management?

Answer 2

1. Shared vision values and focus (soft)
2. Structure (hard)
3. Systems (hard)
4. Strategy (hard)
5. Skills (soft)
6. Style (soft)
7. Staff (soft)

If you change one aspect, the rest will change.

Question 3

Explain each 7 aspects in general terms

Answer 3

Shared Values: Determine how your people behave in the workplace and the way you solve problems

Style: is the style of leadership that is adopted in the organisation

Staff: represent your employee capabilities

Skills: actual skills and competencies of your employees in the organisation

/———————————————————————————–/

Strategy: how you beat competitors and succeed your mission

Structure; This is your heirarchy or your organisational chart

Systems: are your resources and procedures that your people use to do their work

Question 4

How can you used the McKinssey 7 framework?

Answer 4

First: use to realise what you can utilise to improve the performance of your organisation (e.g. if you know something isnt working, but your not quite sure what it is, you can use the framework to find any issues )

Second: useful if you are planning on change in your organisation. Use it to identify where your organisation is right now with each of the 7 elements and think of how it might be affected by the propose change. This can help you make adjustments ahead of time.

Question 5

How to use it?

Answer 5

Look at your strategy and ask.

1. What is your strategy?
2. How can the organisations achieve its goals?
3. How are you going to deal with the competitors.

Question 6

Resistance to Change?

Answer 6

Resistance: is the force exerted to maintain a personal frame of reference

E.g. “hard parts in the 7 elements” are the easiest to do, since its more technical. However, the “soft” is more difficult because it involves people.

Several factors that do affect peoples decisions are:

• values
• behaviours
• assumptions
• politics
• economics
• knowledge

The strength of resistance to change depends on what people have to gain or loose from the change.

Question 7

Drivers of Resistance of Change?

Answer 7

• Self-interest ( how long you’ve been working, high/low level)
• Misunderstanding (lack of communication)
• Low tolerence to change (personality types, that handle chane differently)
• Different assessments of the situation ( different perspectives of reasoning change)

Question 8

How to overcome resistance?

Answer 8

1. Educate & communicate
2. Negotiation and aggreement - (assigning staff to new roles using their capabilities)
3. Partcipation and Involvement
4. Facilitation and support
5. Manipulation and co-optation
6. Explicit and Implicit coercion

Question 9

What are some common change problems?

Answer 9

• We do not communicate objectives accurately
• We go from situation to solution
• People do not feel empowered
• We do not involve people in change design
• Bottom up communication is not acknowledged
• There is no consequence (+/-) management
• Spheres of influence are not specifically pointed out
• Boundaries are not properly set
• By hiding information appropriate questions never get asked
• We jump into the how, before everyone understands the why
• People hear but don’t agree
• We don’t understand cultural differences

Question 10

Eight step Leading Change cycle.
What are the steps?

Answer 10

1. Create urgency: What is the key motivation? What is the reason?
2. Form a powerful coalition: Make a team of empowered influential connected individuals
3. Create a vision for change: create a vision shared across the organisation. This is whats happening? this is what will affect you? this is the future?
4. Communicate the vision: Always be explaining the change. Give insight on shareholders will. Make sure people understand reasoning
5. Empower action: make people take ownership.
6. Create quick wins: getting small profits. Easily measurable metrics. make wins obvious to whole organisation.
7. Build on the change: make sure people are proactive, not only know but dont do anything. keep momentum going.
8. Make it stick: often measure by dash boared, monitor usage of the new change.