LEADING THE ORGANIZATIONAL
CHANGE:CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Sutapa Bhattacharjee, PhD, GPHR
Professor
IBA, University of Dhaka
Change Management
The first thought when you’re faced with organizational change is:
1. It’s about time! I can’t wait for what’s ahead.
2. Change is usually for the better.
3. Hope it’s not too painful.
4. Not again! Time to update my resume.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
• Organizational change refers broadly to the actions a business takes
to change or adjust a significant component of its organization. This
may include company culture, internal processes, underlying
technology or infrastructure, corporate hierarchy, or another critical
aspect.
• Change management is the process of guiding organizational change
to fruition, from the earliest stages of conception and preparation,
through implementation and, finally, to resolution.
5 Steps in the Change Management Process
• 1. Prepare the Organization for Change
• 2. Craft a Vision and Plan for Change
• 3. Implement the Changes
• 4. Embed Changes Within Company Culture and Practices
• 5. Review Progress and Analyze Results
1. Prepare the Organization for Change
• For an organization to successfully pursue and implement change, it
must be prepared both logistically and culturally. Before delving into
logistics, cultural preparation must first take place to achieve the best
business outcome.
• In the preparation phase, the manager is focused on -
• helping employees recognize and understand the need for change. They raise
awareness of the various challenges or problems facing the organization that
are acting as forces of change and generating dissatisfaction with the status
quo.
• Gaining this initial buy-in from employees who will help implement the
change can remove friction and resistance later on.
2. Craft a Vision and Plan for Change
• Once the organization is ready to embrace change, managers must develop
a thorough, realistic, and strategic plan for bringing it about.
• The plan should detail:
• Strategic goals: What goals does this change help the organization work
toward?
• Key performance indicators: How will success be measured? What metrics
need to be moved? What’s the baseline for how things currently stand?
• Project stakeholders and team: Who will oversee the task of implementing
change? Who needs to sign off at each critical stage? Who will be
responsible for implementation?
• Project scope: What discrete steps and actions will the project include?
What falls outside of the project scope?
3. Implement the Changes
• During the implementation process, change managers must be
focused on
• empowering their employees to take the necessary steps to achieve
the goals of the initiative &
• celebrate any short-term wins. They should also do their best to
anticipate roadblocks and prevent, remove, or mitigate them once
identified.
• Repeated communication of the organization’s vision is critical
throughout the implementation process to remind team members
why change is being pursued.
4. Embed Changes Within Company Culture
and Practices
• Once the change initiative has been completed, change managers
must prevent a reversion to the prior state or status quo. This is
particularly important for organizational change related to business
processes such as workflows, culture, and strategy formulation.
Without an adequate plan, employees may backslide into the “old
way” of doing things, particularly during the transitory period.
• By embedding changes within the company’s culture and practices, it
becomes more difficult for backsliding to occur. New organizational
structures, controls, and reward systems should all be considered as
tools to help change stick.
5. Review Progress and Analyze Results
• Just because a change initiative is complete doesn’t mean it was
successful.
• Conducting analysis and review, or a “project post mortem,” can help
business leaders understand whether a change initiative was a
success, failure, or mixed result. It can also offer valuable insights and
lessons that can be leveraged in future change efforts.
• Ask yourself questions like: Were project goals met? If yes, can this
success be replicated elsewhere? If not, what went wrong?
Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model
• Create a sense of urgency.
• Build a guiding coalition.
• Form a strategic vision and initiatives.
• Enlist a volunteer army.
• Enable action by removing barriers.
• Generate short-term wins.
• Sustain acceleration.
• Institute change.
4 Principles of Kotter’s Change
Management Model
• Leadership and Management: Managers must support the change the
administration requires for the initiative to succeed.
• Head and Heart: Data and logic alone are unlikely to motivate people to
adopt a new business process or software implementation, communicating
how they will personally benefit from the alteration to make what’s new
more appealing or, even better, desirable.
• Select Few and Diverse Many: You need a core group of supporters from
different hierarchy levels and varied job experiences. Prepare to recruit
support from multiple levels of management, including those closer to the
employees whose day-to-day work is most affected by the transformation.
• “Have To” and “Want To”: Transitions run more smoothly — and faster —
when those affected by it want it to happen.
Reasons Why Change Management Fails
• 1. Communication flaws
• 2. Resistance to change
• 3. Lack of reinforcement
• 4. Lack of alignment
• 5. Culture clash
The psychology behind letting go in change
• 1. The brain doesn’t like better, it likes familiar
• Whenever a new system is relocating the old one it is
• Triggering threat responses
• Disrupting habits tied to competence
• Removing what makes people feel useful
Psychology….
• Change feels like a loss
• Of control
• Of mastery
• Of belonging
Psychology….
• Identity is the real stake
• People don’t resist processes, they resist identity shifts
• A product owner who no longer owns the product
• A senior executive whose old way made them successful
• A team that must give up a system they built.
Psychology….
• 4. what leaders need to do
• Honor what came before
• Make the old way part of the story, not the enemy
• Create psychological safety before demanding adaptation
Psychology….
• Tactical shifts to make letter go easier
• Ritualize endings
• Use bridge roles
• Invest in identity building
How To Beat The Odds
• By employees, for employees
• Small changes = big impact
• Evolve and adjust
The Key to Successful Change for Managers
• Do you understand the forces making change necessary?
• Do you have a plan? Without a detailed plan and defined strategy, it can be
difficult to usher a change initiative through to completion.
• How will you communicate? Successful change management requires effective
communication with both your team members and key stakeholders.
• Have you identified potential roadblocks? While it’s impossible to predict
everything that might potentially go wrong with a project, taking the time to
anticipate potential barriers and devise mitigation strategies before you get
started is generally a good idea.
To strengthen your team’s capacity for change
• Demonstrate trust and respect for employees
• Make opportunity-seeking a regular part of the conversation
• Build time for improvement into people’s day-to-day work
• Be flexible
• Foster a safe environment for your team to take risks and make suggestions
• Provide adequate resources
Develop skills for change
• Communication
• Strategic Thinking
• Active listening
• Measurement and Analysis
Identify Opportunities for Improvement
• Identify performance gaps, such as wasted resources or bugs in products,
and opportunity gaps, such as ideas for meeting customers’ needs
• Come up with innovative ways to close these gaps
• Experiment with new ways of doing things
• Creatively implement and continually improve procedures and practices
What are some performance or opportunity gaps in
your area?
Overcome Resistance
• Common types of resistance
• It has never been tried before.
• Why change? It's working OK.
• We don’t have the money or time.
• It’s too radical a change.
• It’s not my job.
• Customers won’t buy it.
Change management initiative: RACI
Matrix
Change management initiative: The Four P’s
• Project: State the change you have in mind
• Purpose: What do you aim to achieve via this change?
• Particulars: What are the change enablers for this process? Discuss
the tools, training, and strategy for this change implementation
• People: Identify the impacted stakeholders and how their roles will
change
Change management initiative: SHIFT
• S – Support
• H – Honesty
• I – Involvement
• F – Follow through
• T - Timing
Summary