Torey Quinn's List: Change Management

"NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Many companies are perpetually awash in improvement projects. Yet, all too often, projects succeed in producing committed deliverables, but fail to achieve performance goals. By the end, all that remains are project documents filed in electronic team rooms, like the final scene of "Raiders of the Lost Ark.""

"For quick reference, here’s a breakdown of the steps the manager took:

1. Explained the context behind the workplace change.
2. Defined what had to be accomplished within the next two weeks.
3. Engaged the employees in crafting solutions to the demand from top management.
4. Engaged the employees in testing solutions in practice, and supported their daily progress.
5. Explained her criteria and rationale for accepting, revising, and rejecting their inputs."

"Employee engagement is like a muscle, that needs to be developed — or it can atrophy.

Within the broader collaboration space, there is a shift happening. Organizations are questioning the value of their structured collaboration platforms, many of which evolved from outdated intranet portals and a presenter/audience content distribution methodology. While organizations have had some degree of success with these models, there has been a noticeable enthusiasm gap with end users — and the grand vision of many of these platforms, where employees gather to collaborate, has not been achieved. Social collaboration has now become a disruptive force, causing this shift — and a focus on the key metrics of adoption and engagement."

"Company Z, a financial services firm with nearly $100 million in annual revenue, was changing their business model. It was a big change—they were dumping one entire business unit and launching a new one. The team was none too happy about it. Some were fearful because they were employed in the now defunct business unit, and they’d have to learn new skills.  The change was essential though, as due to market conditions the former unit would never become profitable.

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"as responding to emails while listening to the 2012 Summer Olympics on NBC on a recent summer evening when my attention was suddenly diverted to the broadcast. Did I hear that right? Ian Thorpe, the winner of nine Olympic medals in swimming, just advised Michael Phelps’ mother that he should continue to train vigorously for several months after his retirement?"

"A new study by Towers Watson has found that only 25% of change management initiatives are successful over the long term.  While this may come as no shock – substantive change in organizations with entrenched cultures is always difficult – the study adds new data to an ongoing discussion.

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"The one thing that dominates our modern lives is change. Nothing is static anymore and change is constant. To keep up with the pace of change, governments and businesses are implementing new processes, procedures, equipment, software and more. It’s reported that nearly 70 percent of change efforts fail."

"As companies fight for business growth, many implement change initiatives to create a strong and differentiated customer experience. But if they want to succeed in improving that experience, they must address the primary reasons that change initiatives fail:

They don't focus enough on front-line managers.
They don't focus front-line managers on the exact actions they need to take to achieve the company's desired business outcomes."

"Reason Number 1: Change consultants are insufficiently equipped on a personal level.
Reason Number 2: Most change models are incomplete.
Reason Number 3: Capacity is widely overlooked, on all levels."

"THERE'S A RIGHT WAY AND A WRONG WAY TO PUSH FOR ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE. HERE'S HOW TO AVOID BACKLASH, AND GET EVERYBODY INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS."

"Sustaining Change Momentum
In order to keep change initiatives moving forward, experts say, HR needs to help managers get better at keeping their teams informed, enable them to be successful with the right training and hands-on coaching, and keep them engaged throughout the process."

"What is change management? This is a question you may have heard from colleagues or co-workers in passing or in formal presentations. While many of us ‘know’ intuitively what change management is, we have a hard time conveying to others what we really mean.

In thinking about how to define change management, it is important to provide context related to two other concepts - the ‘change’ itself and ‘how it is managed’. This brief article attempts to show how change management has become a critical discipline to a variety of organisational changes to improve the likelihood of success and return on investment."

"As a recognized discipline, change management has been in existence for over half a century. Yet despite the huge investment that companies have made in tools, training, and thousands of books (over 83,000 on Amazon), most studies still show a 60-70% failure rate for organizational change projects — a statistic that has stayed constant from the 1970′s to the present.

Given this evidence, is it possible that everything we know about change management is wrong and that we need to go back to the drawing board? Should we abandon Kotter’s eight success factors, Blanchard’s moving cheese, and everything else we know about engagement, communication, small wins, building the business case, and all of the other elements of the change management framework?"

Lynda.com course, requires subscription account.

"Help your organization embrace change and make sure new initiatives are successful. In this course, Britt Andreatta, PhD, shows you how to lead your organization through change in a five-phase model that includes assessing the need for change, deciding who to involve, designing the change, announcing it, and implementing it in a way that sticks.

Along the way, the course covers techniques that will increase the likelihood of your change succeeding, such as anticipating resistance, creating a compelling vision, and using emotional intelligence to build staff consensus.
Topics include:
Understanding resistance and the emotions of change
Assessing the need for change
Building your change team
Evaluating solutions
Announcing the change
Implementing change that works"

Discusses the need to manage the drivers and barriers to change.

Kurt Lewin, social psychology pioneer, developed an interesting, useful tool called “force field analysis.” The idea is that when an organization is in the process of moving from point A to point B, there are driving forces and resisting forces. The driving forces, which often come from the outside, contribute to the change and push the organization along.
The resisting forces, which are often internal, hinder that process and attempt to keep the organization where it is. Simply put – the driving forces must overcome the resisting forces. Easy enough to understand, but not so easy to manage well.