Interview: Steve Macaulay
Change Management Excellence
Dawn Richardson
Hello, I am Dawn Richardson. I am in the studio today
talking to Steve Macaulay about a book that he has cowritten with Hilary Coldicott and Sarah Cook called
Change Management Excellence.
So, Steve, why the title?
Steve Macaulay
I think first, change is everywhere. It is not going
down, it is getting more and more and not just big
changes, there are small changes going on all the
time.
So the notion that change can be managed – and also
can be managed well, which is the excellence part of it.
Most change management initiatives come to grief in
some form; they don’t achieve their objectives.
However, some companies are very good at change
management and we can learn from that.
Dawn Richardson
Steve, you pick out four intelligences; can you just take
us through them?
Steve Macaulay
Yes. When I started to look with my co-authors at the
idea of change management it seemed to me that we
could boil it down to some four key knowledge and
skills.
Now probably one that often gets neglected is the
whole idea of business intelligence. If you don’t get, if
you like, the good business sense right, then all other
change really is immaterial. So you need to have a
good rationale why you are doing something and you
need to keep it up to date.
Dawn Richardson
So, Steve, that is the first intelligence – can you take
us through the remaining three?
Steve Macaulay
Business has got to be complemented by some very
strong capability within the organisation. So the
second one that we pick is the idea of politics. Now
political intelligence is key – we are not talking here
about the sort of politics that goes on in government.
We are talking about influencing, about the scarce
allocation of resources. So you do really need to be
able to read when political behaviour is going on and
also exercise some of that yourself. Some people
Steve Macaulay
take a dislike to politics and say I am not going to get
involved in that. You have got to – if you do change
management, you have got to understand how to
operate successfully politically.
So there are the first two. Now the next one is going
more deeply into the interpersonal side and that is the
ability to influence other people, to get insight into their
needs and their aspirations and also to understand
yourself and the interactions with that.
So that is a key component; this idea of emotional
intelligence. It has gained a lot of currency in recent
years, but it is one in the throes of change that people
find quite hard to keep hold of – you know, they want to
get something done and you can quite easily run
roughshod over people and you will pay for that if you
do.
Dawn Richardson
Is there some advice that you can give us about
change management?
Steve Macaulay
Well, I think one of the things that is neglected is the
whole idea of spiritual intelligence. Now, that sounds
strange really that we are talking about the spiritual
side of life in a change management setting. But my
belief is that as religion has declined people have put a
lot of investment into work and it meets, if you like, a
higher purpose that people have a yearning for. Now
if you neglect that side, if you don’t pay any attention to
it, particularly in the workplace, then I think you are
missing out on something.
So I think those four intelligences, then, are really very
important. Putting those into practice, I think, is quite
hard. If you take as a starting point that change
management is going to be hard going, then I think you
need to say look at each of those areas, be aware of
your own strengths and weaknesses and then try and
look at each change situation – whether it is a small
change or a big change – with those complexities in
mind.
Steve Macaulay
© Cranfield University
Steve, thanks very much for that.
Knowledge Interchange Podcast
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