How to Create Change
Louis Rowitz, PhD
3 Competencies of Leadership
Hersey, Blanchard, and Johnson, 1996
► Diagnosing
– Understanding the situation
you are trying to influence
► Adapting – Altering your behavior and other
resources to meet the contingencies of the
situation
► Communicating – Interacting with others in
a way that people can understand and
accept
Change is the process of moving
from an obsolete present into a
revitalized future.
(Rowitz, 1997)
Significant change means the casting
off of old rules and procedures and
the putting on of new ones.
(Hersey et al, 1996)
The greatest discovery of my
generation is that human beings can
alter their lives by altering their
attitudes of mind.
(William James)
Lewin and Isabella on Change
► ADD
TABLE
Psychological Safety in Change
(Schein, 1961)
As an organization unfreezes, anxiety
increases.
(1)Anxiety 1 – Associated with the inability
or unwillingness to learn something new
because it appears too difficult or
disruptive.
(2)Anxiety 2 – Induced anxiety of
continuing to do something that will lead
to failure.
Goal of Change
(Schien, 1961)
► Phase
1 – Increase anxiety 1 – fear of not
changing
► Phase 2 – Decrease anxiety – fear of
changing
Avoiding Disaster During Change
(Bennis, 1989)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Recruit [team] with scrupulous honesty
Guard against the [mavericks]
Build support among like-minded people
[Beware of the hidden agendas]
Plan for change from a solid conceptual
basis
Don’t settle for rhetorical change
Avoiding Disaster During Change
(cont’d)
(Bennis, 1989)
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
Don’t allow those who are opposed to
change to appropriate basic issues
Know the territory
Appreciate environmental factors
Avoid future shock
Change is most successful when those
who are affected are involved in the
planning
Kotter on change
Eight Errors Common to
Organizational Change Efforts and
Their Consequences
Common Errors
► Allowing too much complacency
► Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
► Underestimating the power of vision
► Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10 (or 100 or
even 1,000)
► Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
► Failing to create short-term wins
► Declaring victory to soon
► Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate
culture
Eight Errors Common to
Organizational Change Efforts and
Their Consequences (cont’d)
Consequences
► New strategies aren’t implemented well
► Acquisitions don’t achieve expected synergies
► Reengineering takes too long and costs too much
► Downsizing doesn’t get costs under control
► Quality programs don’t deliver hoped-for results
Economic and Social Forces Driving
the Need for Major Change in
Organizations
► ADD
TABLE
Establishing a Sense of Urgency
► Examining
the market and competitive
realities
► Identifying and discussing crises, potential
crises, or major opportunities
Creating the Guiding Coalition
► Putting
together a group with enough
power to lead the change
► Getting the group to work together like a
team
Developing a Vision and Strategy
► Creating
a vision to help direct the change
effort
► Developing strategies for achieving that
vision
Communicating the Change Vision
► Using
every vehicle possible to constantly
communicate the new vision and strategies
► Having the guiding coalition role model the
behavior expected of employees
Empowering Broad-Based Action
► Getting
rid of obstacles
► Changing systems or structures that
undermine the change vision
► Encouraging risk taking and nontraditional
ideas, activities, and actions
Generating Short-Term Wins
► Planning
for visible improvements in
performance, or “wins”
► Creating those wins
► Visibly recognizing and rewarding people
who made the wins possible
Consolidating Gains and Producing
More Change
► Using
increased credibility to change all
systems, structures, and policies that don’t
fit the transformation vision
► Hiring, promoting, and developing people
who can implement the change vision
► Reinvigorating the process with new
projects, themes, and change agents
Anchoring New Approaches in the
Culture
► Creating
better performance through
customer- and productivity-oriented
behavior, more and better leadership, and
more effective management
► Articulating the connections between new
behaviors and organizational success
► Developing means to ensure leadership
development and succession
Sources of Complacency
► ADD
TABLE
Ways to Raise the Urgency Level
1.
2.
Create a crisis by allowing a financial loss,
exposing managers to major weaknesses
vis-à-vis competitors, or allowing errors to
blow up instead of being corrected at the
last minute
Eliminate obvious examples of excess
(e.g., company-owned country club
facilities, a large air force, gourmet
executive dining rooms).
Ways to Raise the Urgency Level
(cont’d)
3.
4.
Set revenue, income, productivity,
customer satisfaction, and cycle-time
targets so high that they can’t be reached
by conducting business as usual.
Stop measuring subunit performance
based only on narrow functional goals.
Insist that more people be held
accountable for broader measures of
business performance.
Ways to Raise the Urgency Level
(cont’d)
5.
6.
Send more data about customer
satisfaction and financial performance to
more employees, especially information
that demonstrates weaknesses vis-à-vis
the competition.
Insist that people talk regularly to
unsatisfied customers, unhappy suppliers,
and disgruntled shareholders.
Ways to Raise the Urgency Level
(cont’d)
7.
8.
9.
Use consultants and other means to force more
relevant data and honest discussion into
management meetings.
Put more honest discussions of the firm’s
problems in company newspapers and senior
management speeches. Stop senior
management “happy talk.”
Bombard people with information on future
opportunities, on the wonderful rewards for
capitalizing on those opportunities, and on the
organization’s current inability to pursue those
opportunities.
Building a Coalition That Can Make
Change Happen
► Find
the right people
 With strong position power, broad expertise, and high
credibility
 With leadership and management skills, especially the
former
► Create
trust
 Through carefully planed off-site events
 With lots of talk and joint activities
► Develop
a common goal
 Sensible to the head
 Appealing to the heart
Characteristics of an Effective Vision
Imaginable: conveys a picture of what the future will look
like
► Desirable: appeals to the long-term interests of employees,
customers, stockholders, and others who have a stake in
the enterprise
► Feasible: comprises realistic, attainable goals
► Focused: is clear enough to provide guidance in decision
making
► Flexible: is general enough to allow individual initiative and
alternative responses in light of changing conditions
► Communicable: is easy to communicate; can be
successfully explained within five minutes
►
Creating an Effective Vision
► First
draft: the process often starts with an initial
statement from a single individual, reflecting both
his or her dreams and real marketplace needs.
► Role of the guiding coalition: the first draft is
always modeled over time by the guiding coalition
or an even larger group of people.
► Importance of teamwork: the group process never
works well without a minimum of effective
teamwork.
Creating an Effective Vision (cont’d)
► Role
of the head and the heart: both analytical
thinking and a lot of dreaming are essential
throughout the activity.
► Messiness of the process: vision creation is usually
a process of two steps forward and one back,
movement to the left and then to the right.
► Time frame: vision is never created in a single
meeting. The activity takes months, sometimes
years.
► End product: the process results in a direction for
the future that is desirable, feasible, focused,
flexible, and is conveyable in five minutes or less.
Key Elements in the Effective
Communication of Vision
► Simplicity:
all jargon and technobabble must be
eliminated.
► Metaphor, analogy, and example: A verbal picture
is worth a thousand words.
► Multiple forums: big meetings and small, memos
and newspapers, formal and informal interactionall are effective for spreading the word.
► Repetition: Ideas sink in deeply only after they
have been heard many times.
Key Elements in the Effective
Communication of Vision (cont’d)
► Leadership:
by example: behavior from important
people that is inconsistent with the vision
overwhelms other forms of communication.
► Explanation of seeming inconsistencies:
unaddressed inconsistencies undermine the
credibility of all communication.
► Give-and-take: Two-way communication is always
more powerful than one-way communication.
Barriers to Empowerment
► ADD
TABLE
How Structure Can Undermine Vision
The Vision
► Focus on the customer
► Give more responsibility to
lower-level employees
► Increase productivity to become
the low-cost producer
► Speed everything up
The Structure
► But the organization fragments
resources and responsibility for
products and services
► But there are layers of middlelevel managers who secondguess and criticize employees
► But huge staff groups at
corporate headquarters are
expensive and constantly initiate
costly procedures and programs
► But independent silos don’t
communicate and thus slow
everything down
Empowering People to Effect Change
Communicate a sensible vision to employees: if employees
have a shared sense of purpose, it will be easier to initiate
actions to achieve that purpose.
► Make structures compatible with the vision: unaligned
structures block needed action.
► Provide the training employees need: without the right
skills and attitudes, people feel disempowered.
► Align information and personnel systems to the vision:
unaligned systems also block needed action.
► Confront supervisors who undercut needed change:
nothing disempowers people the way a bad boss can.
►
The Role of Short-Term Wins
Provide evidence that sacrifices are worth it: wins greatly
help justify the short-term costs involved.
► Reward change agents with a pat on the back: after a lot
of hard work, positive feedback builds morale and
motivation.
► Help fine-tune vision and strategies: short-term wins give
the guiding coalition concrete data on the viability of their
ideas.
► Undermine cynics and self-serving resisters: clear
improvements in performance make it difficult for people to
block needed change.
► Keep bosses on board: provides those higher in the
hierarchy with evidence that the transformation is on track.
► Build momentum: turns neutrals into supporters, reluctant
supporters into active helpers, etc.
►
What Stage 7 Looks Like in a
Successful, Major Change Effort
► More
change, not less: the guiding coalition uses
the credibility afforded by short-term wins to
tackle additional and bigger change projects.
► More help: additional people are brought in,
promoted, and developed to help with all the
changes.
► Leadership from senior management: senior
people focus on maintaining clarity of shared
purpose for the overall effort and keeping urgency
levels up.
What Stage 7 Looks Like in a
Successful, Major Change Effort
(cont’d)
► Project
management and leadership from
below: lower ranks in the hierarchy both
provide leadership for specific projects and
manage those projects
► Reduction of unnecessary
interdependencies: To make change easier
in both the short and long term, managers
identify unnecessary interdependencies and
eliminate them
Anchoring Change in a Culture
► Comes
last, not fist: Most alterations in norms and
shared values come at the end of the
transformation process.
► Depends on results: New approaches usually sink
into a culture only after it’s very clear that they
work and are superior to old methods.
► Requires a lot of talk: Without verbal instruction
and support, people are often reluctant to admit
the validity of new practices.
Anchoring Change in a Culture
(cont’d)
► May
involve turnover: sometimes the only
way to change a culture is to change key
people.
► Makes decisions on succession crucial: if
promotion processes are not changed to be
compatible with the new practices, the old
culture will reassert itself.
Stages and Tasks
► ADD
TABLE
The Structure of Change
Conner
Synergy
Nature
Culture
Process
Resilience
Commitment
Roles
Resistance
Transitions
(Bridges)
Time
The New
Beginning
The
Neutral
Ending,
Losing,
Letting Go
Zone
Deming’s 14 Points
1.
2.
3.
4.
Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of
product and service with the aim to become competitive
and to stay in business and to provide jobs.
-adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic
age. Western management must awaken to the
challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on
leadership for change.
Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by
building quality into the product or service in the first
place.
End the practice of awarding business on the basis of
price tag. Instead minimize total costs. Move toward a
single supplier for any one item on a long term
relationship of loyalty and trust.
Deming’s 14 Points (cont’d)
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Improve constantly and forever the system of production
and service to improve quality and productivity and thus
decrease costs.
Institute training on the job.
Institute leadership. The aim of leadership should be to
help people and machines and gadgets to do a better
job. Leadership of management is in need of overhaul as
well as leadership of production workers.
Drive out fear so that everyone may work effectively for
the company.
Break down barriers between departments. People in
research, design, sales, and production must work as a
team to foresee problems of production and use that
may be encountered with the product or service.
Deming’s 14 Points (cont’d)
Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work
force asking for zero defects and new levels of
production.
11. Eliminate work standards (quotas) in the organization.
Eliminate management by objectives. Eliminate
management by numbers, numeric goals. Substitute
leadership.
12. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of rights to
pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors
must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. Remove
barriers that rob people in management and engineering
of their right to pride of workmanship. Abolish annual or
merit rating and M.B.O.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and selfimprovement.
14. Put everybody to work to accomplish the transformation.
10.
Overboard
► ADD
CARTOON
Integrated Model for Planned
Change
Planned Change
Leadership Response
High Resilience
Increment
al Change
Deep
Change
Kotter Stages 1-8
Low Resilience
Change
Avoidance
Increment
al Change
Kotter Stages 1-6
Integrated Model for Change During and After a Crisis
Unanticipated Events
(Terrorism, Bioterrorism, Natural
Disasters, etc.)
Leadership Response
High Resilience
Increment
al Change
Deep
Change
Kotter Stages 1-8
Low Resilience
Change
Avoidance
Increment
al Change
Kotter Stages 1-6