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What dilemmas you have faced when implementing changes to a process or system?
I'm an Operations leader, charged with change management and user adoption. I'd be interested in hearing what dilemmas or contradictions others have faced when managing change in an organizational setting. For example, when our company started a major change initiative the proposed change was supposed to be THE top priority, however, there is a lot of resistance and pressure to continue the status quo. People who are theoretically in support of the change are reluctant to accept changes. This is just one example. I'm curious about the range and type of these dilemmas in the face of change.
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11 Answers
Hi Kathy - this is an interesting discussion, and, I'm betting that it is still something you are dealing with a few months on.
A perspective that might be of help to you is to think about the intrinsic motivation of the members of your organization. What is important to them?
When change is introduced in an organization, the impacts on individuals typically vary considerably. If someone is being successful the way things are now, there is an understandable skepticism about what the change may mean. While it may be, this kind of response does not necessarily reflect a selfish view -- the person's contribution to the organization is what they may be thinking about, at least at first, and their concern may emanate from not knowing whether they will perform as effectively in their redefined role (or have one). Their intrinsic motivation will have alot to do with how they see the change.
Effective change management programs figure this out as part of the planning. Sometimes the answer is not what management wants to hear. In other words, sometimes management wants to make a specific change, but it is clear that, for a significant number of other members, the proposed change is going to be difficult, or worse. This type of situation has been predominant in change efforts during the last decade, because many of them have been to implement business reengineering, downsizing, outsourcing. Most existing members in the affected part of the organization quickly figure out the personal consequences for themselves. This may not be aligned with how they want to be rewarded in their role in the organization. If this occurs with a significant number of the members - it is typically characterized as "resistance." What then ends up happening is that the "change management" process becomes focused on how to minimize this resistance to the change, as opposed to using what has been discovered to figure out a change that fits with the intrinsic motivations of the organization members.
Management needs to be realistic in managing its change initiatives in how they will affect individual members of the organization. Understand that most are likely to be behaving very rationally from their own perspective. Naturally individuals will find others who share their perspective. If you do not address this, you will not bring these individuals along with you in your change process, no matter how well "managed" it may be.
Management needs to analyze the longer term strategic implications of change. If management decides to make significant changes that are unaligned with the intrinsic motivations of a significant number of the organization members, they must understand that they will most likely not effectively engage these individuals in the change.
Kathy, if you review the tenants of change, you may find your answer. What's the reason for the change, how will it effect me and more importantly how will it benefit me. When we are instituting change, due diligence. Remember, fear of the unknown is perhaps the most significant factor.
Most people like to stick with what they know, even if it isn’t in their best interest. They do so, because it is something in this chaotic world that they can ’depend’ on being a certain way. They feel like what they have known, they understand, and can trust to remain a certain way. It becomes becomes kind of a ’false security’. They become attatched to it, and would rather suffer through something not in their best interest, that they can count on, than take a chance with the unknown. No one knows how they will function in a strange situation, and this is frightening for alot of people, like toppling freefall off a cliff, and not knowing how, or where you’ll land. It involves risk, often courage, and a belief that you'll be ok, no matter what.
There are many other possibilities for why people resist change, depending upon the circumstances. For example, if a young person is taking acting lessons, with dreams of being on stage, and a willfull parent forces the young person to go to law school, the young person would resist the change, because he/she would no longer be allowed, for that period of time anyway, to follow their heart and pursue their dream.
A person may overextend living with his parents, because he doesn’t believe he has the adequate skills to support himself in the world, or just doesn't want to work that hard.
It’s always because, for one reason or another, a person believes they are being best served somehow with things as they are, even if that isn’t true.
Thank you so much for your reply. The fact that there are many possibilities for resisting change is precisely why I'm asking for particular experiences. I'm trying to solicit information to understand the range of dilemmas and understand the underlying themes.
My past experience has shown me that there are two specific obstacles to overcome when implementing change. One is trust and the other is communication.
Trust comes when people and their ideas are involved in the change. Solicit their ideas and get them involved. They need to feel like they are a part of the process, even if it’s at a very minor level. Communication is also key. People typically fear the unknown. They need to understand, sometimes step by step what is happening.
Putting these two things in place will eventually create a buzz, or excitement and then hopefully an anticipation of the change that is to come rather than dreading the change.
Thank you for your reply. Have you found any link between trust and communication? I wonder if trust is a precursor to the open, honest and complete communication that supports success in a change process.
Certainly, as you mention there is a link between the two. They really go hand in hand. Clear, constant & consistent communication will lead to trust. Trust will lead to the more open and honest communication you mention above.
My own example of a difficult change process was when a hospital where I worked moved from a shared billing system to an ih-house system at the time new govenrment requirements were being required for medicare and medicaid, and blue cross was requiring some of the same data. The new vendor could meet the inpatient billing rules, but didn't meet the outpatient needs.
When the inpatient requirements were met, the executive leadership went ahead with the implementation trusting the vendor to meet outpatient needs in a short period of time.
They never did.
The CFO and IT Director were fired. We migrated the outpatient system with, a huge backload of data growing stale, back to the old shared system. I ended up managing the system files for our hospital. At that time it was setting rows and columns of 1s and 0s.
The executive managers trusted the vendors and did not listen to (trust) the middle managers who indicated the vendor was not moving to a solution.
Great and important questions Kathy. I think you hit on a couple of themes that are important to helping people navigate change: buy-in and commitment. As someone who helps organizations and people deal with changes, I've noticed that it requires a couple of things:
1. Buy-in from all levels. It's helpful to have encouragement from top leadership first before trying to implement changes. Once we have the support of leadership we can work on moving down to other levels.
2. Commitment refers to creating an organization-wide philosophy that encourages change rather than viewing it as a monster. Nimble businesses and organizations frequently invest in teaching their leaders core skills like communication, team building or collaborative problem-solving that will help deal with change when it comes around. The idea is to create a mindset that invites change and deals with it proactively instead of managing it after the fact.
Totally agree Guy. Years ago, my company made the word CHANGE into an acronym:
Change
Helps
Achieve
Nimbleness
Growth &
Excellence
Intrinsically, human being suffer from paradigm paralysis and this emanates either from the fear to change or accepting the comfort zone being created in the as-is environment.
My practical experience from implementing several six sigma projects and ERP projects is that every one "feels" there is a need for change", every body loves to talk about it near the coffee machine or at the pantry or at the lobby.
Organisational change cannot be managed, it can only be inculcated in people with a top down approach.
Clarity in the top management's vision of what change they want to achieve, how they want it to be a "Culture' of the organisation and accordingly how clearly it is communicated to all the stake holders in the organisation,starting from the CEO to the junior most level, defines the success of any Business Process Re-engineering.
This is in itself a re-engineering process.
Why do you say "Organizational change cannot be managed"? I've come across this perspective before, what is the source of this belief? Several times I note that consultants are making this claim all the while they are persuading organizations to let them help manage their project.
I'm not being critical here, I want to understand, because to this point, I believe that the dynamic of stability/change implicates the tendency to manage as intrinsic to the very idea of change. If there's a reason to think otherwise, I would like to know of it.
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