Managing and Leading People through Organizational Change

The Theory and Practice of Sustaining Change through People

Julie Hodges

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781789667981
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Verwaltung

Change in organizations is all about people: it is people who plan, prepare for and implement change, and who are affected by it in the daily course of their work. Yet there is a tendency to focus on quantifiable and often more easily solved technical aspects of implementing organizational change programmes, and ignore the complex ways that these will impact individuals. Providing an evidence-based analysis of change in organizations, Managing and Leading People Through Organizational Change is written for practitioners responsible for change programmes and postgraduate students of organizational change. This updated edition demonstrates the importance of understanding the effects of change on individuals and engaging them collaboratively through the transformation journey. Featuring new material on individual wellbeing and the impact of technological advances on the workplace, this book sets out frameworks, practical approaches and recommendations for communicating with and leading individuals, teams and organizations through change. Full of exercises, interviews and case studies from across the globe, this book is an essential resource for leaders and students enabling them to achieve sustainable benefits of change at work.

05

Fostering commitment and ownership

KEY POINTS

• Managing change is complementary to the leadership of change and, together with leadership, necessary for effectively engaging people with change.
• Managers play a crucial role in the implementation of change since they translate the vision or purpose into reality through strategies, action plans, accountabilities, objectives, key performance measures, tasks, action and outputs, and are also directly responsible for the teams of people who have to adapt their ways of working in order to embed the change.
• Being able to identify and engage stakeholders – those individuals or groups with an interest or involvement in the change – is crucial for prioritizing and identifying different influencing strategies.
• Readiness for change refers to organizational members’ beliefs, attitudes and intentions regarding the extent to which changes are needed, the extent to which employees have positive views about the need for change and believe that these changes have positive implications for themselves, and the wider organization, as well as the organization’s capacity to successfully implement those changes.

Introduction

The literature on organizational change is often positioned from a top-down approach with a focus on senior executives making the key decisions about a new vision, strategy or structure, or to merge, acquire or downsize. The perspective of those who are directly affected by the decision to change and have to manage and implement it is often ignored. Those are the people who must take on new tasks, develop new skills, ensure deadlines and budgets are adhered to, and manage others through the change. Although (as discussed in Chapter 4) the leadership of change is vital, it is not alone a sufficient condition for successful change. Planned change must be managed – it must be organized, directed, controlled and measured. The management of change is complementary to the leadership of change and, together with leadership, necessary for ensuring that key stakeholders are engaged with the change. However, its perceived importance is not always matched by its actual success, often because of poor management.

This chapter explores the management of change. It begins by defining what managing change means and goes on to focus on the importance of fostering engagement and ownership with change. Within this context the role of managers in the change process is examined, as well as what managers need to do to engage stakeholders with change. Specific approaches are considered with regard to how to gain commitment from individuals collaboratively including: involvement in the decision making; creating a sense of shared ownership; and enabling individuals to actively contribute to the shaping of the change. The chapter also examines key factors such as identifying the readiness for change, stakeholder engagement, and managing conflict. Since transformation can be a long-term process, those managing change must be able to sustain the momentum for change. So how to analyse the impact of change on people and ways to maintain momentum throughout a change process are also considered. Several key issues are examined in the chapter, including: What are the key principles underpinning the way that change is managed? How can individuals and teams be supported through change? What can be done to build the ownership of change? How can managers identify whether or not people are ready for change? How can stakeholders be engaged and managed? And how can the impact of change on organizational members be identified?

LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

• appreciate what is involved in managing people during change;
• assess the readiness of individuals to change;
• conduct an impact analysis of change;
• identify key stakeholders and ways of influencing them to support change.

Change management

Definition

Management can be thought of as a function that is part of an organization’s formal structure. This is aptly outlined in Laurie Mullins’s (2010) characterization of management as: taking place within a structured organizational setting and with prescribed roles; directed towards the attainment of aims and objectives; achieved through the efforts of other people; and using systems and procedures. In other words, management is about ensuring that processes and people are working efficiently and effectively, which concerns not only maintaining the status quo but also changing it. Indeed management and change are synonymous, for as Robert Paton and James McCalman point out:

It is impossible to undertake a journey, for in many respects that is what change is, without first addressing the purpose of the trip, the route you wish to travel and with whom. Managing change is about handling the complexities of travel. It is about evaluating, planning and implementing operational, tactical and strategic journeys. (2008: 3)

So change must be managed – it must be defined, communicated, planned, organized, directed, implemented, monitored, controlled and measured. So whereas leadership of change is about showing the way and enabling it to happen, management of change is about making it happen.

How change is mismanaged

Effective management is vital to the success of planned change in organizations, although its perceived importance is not always matched by its actual success. Indeed, ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’ – ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’ – is an unfortunately suitable epigram for the management of change.

Change can be mismanaged in a number of ways. For example, there may be: inadequate day-to-day management skills such as poor planning, monitoring and control; a focus more on the...