Welcome to this live session from GIZ College of Business at the University of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Please make sure your microphones are muted and your
video camera turned on. Now here are your instructors, professors Mike Bednar, Jim
dogs and Sandra. Accorded order. Good evening and welcome to our live session. This
is our fifth live session together and I'm looking forward to another active
discussion. And hopefully this will be a great way to cap off your Monday and get
your week off to a good start. I'm here in studio. I also have online, we'd guess
Sandra and Jim. Sandra and Jim, do you wanna say hi real quick? Schiller cell.
Welcome to our life session and I'm ready to get changed. Ids, ionization. Good
evening. It's good to see you all learned a little bit segue. So look for Joe Gray,
client. Awesome. Great to be here with my colleagues and we'll be hearing from
Sandra and Jim throughout this session here today. I'm grateful to be in studio
earlier this week, I, or I guess it was last week I was doing a session for a
different class from my home and apparently my two-year-old son, the blinking
lights on the router and unplugged the router, push some buttons or something. So I
went blank and then in the middle of my sessions, so there's no risk of two-year-
olds unplugging the router here in studio. So I appreciate all the, all the folks
that work to make this live session possible. So just to give you a little bit of a
sense of where we're at in the class. So we finished the first MOOC in Coursera,
which was all about designing the organization. And so we're really looking at an
organizational level perspective on things. And again, we talked about purpose and
structure, and we talked about growth. We talked about dealing with the external
environment in this MOOC. This MOOC is called Managing the Organization. We're
still going to be talking about organizations, but we're going to be talking about
how do you manage organizations? How do you manage yourself within organizations?
And so there'll be a little bit more of a focus on an individual level perspective
and we'll do that today, right? We'll talk a little bit about power. What are some
of the sources that you have of power as a manager? And what are some things that
you can do to be a more effective change agent in the organizations that you're
that you're involved in. So again, really looking for forward to our second part of
this class. So let's go ahead and dive in and get started. So in Coursera this week
we talk a little bit about or just about power. And you could have a whole session
devoted to power, but we have to divide this an eight-week, eight weeks for
Coursera. So we've combined power with organizational change and I think those are
really good fit. Because to be an effective change agent, you've gotta understand
how to effectively use power. And when you think about power, you can think about
power is it's my ability to get you to do something. And sometimes we think about
power over somebody. So we think about power as the ability, my ability to get you
to do something that You might not ordinarily do. Now, another way to think about
power, maybe a complimentary way to think about Power's, power is just the ability
to exert influence and get things done. And oftentimes I think we shy away from
talking about power. And sometimes we have almost this really negative dim view of
power. But as a manager, if you're going to be an effective manager, you really do
have to understand some basic principles about where power comes from and some
strategies to use power effectively. And so I think you'll see some nice overlap
between some of the things that we've learned about power, some of the things we'll
talk about here and being an effective change agent. So I want to ask you just
briefly as you think about our three different lenses that we've been talking about
throughout the course. We talked about organizations as rational systems are kinda
like machines, organizations as natural systems. They're kinda like communities and
organizations as open systems. They're kinda like adaptive organisms. What are some
of the bases of power that you see? And maybe some, some bases of power that, that,
that you've experienced in your own organizations. First, let's start from a
rational system perspective. As you look at an organization through that lens. So
what are some of the bases of power that you see when, when viewing the
organization as a machine. Why don't you folks, maybe that would be willing to
share your thoughts on that. Let's here from Jeffrey sided or you're raising their
hand TFA Ness, I wanted I was on mute him. Well, I in my organization, AIC power
when we need we need something to be clarified in a requirements. Or if there's
something that's blocking us from meeting the requirements. We go to a manager and
then that manager would go to somebody else and get something escalated so that
people would do whenever we need them to do in order so that we can complete our
jobs. So that's, that's kinda like a rational lens type of power. Awesome, thanks,
thanks Jeffrey. So oftentimes when we think about power through that rational
system lens, we think about hierarchy, right? Which is exactly where you went and
you escalate things up the chain of command until you can find somebody that can
actually that has the power to, to get something done right? That's a typical way
that we'd like to think about power. Excellent, thanks, thanks Jeffrey. So, so
that's, that's one way to think about power. But as we've talked about in this
class, a rational system view. That's it. That's a useful view of organizations.
That's definitely not the only view of organizations. So what if we put on this
natural system lens? Now we're concerned more with people. What are some of the
bases of power that you might experience from a, from a natural system lens.
Harris. Yeah, I think for me and natural system then they ERP Bologna and data,
lends me exploitable. Followed on. Oh, and by the competency and skills that you
look up on us as his source offline, you know, reframe our our mono foam board
about what is one often will mean things that comes up in a natural system. Limbs.
Excellent. I love the connection there with one of the things that came up in
Coursera this week is referent power, right? And to the extent that you possess
qualities that other people identify with, then that can cause you to be more
influential, right? Remember we put on that natural system lens. We see people, we
see all the dysfunction happens. We see cooperation, we see lack of cooperation. We
see all these, all these human related characteristics of organizations. And
oftentimes, power doesn't always show up in the formal organization chart. I've
known people that are high up in an organization chart that aren't very powerful,
they're not very influential, right? And you're exactly right sometimes, for
example, trust can, can be a basis of power, right? To the extent that, that people
trust you as a manager or as a leader, that can allow you to have more influence.
You can also think about informal structure. From a rational system view, we talk a
lot about formal structure. But from a natural system view, there's all kinds of
informal structures that exist in an organization that can give people an ability
to exert influence and get things done. So where you sit in informal networks can,
can be really important. How well you understand the culture or how well you
understand the political dynamics in an organization. Those are all things that can
allow you to navigate better, to have more influence and to get things done.
Excellent. Alright, last, last perspective is open system perspective. What, what
kinds of things would we see from this perspective when we're thinking about power?
How would this change? Where we view or how we view power within an organization?
Let's hear from gun Jim Patel. So Professor incomes of the open system, we've made
me think about it. It looks like resource dependency is how you can get resources
from the external environment would be one way to look at it. Excellent. Yeah,
remember last week we talked about resource dependence theory. Will ultimately,
that's a, that's a theory about power, right? And ultimately you want to create
relationships where you have more power over our organizations that have critical
and scarce resources that your organization needs. You want to lessen the extent to
which those organizations have power over your organization, right? So, yeah, I
think resource dependencies is one lens that helps us to see power in organizations
from an open system perspective. And so you can think about powers reside not just
in the hierarchy, not just an informal networks, but also power exists at the
boundaries of organizations, right? If you're somebody that, that plays a role
where you can get resources into the organization. Where you get information in or
push information out to the external world. That, that can also be a source of
power. So I talk about these lenses again. We talk about these lenses throughout
the class, but I think it's important when we talk about power. Because so often I
think we have a very narrow view of power and we only think about formal power and
authority and organizations, we think of the formal organization chart. And
sometimes that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where we think, well, I'm not in
one of those positions, so I can't possibly exert influence. But to the extent that
you understand some of your other bases of power which sometimes are highlighted
through these other lens. Then sometimes you have more power and ability to
influence than, than what you might at first suspect. Now one of the things that we
talked about in Coursera this week was remember Jeff Pfeffer, he was the former
U of I professor. That was really the father of resource dependence theory. He
talked about different strategies that we can use to effectively use power as
managers and organizations. And again, you'll see some of these, some of these will
be very relevant as we think about the case that we'll talk about later. I think
many of these strategies become strategies to be an effective change agent. Which
in many ways is synonymous with effectively using power, right? So think about your
ability to, to, to mete out resources to give rewards to people. He talks about
advancing on multiple fronts. That and I think that's related to the idea that
sometimes as a, as a manager, you gotta use different strategies to try and exert
influence. And sometimes we fall in love with one strategy and that's what we go
back to all the time. So again, advancing on multiple fronts is important. He talks
about co-opting antagonists, which came up again in the choosing strategies for
change article. Sometimes if you've got people that are resisting change effort for
example, sometimes you bring them close and you'd make them part of the solution.
He talks about removing rivals, being real cautious about where you're spending
your political capital. That you don't need to draw unnecessary fire, make sure
that it's actually worth it if you're going to stick your neck out using the
personal touch. I know that's something that in I I've had experiences where I'm
trying to exert influence and I think that personal touch can be very important.
Persistence as keys sometimes change happens when people don't give up. And change
is hard and it's really easy to give up. But again, I think change happens when
people persist. He talks about making a compelling vision. Again, a change agent
has to be a good storyteller and you gotta be able to tell the story of the future
state where you're trying to get to. So again, these are all examples of different
strategies that managers can use in different circumstances. I'd, I'd love to hear
from some of you. As you hear about some of these strategies. Think about in your
own experience, have you use some of these different strategies for exerting power?
Or use some of these strategies as a change agent. And tell us a little bit about
what you've done and how effective it's been. Maybe some of you will have
strategies that you've tried that haven't been very effective. So again, we'll open
it up and I'd love to hear from several of you here. Several chip from Rena film
now. I saw among what even is listed, I have used a couple of times like person
attach whenever we'd like an external parties and offshore team. So good. Thank
you. No more friendly. And then it works. Sometimes lead rather than being pharma.
It always worked. And also I'd try not to create that Lincoln Australia from the
fire. So it works better and that they cannot do. And lead by example that those
three things I really worked with, excellent personal touch, leading by example,
that's probably one that we could add to this list, right? It's easy to lose
credibility and lose your ability to influence where newer, telling other people
what to do and you're not willing to do it yourself. So, yeah, I think that's an
important an important strategy for exercising power. Thank you. Let's hear from a
couple of other tier from well, it can do munching. Yeah. In, in my previous attic
and they said I have seen lake mode uses a flake though, do you or does the
coercive about? Basically whenever they make a change, they come up with viewers.
But, but specifically taken on when some of the people who they don't want to
change LinkedIn, they tried to move them from Monday to debug them and be like, you
know, odd lake annoy. Someone is VDI stiff and laying on the US and go out of the
organization. So I have seen Lake and Ed experienced both of these. Always give me
a set of MAC. Excellent. Well, we'll come back to that as we talk about our case
and we talked about different strategies for change. But coercive power is
actually, again, that's a commonly used way to just get a common use of power,
right? And it's usually pretty effective, at least in the short term for overcoming
resistance. Excellent. Alright, let's hear from a couple of others. So Jamal, a
Friday. One of the thing I found really helpful in the context of a large global
organization is making important relationships. And oh, and when I joined this
company, makes some years ago I reached out to different people in division,
different people who have been in an important position. And the only advice that
I, the common advise that God was networking, informal networking. And I've, I feel
like that is something I leverage a lot. Could reaching out to people in different
divisions, reaching out different business units making those connections. And I
feel like they helped me out when there is a project or something where I need some
people to support me. Uncertain things. When I need people to help me with would
send an email to me, send and I think both really helping conveying the message
that I want them to become weight. Excellent. So just reaching out and building
relationships in different parts of the organization that helps to build your own
social capital, which again, can, can make you more influential. And part of what I
hear you saying too is, again, you think about relationships and as you build
trusting relationships with folks, then there's some, some degree of reciprocity,
right? Not an manipulative sense, but just as you reach out to others, as you're
willing to help others out, then in return. They're willing to help you out as
well. And again, this whole norm of reciprocity is, I think, an important aspect of
developing influence in our relationships. Excellent. Or we can't hear now from
Marshall reflect. So in my previous organization, we had to institute a new process
to manage your workflow. And so in order to do that, one of the strategies I used
was to try to explain why it was necessary to make the change and then communicate
over and over again. Daily updates, weekly meetings, what the process how the what
progress was being made in improving the process, and why those changes. We're
having tangible effects that we're making everybody's life easier. And so
continuing that beat, that drama of showing metrics, numbers people could relate to
and show how much time it was saving them every week. Excellent. So if you had to
put that one of these buckets, that sounds like making the vision compelling,
right? If you're trying to change or you're trying to tell that story. And I like
what you talked about using metrics, right? Telling people, this is great, but
showing people and using data to persuade people. And it sounds like that wasn't a
one time thing, but that was an ongoing effort, which again, as we get into talking
about strategies for change, typically that's the case, right? If you're trying to
make any kind of a significant change in an organization, it's not a one time
thing, but it usually, it requires lots of follow-up and the types of education
strategies that you're talking about, that those have to happen repeatedly over
long periods of time. Excellent. Thank you. Or if we have time for one more and we
can't get from George Kirby. I, so I wanted to kind of emphasize expert follow,
right? So establishing thought leadership. So whether that's through your own
expertise within the company or external, establishing external expertise through
social media and whatnot that really helps you establish influence within the
organization. That and also, I think someone else mentioned building relationships
not just within your team but within the broader organization such that you can
leverage those to influence vendor at certain projects and whatnot. Excellent.
Yeah, as you think back to Coursera, where taxes are different sources of power and
you've got legitimate power and coercive power and reward power. Sometimes we can't
do a lot about that, at least in the short term. I may not have a position of
formal power and influence, but, but I can't do something about my expert power,
right? And to the extent that you become an expert in something, then you create a
situation where people are dependent upon you for that expertise. Same thing with
referent power, right? To the extent that you develop characteristics that people
identify with. And that's something that you have more control over. That, at least
in the short-term than maybe something like your current formal position. So that's
a good segue. We're going to talk, you mentioned networks, but let's talk a little
bit about networks and how networks might play into our ability to influence and
get things done as a manager. So take a look at these two networks. You've got
Chris on the left and panel on the right. Who has more power. Or if that's an
impossible question, which it may be actually. Think about, what are the
implications for power? What are there any implications from just looking at the
shape of the network of Chris versus Pat? So what we can from men Buckley, I'm not
sure I totally understand that diagram, but I made what we studied. It's, you know,
whoever it has more contacts that are diverse around in different units within a
company, rather than centered all being similar, contacts that may have the same
information. So basically, you know, the more departments, the more contacts you
have in different departments with different functions, the more power you're going
to have. Excellent. I can't believe you don't love my amazing diagrams, but I think
the answer is, you really can't answer the question of who has more power, right?
But you can notice some things and I think you did a good job of articulating what
might be some of those differences in the network structures there. So they both
have
five ties to other folks, but Chris's connected to people that are also connected
to each other. And those kinds of debt dense networks tend to form around our
strong ties, right? So, so you think about a family. Families tend to all be
connected to each other. If you're in a close Department at work and you've worked
together for a long time and you all know each other well. Those tend to be strong
ties and so you all tend to be connected to each other. Versus Pat's network, the
kind of network that would tend to evolve around weak ties. And weak ties. They're
not your family members, their acquaintances, they're not close colleagues, but
people that maybe isn't some other department that that you've met, but you don't
have a close working relationship necessarily. And yeah, there's, there's some
advantages of both, right? And so when you, when you think about power, sometimes
there is power in being central in the network and having lots of ties that can
give you the ability to influence. But if you just look at this from an
informational perspective, then Pat's network actually has, it has some advantages,
right? Your weak ties tend to give you access to different types of information.
And the other thing about Pat is Pat fills what's called a structural hole. So if
you take pad out of the network, what happens to the network? It totally falls
apart, alright, because he connects otherwise disconnected groups. And so there's
some power in being that go between, right? And if, if, if information has to pass
through you or you're the one that connects otherwise disconnected groups that can
give you a greater ability to influence. So again, I don't, I don't want to spend,
spend too much time here, but hopefully that gives you a nice review of some of the
principles. About power. And so again, power comes from position, but power also
comes from where you're at and informal networks. It comes from your ability to get
resources in and out of the organization. And all of those things will come to bear
as we think about organizational change and your ability to be, to be a successful
change agent. So let's go ahead and transition. And I'd love to hear from some of
you about what are some examples of organizational change that you've experienced.
Tells us a little bit about what the change was and how effective were the change
agents in this particular case, do you feel like the change was well executed? And
maybe there were some things that you learned about in Coursera or things that
we'll talk about here today that that maybe folks could have done differently. So
let's hear from some of you about your experiences with organizational change. Came
from Lamar Ross? For me, I experience organizational change because we actually got
acquired several times. We were a small privately owned company, which we had a
traditional functional setup. Once we got acquire, was more of a matrix setup and
then we got acquired again four years later, bad even bigger company. So some of
the things that I've seen outward done, I could have been done differently. I'm the
biggest thing could have been just unifying some of the purposes in mission
statements. We were kind of operate under our own division for, I mean, private
company. We got acquired. We still operate it on our own rules and guidelines. And
then all of a sudden here we are, you know, 5-6 years later is after all those
acquisitions. And they're trying to push down some of these roles and guidelines.
But it wasn't quest from the bottom up was kinda push from the top, which now is so
far removed. We don't even know these people wars of personal connection. So you
have this weird mix of people that have been there when it was a smaller company
and people that have come on since then one's a larger company. So we need a kind
of mesh those two together and get us, they call us the older guys. We need to kind
of buy and see what the newer purpose envisioning and we still haven't done that
very well. Yeah, awesome. Thanks from our great, great, great insight there. And I
think that's common. That's part of what you see in the case for today, right?
You've got in your case it was acquisitions, right. But sometimes structural
change. And we're real good at focusing on the structural change. But there's also
a cultural change that often has to happen to compliment that. And so it sounds
like in your situation there was lots of structural change going from functional to
matrix and other structures, but maybe not a coinciding cultural change. It'll at
least not yet. It sounds like it's still a work in progress. Thanks. Thanks for
more. People, other priorities. Okay. So let's hear from three per car, a Krish
Moltke, Maya, my example, as in my previous organization, there was an effort to
transform things into cloud and it started off without a lot of adoption from
senior management and it became extremely slow and and and kinda like a non-
starter. And then we were able to see that wants to Watson adoption and commitment
from the from from the senior management. He just Chemical, rocket ship got things
just happen. So five, so when I saw that particular point in the lesson, he just
kind of resonated with me about how important do toaster could adopt to get to that
particular changes such excellent. So, so many times change efforts start and stop
at the top, right, and you get a small group of people that are really committed
that see the value in the wisdom of this change. And then they're totally surprised
that other people don't automatically see things the way that they do. And then
they're frustrated because there is a resistance at other levels of the
organization. So yeah, I think that's a, that's a common problem and that's
something that again, if you're a change agent, you gotta figure out how do we
communicate this? How do we get people involved in a way that they're more likely
to, to buy into the change as opposed to just resist the change. Good. Let's hear
from a couple others. Mino story. Hi. I would like to share an example from my
recently that happen at my, my program. Be work on different proposals and
different bits. So for growth opportunities, basically, gypsum you will want to
have. And occasionally we get a work which is totally out of scope. So like two
weeks back, I'll plant reach out to me casually and said, hey, by the way, can you
build this for us? And I said, Sure, let me look into it. And we had no idea what
that was honestly. But we had couple of networking connections within its a huge
global organization. So we had like these weak links with different teams all over
us that I was able to reach out to you, hey, you guys know about this, aways knows
about it. I was it within, because of that weak links, I was able to put together
three different proposals. Our pricing it, all that information in a matter of one
week. And if I do not have these weak links and I was just going to be focusing
button that my team's trend, I would have been not able to do that. So I think goes
neck looking examples really helped me. Excellent, great, great example of this
strength of weak ties, right? Oftentimes, when we think about networking, we
always, at least I do, I initially think about strong ties are, are really
important. But again, those, those weak ties can actually be super important as
we're trying to get stuff done in organizations. Great example, thank you. Let's
say we got time for maybe one or two more. But we can hear from my gear or sorry
Polly. So the example that I have from our workplace was when the organization
decided to go into a new platform called service. Now, the change took off really
well. Change agents were identified throughout the company. We were the first one
to get trained on and then take that training and convince other people how great
of a product and the moon. And we ended up doing, there was some feedback that we
receive and we took it back. It felt like it went to a black hole. So that kind of
didn't really. It felt like the change planning was done, execution was done. But
at some point it all became where it was being pushed from top down to get the
change done. But no one was taking that feedback. And later on, when something,
some of that feedback was needed. And they tapped on the change agents shoulders.
We were not really very enthusiastic about getting that feedback because we knew
that it was going to go into a black hole. Interestingly enough, two or three years
later they're coming up with the 2 release of that. Knowns asked our opinion about
what lessons we can take from the previous implementation. So we'll see how that
was excellent and create great example. And I think again, there's an important
principle there as you think about a change effort, it is important to build, feed
back into the process, right? One of the themes I'm hearing from a lot of your
comments is a lot of change efforts seem to be top driven from the top down, right?
And that's typically how organizational change starts. But you've gotta have some
sort of a feedback loop. Because people that are living the change are often very
disconnected from the folks at the top. Both in terms of, you know, they often
don't see the purpose of the change like people that are, that are up at the top.
And they can identify problems that folks at the top of the organization can't see.
And so again, there's gotta be some sort of feedback loop. And in communication
that doesn't just go in one way. Excellent, great to, great, great comment.
Alright, last one. Let's do one more. Let's see a couple other hands here from
Daniel Johnson died that hold with what? That something else. I don't already know.
That's let's hear from are you damn carry. Hey, I just want to add one example on
my own nation and what for it largely in I think everybody knows what it is called
Gap
ink. So you own multiple brands? Were Navy, gap, man, Republic, multiple of them.
So there's a big change that they wanted to make is the separate out will they be
honest? The division out of the audacious create a separate company, right? It was
declared a year back. There's a lot of planning, lot of investment happened to the
IT, organization hiring. But eventually, there was a huge kind of negativity within
the organisation who is going to go where it goes. Like, you know, people were
deciding or some people have even given opportunity to decide where people who want
to go. It is something that company was dealing with. But eventually after all this
planning, 67 months of work, eventually the organism decided, board decided that
we're not even what GWAS split. So they again came back together and whole
organized and is now in that along with this process, there's a huge lead us if
Chait CEO got changed, there is a new organ isolated. So this is a classic example
of failure of organizational change. And I also want to bring in excellent grade.
And those types of examples of failure of organizational change are not unique.
Again, changes hard, that's a good transition into what I want to talk about next,
which is. Why is it that we see failures like that? Why, why is it that change is
so hard? And part of the reason is because people resist change. And part of it is
because we build organizations to do things a certain way. And it's really, there's
lots of interconnected parts to, to organizations as we've been talking about
throughout the first four weeks of the class, right? And so it's really hard to
change things. If you change one thing, there's often ripple effects. So on an
individual level, think about why is it that changes so hard? Well, some of it's
just because of our routine and I don't know about you, but I love my routine and I
don't like to be bothered to get out of my routine. Just to give you a kind of a
silly example. So sometimes when I've taught about change in a, in an in-person
classroom, by the time we talk about change, you're halfway through the semester
and nobody tells people where to sit. But every single person in the class sits in
the exact same spot from day one. So you might as well have a seating chart.
There's like this unenforced seeding chart of where people sit. So when I teach
about change, I always say, Alright, for this class, you gotta sit someplace else.
You gotta, you gotta pick up your stuff. You gotta move to a different side of the
classroom. You gotta sit by somebody that you've never sat next to before. And you
wouldn't believe all the griping and complaining the students give me just for
asking them to move seats. And so they belly ache for awhile and they complain and
definitely not the most popular professor at the start of that class. But, but then
we step back and we, and we say, okay, how come there's so much whining about a
small change like asking you to move seats. And we talk about that for just a
minute. And then I always make the point. Imagine how much resistance there is just
for a simple asked like this. In an organization when you get organizational
leaders that are asking you to change the way you do something. Sometimes 4050 plus
hours a week, that you see as a big part of who you are as an individual. No wonder
that when we get asked to do something in an organization, that there's a lot, that
there's just a lot of resist, resistance. I think that's a natural tendency for all
of us. We don't like the uncertainty and we like our routines. Sometimes people
wonder how they're going to fare after the change. So I like my job, I'm pretty
good at it and I'm just not sure that I'm I'm I'm going to do so well, that things
are going to go well for me after this change. Sometimes people don't understand
the change. And sometimes people just disagree with the change. Just because top
management thinks it's a great idea, doesn't mean that I think it's a great idea.
And so you can have disagreements and that can lead to resistance. So there's all
kinds of reasons why people resist change. And as a change agent, that's really
important to understand why people might be resisting before we head off into a,
into a change effort, right? Understanding why people are resisting is a critical
step in this whole change management process. Alright. Let me stop just for a
second and just see sander or Jim, anything at this point that you want to add or
anything that's come up and chat that we should address. Just a quick thought.
Leaders. Sometimes we often think we have to shift people who are resistors into
advocates or convert them. And oftentimes you'll find that really all you need is
to kind of get them to be heard. One of the leadership skills that we don't talk
enough about is listening. And the fact is when people feel like they've been
heard, they'll go to neutral. They may still not like it. They may not want to do
it. They go to neutral instead of being a resistor. So think also about how you can
kind of just be a good listener in the sense of getting people's insights and
perspectives. So they feel like they've been heard as well. So excellent, great,
great, great, great point. Sandra, anything that we need to bring up? Mike? So in
the live session question forum, actually Steve breweries, who I think is here, ask
about changes during these Kavita era, right? And everyone working from home and
how this has been more or less challenging him. So, So I thought it's, I mean, it's
interesting to know that we may like, sorry, making change happening, happen in
organizations in these working from home era can present more challenges because
you might have more difficulties. For example, finding who are there resistors, I'm
bringing people in, your change boss, right? So I just wanted to point that out.
Excellent. There, there's a lot there's a lot to reading people face-to-face,
right? And if I find this, I'm, I'm teaching an undergraduate class right now. And
again, I'm used to teaching this class face to face, where you can read the body
language and you can find out pretty quick Who the resistors R. Now, it's not quite
so easy, right? Sometimes you can tell the resistors by they turn the camera off
and put everything on mute or, or, or, or sometimes I read too much into that,
right? So it's just hard. You don't have some of those informal interactions. A lot
of a change effort happens through informal interactions. And so I think you have
to work extra hard to intentionally make some of those interactions happen in
online covert world. Jim, did you have any other thoughts about that kind of
enacting change during Cove it and just kind of becoming our national new normal,
right? Sir. So interesting, as Mike pointed out, we have difficulty reading the
non-verbals and the virtual world, but we also have a diminished informal
communication that goes on. So there might be two sides to that coin. One hand, the
resistors aren't necessary, going to be griping with each other to, to think about
it from that perspective or pushing back and the communications in the informal
network. On the other hand, the issue is maybe you need the communications to be
elevated even more so and as we know, you need lots of communication, need to over-
communicate when you're doing change. So maybe there's a place there to really
think about how you over communicate and that space as well. So a couple thoughts
on. Great, thanks, thanks Jim and Sandra. So we've got a couple of models of change
that we learned about this week. So one is this Lewin's model of change where
you've got the current state of things and you think about what's the future state,
what's the desired state that we're trying to get to? And in Lewin's model, we've
got these three steps. So in Coursera talks about think about the organization as
an ice cube and you gotta melt things and then you got a re-freeze it in this new
desired state, right? So, so those are the three stages. But as you think about how
do we get from current state to a future state, you can think about driving forces
and restraining forces. And so there's always some forces that are going to drive
towards the change. Maybe we got support from upper management. Maybe you got
resources available to you that are going to be a driving force behind the change,
that you can throw a lot of resources behind it. Maybe there are people that
strongly believe in the changes that are going to be a driving force behind the
change. On the opposite side of things though, there's going to be restraining
forces. And again, those could be individuals that might be resisting. There maybe
budget constraints. There may be technological issues. There could be all sorts of
different restraining forces that we have to take into account. Now, I like this
model. It's a pretty simple model. But I just think that to the extent that
managers map out some of these things as they're starting to plan a change effort.
It can be a really fruitful discussion. And one of the things that I always tell
people is you got to map out these driving forces in restraining forces and then
try to figure out how strong they are. And maybe more importantly, figure out what
are the, what are the forces that you can do something about. And that's really
where you want to spend your energy because there's some things that no matter what
you do, you're not going to change it, right? If there's a budget constraint,
There's not much that you can do to change that. So let's focus on the restraints
that we actually can do something about. Or let's focus on the driving forces and
figure out how we can overcome that. Restraining force isn't going anywhere. So
again, I think this this model, even though it's a simple model, I think it can
lead to some useful conversations, the conversations at the beginning
of a change effort. Now, this model is in many ways related to the other model
that we talked about in Coursera this week, which is the model put forth by John
Kotter, John Carter used to be an academic now he works with big companies,
teaching them how to do organizational change. And this model has been used in lots
of different circumstances. And originally it was, it was intended for effecting
large-scale change in big organizations, but I think the principles can be applied
at lots of different levels. So this model starts out of with the idea that you
gotta create a sense of urgency. If people are naturally resistant to change, you
gotta help people see Why do I need to change? And you gotta get some key people
involved and build a guiding coalition of people that are really going to champion
this change and lead the change effort. And those folks, they have to develop a
vision, a story about what that future state is going to be and come up with a plan
or a strategy for how you're going to get there. We've talked about this already,
but just the importance of communicating the change vision. Some of your examples
that you shared. In some of those examples, I think there was clarity among a small
group of people that didn't get communicated throughout the organization. And I
think that's a common problem. You gotta communicate, communicate, communicate.
Then you've gotta empower people. You've gotta give people the resources that they
need. In order to enact change. You gotta remove some of the restraining forces
that are going to get in their way. I like this idea of generating short-term wins.
You gotta show feasibility of the change and you gotta build momentum and you gotta
get people excited. And so can you find short-term ways that you can demonstrate
that this change is going to be helpful. And then once you get those short term
wins, then you can start to consolidate your ability to enact more change. And
ultimately, this last step looks a lot like the refreezing step from the, from the
prior model. You gotta figure out how do we build processes? How do we build this
new desired state that we've reached? How do we make that a part of the unspoken
taken for granted culture at the organization? Now, sometimes we think about
Kotter's model is this nice eight step model? And it is a nice kind of game plan of
where you could start. Sometimes in the real world things are a little bit messier.
And again, I think sometimes you don't always go straight from step one through
step eight. Sometimes you go back a few steps or there might be some feedback loops
that you want to take into account. But I really like this model. It's a simple way
to think about getting started with a, with a substantial change effort. Alright,
last thing I want to talk about before we get into our case is this idea of
choosing strategies for change. And remember back in module two, we talked about
contingency theory. Contingency theory is all about the right structure depends on
a bunch of contextual factors, right? Well, the right strategy for your change
effort depends on a bunch of contextual factors. So you gotta figure out what kind
of change is this and where's the resistance likely to come from? And how much
power do I have as a change agent? And how much information do people have? Based
on answers to questions like that, then certain strategies are gonna be more
beneficial than others. And as we talked about before, you got to understand why
people are resisting. Because depending on why people are resisting, then there are
certain strategies that are going to be better than others. So maybe people don't
trust me as the change agent. Maybe people just fundamentally disagree. Maybe they
don't understand the change, don't understand. Then all of a sudden, we can try to
fix that and we can, we can do, we can engage in education to try and help people
to better understand the change. So the whole idea here is that we can diagnose the
context of the situation, diagnose why people are resisting. And then we pick
usually a combination of different change strategies to help overcome that
resistance, right? One of the problems that people run into is, again, you fall in
love with just one of these strategies. And I'll oftentimes, and this is what we
said before about wielding power. You gotta become familiar with several of these
strategies. As you try to become a more effective change agent. So let's take some
of those things and some of these models that we've just talked about and let's
apply those in a real case. So I had you read about carob wood or lay at Old
Mutual. And she comes in after this structural change at Old Mutual and is trying
to enact some cultural change. Now, I found a quick video that I want to show you
that gives you a little bit of a flavor of the type of change. Or at least
hopefully will give you a little bit of additional insight into the things that you
read about. Let's see if we can do this. Every business has a heartbeat, rhythm, a
pulse. We've redefined ours as we enter this new chapter in our story. Our purpose
redefined championing mutually Positive Futures every day. Our vision, to be our
customers most trusted partner, passionate about helping them achieve their
financial goals. But we're not all talk. To put that vision into practice. We'll
need an evolution in fundamentals. Are values. Always act with integrity. Trust,
and accountability. Champion the customer to the power of diversity and inclusion.
Respect for each other. And the communities we serve. Agile innovation that makes a
difference. And with new values comes a new culture. Our culture shifted to winning
in the market, customer-led, risk-based decision making, acquiring and retaining
top talent, externally competitive, focused, executing and delivering, value and
impact driven. Speed, simplicity and focused on cost effectiveness. And what
changes on the inside shows on the outside. Our new brand positioning. To champion
individuals and businesses to be their exceptional best of Rand has to evolve to
being vibrant, insightful, and inspiring. We need to support it by living the brand
and championing customers each and every day. We have to be more consistent,
meaningful, connected, believable, relevant, and distinctive in the market. Beating
in sync with the pulse of Africa. Focused on leadership. As we continue to have
better responsible business ethos across everything we do is at the center of who
we are and underpins our decision-making. As we enter this chapter, will continue
to change the lives of millions of Africans by creating mutually Positive Futures.
A common narrative that runs through everything that we do. A heartbeat, rhythm,
pulse. Alright, hopefully that gives you a nice kind of overview of some of the key
aspects of the case gives you a glimpse of some of the fundamental values that they
were trying to refine and modernize, I think is what it talks about in the case. So
we're going to get to your breakout groups and I want you to talk about, first of
all, I'll just articulate what exactly. I mean we're talking about cultural change,
but what does that really mean? Can you articulate what kind of change is really
needed at Old Mutual? And then see if you can't connect some of the aspects of the
case with what we've been talking about so far. Can you see ways to apply the
different models of change that we've talked about. For example, are there parts of
Kotter's eight steps that you see? What are they using as a change agent or as you
think about choosing strategies for change? Can you analyze the context of the
situation and talk about what are some specific strategies that Moodle they uses in
this particular case? And then what's your overall evaluation of how she do how
effective what she as a change agent. So let's go ahead and get into your breakout
groups and we'll see you in just a few minutes. Welcome back. Hopefully you had a
good breakout session with your group. So I'd love to hear from several of you.
Just a, just a reminder. We'd love to hear from as many groups as possible. And so
don't tell us everything that you've talked about as a group, but please do
highlight one or two of the key points that you made. And let's start off with this
first question of, can you articulate the type of change that's really needed at
Old Mutual? So I mean, we talk about cultural change, but what do you think the,
what do you think the mandate really is for moon or lay to make change at Old
Mutual. So let's start with that question and yeah, do we have a couple of
volunteers? Week shear from handmade. Thank you. Actually, change required. In a
static case study we had the resilience should be permanent. So the need for the
for the the CFO, I think fewer finance manager was to be convinced, said she
shouldn't be going to solutions that depend on coercion and the cutter model did
not include any coercion. She followed the same sequence Cutter's model. And we
discussed Another thing about the education communication points. And we see that
the case study where education was in both ways, she informed about the need for
change, allowed participation. And then she went to the extra mile, learned from
the field, learned from the outer circle. We're talking about also outer circle.
First hierarchy, hierarchical. So she went and learned from the outer circle and
brought back reflection into the void. That was one thing that she did very well.
And another thing that she did not just go and learn. And bringing her own
perspective, but rather she recorded those statutes and she brought them to the
boat. So the Board was not the still through her perspective, but directly through
the perspective of those in the field. And then we discussed something about
computation versus participation. Why, why are we using the word co-optation?
Because at the end of the day, even when you are putting in the team resistors,
you're allowing them to participate and make, you know, you're teaching them. But
at the same time, you're involving them and you're allowing them to participate and
give a diverse feeling for the team. And diversity, of course, always works here so
that we can fix our gaze. Great, thank you. Thinking Mohammed in great report out.
Sounds like you had a really good in-depth discussion in your group. And I mean,
part of what I hear you saying is, given the nature of this change, this wasn't
something that she could just top-down say, oh, here's the change that we're going
to do, right? That's just not how you do cultural change. Maybe you can do
structural change that way, right? And a lot of times, even, even some of the
examples that I shared earlier ones want the actual, you want to dig in, especially
with culture. You don't want them just to come in as a, as an applet to that. Even
with factual change, it's the same, I think. Yeah. No, no. I I agree. I just think
sometimes you see that, right? Sometimes you see coercive measures used to do a
structural change. And sometimes those can work, sometimes, sometimes not. But, but
really that's not a good strategy if you're trying to enact a cultural change. And
so you did a really nice job of identifying some of those strategies that Moodle
they used. And I like what you talked about with the two-way communication, which
was in contrast to one of the examples that we heard earlier from one of your
classmates that talked about a structural change where everything seemed to be
going really well. It's that there wasn't any feedback going back the other
direction. And so anyway, excellent job of pointing out the feedback that was built
in to this particular change effort. Excellent. Thank you. Great, great job,
Muhammad. Alright, let's, let's hear from a couple others. And again, let's go back
to just that initial question of articulating what kind of change do you feel like
is necessary if we could start there and then give us a few of the just just one or
two the key points that your group brought up during jam-packed town. So group
discussed about as all mutually forming itself as a new company, it was important
to create a sense of identity for its employees and use the culture as the
stepping, as the foundation for that new identity. So about identity, interesting,
it seems like there's a connection to what we did in module one when we talk about
purpose, right? I think those are connected, right? You think about purpose and
identity as, as we'll following this structural change where we kind of spin off
this unit that's going to be solely based in Africa. We really want to be clear
about what is the identity, what it, what is the purpose of this organization?
Excellent. Thank you. As I think about what the mandate is, I really think it's one
of alignment, right? We have this structural change that's taken place. And
remember some of the things we've talked about in module two about a divisional
structure you can think about this is like spinning off a division of Old Mutual.
And it's a division that specifically designed to cater to a certain geographic
area. And so what we're trying to do is align that structural change that's already
happened and make sure that there's a complimentary culture. It's going to support
this structural change that we, that we've already made. So it really is a, a
change that has to do with the alignment of structure and culture and purpose and
identity like you talked about. Excellent. Alright, let's, let's hear from a couple
others. Why demand? Yeah, I was going to talk a little bit about purpose there, but
that was already kind of mentioned about more specifically, I think something that
was mentioned in the case study as well as up videos, there was changing from a
product-focused company into a customer focused company. On the culture comes under
that and alignment. And I think that's kind of fundamental issue that we're having
to deal with. Excellent grades. Are there other thoughts? Let's hear from a couple
of others. And again, did you see specific instances of maybe aspects of Kotter's
model or restraining forces are driving forces or the choosing strategies for
change to just did you talk about any specific instances where some of those
principles that we've talked about, maybe we're put into practice here or right
here from merely narrowing thought. Hebron. So I think, I think first of all, it
was a reactive change because it was driven by a structural change that happened.
And second, I think it was also an incremental change and not a very radical change
because she was trying to build upon some of the existing values that existed off
of grants and working together. And then she wanted to build on top of them, live
in like customer centricity and inclusion diversity. That's 1 second, I think you
can actually trace all the it's chip portrait process. You know, I asked her what
she was trying to do with various degree of success. I would say. Specifically the
ones that she did a good job was forming a powerful coalition, making sure that the
frontline managers are also involved in the change and not just her leadership
team. And the last thing I think our group discussed was that change. The case
study was not the conclusion whether the change actually happened. It was a
successful change or not. So I think that's where we left and this is what we
discussed as part of a group 17. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for that insight.
Sounds like you had a really good discussion and yet, there were several elements.
I think Kotter's model that you can identify. There talks about a controlled sense
of urgency that seems to line up pretty well. Some of that's probably how the cases
written. Cases written, I think to demonstrate some of these principles, but it
does a nice job of providing an example of what Kotter's model might look like in
practice. Excellent. I also like what you said. You talked about how this was an
incremental change building on other things and it was, it was linked to the
structural change. And I wonder if that's one of the reasons it doesn't talk a lot
about resistance to change. In this case. Typically when we think about change, we
think about lots of resistance. I'm sure there still was some degree of resistance.
But, but I wonder if those elements, the fact that it was kind of it wasn't a
wholesale change, that was an incremental change, maybe led to the fact that at
least in the case we don't read a lot about a lot, lot, lots of resistance.
Excellent. Alright, I see a couple other hands up. Let's, let's hear from a couple
of other groups. Are LD Thompson. Hi. Hi. I was going to talk about briefly, you
mentioned cotter. I thought that shoe is a poster child for Kotter's model. And
just she was a transformational leader, an aspirational transformational leader.
And she really created a sense of urgency and the growth strategy. And so that's
what was interesting is like she said, you know, there's no going back. This is
we're only going to move forward. And I think whenever you say something like that,
that's very powerful. There is, there is no other way but forward. And so she
really made that sense of urgency and she kept the communication lines open. Her
peers saw her. Well, I think what what was it? One of her peers talked about said
she's one of those key leaders who are responsible for driving responsible
business. And so I, I think she has a powerful force and this was going to happen
regardless, but she used all of the positive mechanisms of power and she didn't use
coercion. I think she used all the rest of them but coercion, sexually active. So
excellent. Hearing. Great. And like we said, I think I think that messes up pretty
well with the type of change that we're trying to enact here. Excellent, excellent,
great, great insights there. Alright, I see a couple other, We've got time for
maybe one or two more. Seriously, rich here from carrying skull. Thank you. A
couple of like sort of big picture things I noticed one was and it feels like such
a great example of if you have infinite time and resources to enact your change,
then you can take all these amazing steps. So in that way, this change was the
poster child for the method. But at the same time, it would be interesting to read
a case study where someone had more limited time and tried to accomplish something
similar. And then like you said, I feel like It was a little bit tailored and like
there were no resistors at all. I would love to hear about the one parse and she
had to fire and just feel like you're not on the same page. I've done everything I
can. I'm sorry, this is just not working out. Yeah. I wonder where those resistors
came from, right? I'm, you know, this was a change that I can imagine a lot of
people were enthusiastic about. But anytime you're talking about changing core
values, I've taught a case before about IBM. And IBM went back and they modified
some of their core values that were in there. Not, not their mission statement, but
an a value statement. And it's interesting even though to an outsider just seems
like they were tweaking words on a page. There are a lot of people that were really
resistant to some of those changes. And that's because if you've grown up in this
company and you've internalized some of these values. And now all of a sudden
somebody is coming along and saying, hey, we need new values that, that can be
super threatening to people. So I just wonder if there were people that had been at
Old Mutual for a long time that that were resistant to in any kind of tweaks to
even the language around the values and things like that. Again, that doesn't
really come up in the case, but I agree. I think that would have been that would
have been interesting. Alright, let's do one more and then we'll summarize what
we've done. For j not roll. Thanks. I wanted to just emphasize the importance or
the benefit of her not needing to resort to legged coercion and manipulation. One,
because it allows you to kind of save her political capital for when that's
necessary. And then two, if it became necessary, she, you know, the the company
would kind of sense from her a different type of urgency and a different type of
willingness to collaborate that might send unnecessary signal to get a different
more structural change through more quickly. So making it really easily to
differentiate between the two approaches. Excellent, great. Well and part of the
reason why maybe she didn't have to resort to some of the other things is because
one of the other comments mentioned her as a transformational leader. I think she
had built up some political capital. She had built trust with lots of people. She
took the time to, to create some of those relationships you help people connect
with purpose. And yeah, I think she was a a, a good example of an effective change
agent. So how did she do? I sense I got from listening to your comments is I think
a lot of people and just seeing some of the comments in the chat, I think for the
most part, people think she did, she did a pretty good job, right? I think this is
a nice demonstration of some of the principles that we've talked about both in
Coursera and in our class today. So it's nice every once in a while to read a case
of somebody that puts into practice some of the things that we that we talked
about. I've never used this case before, so I actually would be interested in your
feedback about how you like the case. And if this provides a meaningful good
example for you, again, I think Motorola was, I give her an a In her performance as
a as a change agent. Let me ask Jim and Sandra At this point, after going through
this case, any reflections or any things that either if you want to add points that
you want to drought. Know Mike, I wanted to point out there has been some talking
to chat about their resistors, right? So form worldly shattering the glass ceiling
could have being ever see sir. So reaching senior level position as a female
leader, he's going to be hard and also overcoming what it's called big Lastly, and
that he's managing while being a female leader in a senior position. These
challenges can be aggravated. If we account for dairy system that generates the
intersection between race and gender on these intersection and these resistors are
particularly Archer in emerging markets. And that's what research says. So
organizations, of course, have increased their efforts to cultivate female
leadership. Also because we have recognized that one of the levers for change,
particularly that type of change that all new child needed. Ease, little
leadership. Looks like we would somebody just lost Sandra writers. He was common in
her point. Anyway, great, great, great insight there of women or what research has.
Sandra, We just lost you for a second. So while yes, no, no, no, no, sorry, sorry,
I was just finishing. So these transformational leadership style is what really
help us help her. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you sander for that perspective and
yeah, that's it. That's a great insight on this particular case. Fantastic. Jim,
anything that you want to add? And I think Sandy covered it well, similar, nice job
on that. I'm smiling because some of the chat saying that perhaps, perhaps one of
your children is push the router there and Mike's good. Could be. I wouldn't put it
past my two-year-old right now. Awesome thing. Thanks. Thank thanks to him and
Sandra. So just a couple of takeaways from this case. Again, I I think it does
provide a nice example of, like I said, somebody who followed some of these
patterns are some of these models that we've talked about this week. I think it
shows this idea that cultural change and structural change are often tightly
linked. In this case, the structural change came first. I think structural changes,
again, from some of the examples that I heard many of you offer are often more
likely to be done with some of the I think it's a characteristics on the right side
of the continuum, right? More, more coercive strategies, right? But, but culture
takes time, right? We're going to talk about this a little bit more next week as we
dive in a little bit more to culture. But culture takes a long time to build and
it's really sticky. It's hard to change. And so I think Moodle a was really wise to
spend her time on that end of the spectrum. We're facilitating people, empowering
people, educating people and doing the hard work over a long period of time. Not
just with a short burst, getting really excited about it, but again, trying to
reinforce some of these change efforts over time. That's part of the reason why I
think she did a really good job. You can see several aspects, right? And again,
part of this is the way the cases written, but hopefully you can make some
connections there with the case and some of the things that we've talked about in
this module. And then I hope you see some connections to some of the other stuff
that we've done in this class, right? I know at least one of you talked about
purpose and wouldn't when you talk about transformational leadership, I heard a
couple of you mentioned that term, we'll talk about that here in a couple of weeks.
But transformational leadership is all about connecting what you do back to
purpose. And when you think about what Motorola was trying to do here, that that's
a big part of what she was trying to do was connect people's work back to purpose
and identity and who were, who they were trying to become as an organization. When
you think about change, you can also think about are three lenses, right? You can
think about change, the structural change that went on. You know, that's pretty
easy to see from a, from a rational system perspective, right? You're moving boxes
around and you're pulling out this part of the organization and kind of creating
this independent unit, right? But you can also look at changed from a people
perspective. And I think the case does a good job of highlighting that, right? We
gotta view change from a natural system perspective when we're talking about
resistors and how do we influence individuals so that they're not resisting? That?
That's really a natural system perspective. And when we think about open system
perspective, right? Think about part of what they're trying to do is design an
organization that's going to fit well in this external environment, right? In this
geographic area where they reside. And so there's an open system perspective as
well. They talked about being customer centric. And one of the things I love about
this cases, she made some of her own employees go out and feel what it was like to
be customers and so they could get that perspective. So again, when you, when you
think about being a change agent, you've gotta be able to look through all three of
these different lenses that we've been talking about throughout the, throughout the
semester. So to finish up, hopefully you've got some hope that change is hard, but
it can actually be done. Successful change agents can follow some of the principles
that we've been talking about this week. Successful change agents, they identify
the context of the situation and they pick strategies that are appropriate for that
particular context, right? They identify resistance points, they've identified
driving factors, and they focus on the ones that they can do something about and
they try to make change there. I really like Kotter's model. I think that's a
useful starting point if you're thinking about changes, not just for large-scale
organizational change, but if you have to enact any kind of a change, I think
that's a useful place to start. But just remember that in the real-world, things
are sometimes a little bit messier. And, you know, you might not go in lock step
through those eight different steps, but I think that's a good way to get you
started. And the last thing this will date me, but if we have any Rocky fans out
there, in the words of rocky, everybody can change. So I want to close on this
amazing organizational speech by rocky. I'm trying to say is that if I again change
world, don't crash, the Cauchy's means, you can change. We move with these
vignettes. If you're not familiar with Rocky for that, maybe the cornea moment in
cinematic history where Rocky, the underdog boxer sways the crowd. And by the end,
everyone in Russia's cheering for Rocky, even the president or the, the, the, the
president of Russia. So change is hard, but if Rocky can do it, maybe, maybe we can
do it too. All right. For our next live session. Just a couple of things, a couple
reminders, so make sure and complete your graded discussion for module five. Also,
if you haven't done the exam, make sure and do the exam, make sure and get that
done. There's also the second milestone, which is the background information that
you need to do. Start working on Milestone three. That's going to come up quick as
well. That's going to be due a week from tomorrow. So Milestone three is all about
using r three lenses to identify three issues or problems in the organization that
you're studying this semester. Okay, so again, think of a problem that you can
identify from a, from a rational, natural and open system lens. And then for the
final deliverable, you'll pick one of those to dive into in a little bit more
depth. And in our case for next week is going to be Zappos. So again, make sure you
read the case, answer the discussion question, and come prepared for another great
discussion. Hey, thanks so much, great to be with you. Thanks for sharing your
insights. It's always fun to
hear from your experiences and have a wonderful week. 2345678910