MANAGING CHANGE

Dr Faiza Ali
SDSB
 USE CHANGE TO YOUR ADVANTAGE,
HR TOLD
• HR leaders from British Gas and Surrey County Council shared their tips in a CIPD
panel session in 2010.
• Tom Crawford, director of internal communications at British Gas, said that a vital element of
ensuring sustainable performance was to encourage dialogue about change and culture to come up
to management from lower down in the organisation. He said this helps sustain longer term change.
• Carmel Millar, head of HR and organisational development at Surrey, said the council’s “root and
branch change” started when its children’s services were assessed as failing in 2008. In what she
described as a “scary year”, a £180 million shortfall emerged in the council’s finances, and there were
wholesale management changes and 300 job cuts. Millar said that HR was spurred by the changes to
conduct a “cultural stocktake”, with surveys of the workforce to establish which interventions would
make the biggest impact on performance.They fixed their priorities as working on leadership, staff
engagement, communications and change management, and these were backed up by significant
investment. “Council members bravely supported HR with a £1 million a year investment in training
and development, and engagement – despite the £180 million hole – because they understood the
importance of employees’ abilities and skills.This has really shifted our organisational performance,”
said Millar.
• http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2010/11/use-change-to-your-advantage-hr-told.htm
(11Nov 2010)
 CHANGE MANAGEMENT
FAILURES

• At the beginning of the new millennium, Time Warner stock

was changing hands at almost $72 a share. Less than a decade
later, shares were below $15. What the company’s executives
hadn’t strategized for was a disastrous merger with AOL. The
biggest merger in corporate history, it should have been a
match made in heaven. The need to manage change through a
clash of corporate cultures was severely underestimated. As
Richard Parsons, President of Time Warner remarked later, it
was “beyond my abilities to figure out how to blend the old
media and the new media culture.”
Source: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-change-management-failures
• Hewlett Packard is a company in decline. Senior management knows
what its problems are and is attempting to change culture slowly. As
part of the redefining of its business, it undoubtedly discussed plant
closures and staff lay-offs at board level. News filtered through to staff
before announcements were made. Staff morale declined rapidly, leading
to further poor business performance and the need to lay off tens of
thousands of staff: all this in the lead-up to an announcement that the
company plans to split in two. Its mismanagement of
workplace change has seen hundreds of disgruntled top executives
leave for pastures new: an unprecedented brain drain that has seen real
money makers move on.
• Hewlett Packard’s reluctance to train, coach, and nurture in the lead-up
to workplace change became so threatening to the company that it
could be argued it had no option but to split in two to survive. Time
may not even tell us if this is the case. It could have been so different,
though.
• The National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom recently
abandoned its massive new computers system – at a cost of over
£10bn so far (which is over $16 billion). What happened? Here’s an
excerpt from The Guardian UK newspaper:
• ‘An abandoned NHS patient record system has so far cost the taxpayer
nearly £10bn, with the final bill for what would have been the world's
largest civilian computer system likely to be several hundreds of millions of
pounds higher, according a highly critical report from parliament's public
spending watchdog.
• Members of Parliament (MPs) on the public accounts committee said
final costs are expected to increase beyond the existing £9.8bn because
new regional IT systems for the NHS, introduced to replace the National
Programme for IT, are also being poorly managed and are riven with their
own contractual wrangles.’
 FORCES FOR CHANGE

• Nature of the Workforce

• Greater diversity
• Technology
• Faster, cheaper, more mobile
computers and handheld devices
• Economic Shocks
• Mortgage meltdown
• Competition
• Global marketplace
• Social Trends
• Environmental awareness
• World Politics
• Opening of markets of China
 Sources of Change

• Changes in the external environment must

be matched by organisational changes, if an
organisation is to remain competitive.

• All organisations face two basic sources of

pressure to change – external sources and
internal sources.

Copyright ©2005 Pearson Education Canada Inc.

What Organizations Can Change

• Goals and strategies

• Technology
• Job design
• Structure
• Processes
• Culture
• People
 RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

Resistance to change appears to be a natural and positive

reaction to change.
Forms of Resistance to Change:
• Overt and Immediate
• Voicing complaints, engaging in job actions
• Implicit and Deferred
• Loss of employee loyalty and motivation, increased errors or
mistakes, increased absenteeism
 TACTICS FOR OVERCOMING
RESISTANCE TO CHANGE
• Education and Communication
• Show those effected the logic behind the change
• Participation
• Participation in the decision process lessens resistance
• Building Support and Commitment
• Counseling, therapy, or new-skills training
• Implementing Change Fairly
• Be consistent and procedurally fair
• Selecting people who accept change
• Hire people who enjoy change in the first place
• Coercion
• Direct threats and force
CHANGE MANAGEMENT

• Two dominant approaches

• The Planned approach (Lewin, 1940s-
1970s)
• The Emergent approach (1980s
onwards)
PLANNED APPROACH: LEWIN’S
THREE-STEP MODEL

• Lewin (1958)’s model lies at the core of

planned change.
• 3-steps
• Unfreezing the present level
• Moving to the new level
• Freezing the new level
• General, broad
 KOTTER’S EIGHT-STEP PLAN

• A detailed approach to implementing change that is built on Lewin’s three-step

model
• To implement change:
1. Establish a sense of urgency
2. Form a coalition
Unfreezing
3. Create a new vision
4. Communicate the vision
5. Empower others by removing barriers
6. Create and reward short-term “wins” Movement
7. Consolidate, reassess, and adjust
8. Reinforce the changes Refreezing
PLANNED CHANGE - CRITIQUE

• Assumes environmental stability

• Ignores power and politics
• Too reliant on managers
• Not applicable to situations which require
rapid, transformational change
• “one-best way” approach
• Limited applicability
COMMUNICATING AND
MONITORING CHANGE

• “Effective communication may be the

single most important factor in overcoming
resistance” (Johnson, Scholes & Whittington, 2005).
• Clarity of vision
• Choice of media
• Involvement in strategy development
• 2-way process: feedback loops
• Importance of emotional aspects
• Monitor change programme
MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS

• Change programmes are difficult and

complex
• Monitor the change
• Understand the culture
• Involve people
• Recognise change as a major
challenge
CONCLUSION
• Strong cultures can make organisations resistant to
certain types of change
• Strong cultures may only suit organisations at certain
stages in their development
• Can bring short-term benefits but may also bring
long-term stagnation and decline
• Organisations also have sub-cultures
• Timescale for changing culture: 6-15 years
• Ethics: should we seek to control or manipulate
people’s emotions
• Culture cannot be controlled
 ADDITIONAL READING

• Dunphy, D. (1993) The Strategic Management of Corporate Change. Human Relations, 46(8):
905-920.
• Francis, H. (2002) "The power of “talk” in HRM-based change", Personnel Review, 31(4): 432
– 448.
• Francis, H. and Sinclair, J. (2003) 'A processual analysis of HRM-based change', Organization,
10(4): 685-706.
• Hendry, C. and Pettigrew, A. 1992. Patterns of Strategic Change in the Development of
Human Resource Management
• British Journal of Management, 3(3): 137–156.
• Lynch, R. (2000) Corporate Strategy, London: Pitman Publishing.
• Michie, J. and Sheehan-Quinn, M. (2001) Labour Market Flexibility, Human Resource
Management and Corporate Performance. British Journal of Management, 12: 287–306
• Wright, P. and Snell, S. (1998) Toward a Unifying Framework for Exploring Fit and Flexibility
in Strategic Human Resource Management. The Academy of Management Review, 23(4): 756-
772.