Managing Strategic Change

Dr. Sami Ullah

 Managing Strategic Change
• Unusual for an organization’s strategy to
remain unchanged
• Change is inevitable
• The only question is how rapid the change will
be
• The process starts with diagnosis of change
requirements
 Diagnosis: situation analysis for change

• A wide range of stimuli may lead an

organization’s managers to recognize the need
for strategic change
• The management of change starts with an
understanding of three main considerations:
– The type of change required
– The wider context of the change
– Forces facilitating and blocking change
 Types of change
• Balogun and Hope Hailey, analyze change on two
axes:
• The scope of change is its extent
– The measure of scope is whether or not the methods and
assumptions of the existing paradigm must be replaced.
– It results in realignment or transformation
• The nature of change
– Change may be incremental and built on existing methods
and approaches, or it may require a 'big bang' approach if
rapid response is required, as in times of crisis.
Types of change
 Types of change
• Adaptation:
– It is the most common type of change. It does not
require the development of a new paradigm and
proceeds step by step.
• Reconstruction:
– It can also be undertaken within an existing
paradigm but requires rapid and extensive action.
It is a common response to a long-term decline in
performance.
 Types of change
• Evolution:
– It is an incremental process that leads to a new paradigm.
– It may arise from careful analysis and planning or may be the result of
learning processes.
– Its transformational nature may not be obvious while it is taking place.
• Revolution:
– It is rapid and wide ranging response to extreme pressures for change.
– A long period of strategic drift may lead to a crisis that can only be
dealt with in this way.
– Revolution will be very obvious and is likely to affect most aspects of
both what the organization does and how it does them.
 Context of Change
• Balogun and Hope Hailey suggested 8
determinants of context of change for
organizations.
– Scope could be realignment or transformation
– The time available may vary dramatically, but can
often be quite limited when responding to
competitive or regulatory pressure.
– The preservation of some organizational
characteristics and resources may be required.
 Context of Change
– Diversity of general experience, opinion and practice is
likely to ease the change process
– The capability to manage and implement change. It
depends on past experience of change projects
– Capacity to undertake change. It depends on the
availability of resources, particularly finance, and IS/IT,
and management time and skill.
– The degree of workforce readiness for change.
Readiness may be contrasted with resistance to change
– The power to effect change
 Questions
• An examination of context leads to four
questions.
– Is the organization able to achieve the change
required?
– Does the context affect the means by which change
should be achieved?
– Should the context itself be restructured as a
preliminary to strategic change?
– Will constraints present in the context make it
necessary to proceed in stages?
 Force-field Analysis
• It consists of the identification of the factors
that promote and hinder change.
• Promoting forces should be exploited and the
effect of hindering forces reduced.
 Force-field Analysis
• A practical route to applying the force field analysis
idea is:
– Define the problem in terms of the current situation and
the desired future state.
– List the forces supporting and opposing the desired
change and assess both the strength and the importance
of each one
– Draw the force-field diagram
– Decide how to strengthen or weaken the more important
forces as appropriate and agree with those concerned.
 Force-field Analysis
– Decide how to strengthen or weaken the more
important forces as appropriate and agree with
those concerned.
– Identify the resources needed
– Make an action plan including event timing,
milestones and responsibilities
Force-field Analysis: Performance review of a public sector organizations