Source: the HRDIRECTOR
Date: May 2006
Author: Sudhanshu Palsule, MD, Pertec Consulting

“To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now” samuel becket Why do so many companies get it wrong when going through a period of organisational change? Sudhanshu palsule, Member of our editorial panel, suggests that we must approach change management differently, if it is to be successful…

THE MESSY WORLD OF CHANGE

"Change is primarily a psychological process: the survival mode"

At the risk of offending my colleagues that implement organisational change projects through large consultancies, I’d like to go on record and state that I have yet to see a successful change programme that has been driven this way. Of course, we need to define what is meant by successful organisational change. If it is about creating spikes in the stock market it probably works, but if it is about improving performance, I have yet to see it happen.

Change has become a key word in the management lexicon; being able to deal with, manage and lead change has become a critical competency, and the word is almost synonymous with being able to perform successfully in the global market place. Companies spend millions on change projects, large and small. But at the end of all this, why do so few initiatives work?

The answer lies in how we understand the change process in its depth and totality. For most managers, organisational change is assumed to be something that needs to be ‘implemented’. This leads to the following conclusions: that the implementing agency is external to the organisation; and that the organisation stands still and receives the change as if it were a new software system being installed into a passive computer. Hence the ‘change management programme’.

"Change has become a key word in the management lexicon; being able to deal with, manage and lead change has become a critical competency"

I was recently invited by a chemical company to present a proposal on how they could create change in their organisation. I found myself in the amusing situation of presenting to what they called a ‘Change Panel’. While I was describing that the exact point at which change happens, does not follow a  re-determined schedule on an Excel spreadsheet, I realised that I wasn’t playing to their expectations. What the panel wanted was a step-by-step plan of change with time lines and costs and details on how many management workshops were required at what time. It was clear that their mental models about change were about a linear, neat and tidy, step-by-step process. They wanted me to bring the software and plug it in.

The irony is that, as all managers will testify, organisations are anything but neat and tidy. They are messy places and the last thing that can work is a step-by-step process. But we continue to assume that it’s the opposite. What I’d like to present here is a list of seven reasons that undermine and even derail the amount of effort and money that is poured into organisational change programmes.

1. Managers do not have answers to fundamental questions. Change for what, change to what, change from what, and change for whom: these are the four fundamental questions that need clarification all the way through the change process. From my research of over 25 organisations going through some form of organisational change, a large percentage of managers (56%) were not able to communicate answers to these questions clearly. This was despite all the communication that the managers had been receiving.

2. Managers do not fully believe in the change. This is an embarrassing detail that so many organisations ignore to their peril. When managers do not fully believe in the change that the organisation has embarked upon, no matter how compliant they are with the change process, their behaviour unconsciously sabotages the very process they want to implement. The main reason why managers do not fully believe in the change is because they are disengaged with the process in one way or another and they haven’t been given the opportunity or space to align the change with their values. As we shall see later, the value hurdle is one of the four biggest blockages to successful change.

3. The customer is ignored while the structure is being put up. Whilst all change programmes in business organisations begin with the intention of improving the customer value chain, very few companies manage to retain focus on the customer while rearranging the deck chairs. Service organisations feel the pain of
this in more ways than one. No customer in a hotel is concerned with, or cares about, the organisational change that is going on: the customer wants the best service or else that customer walks. Moreover, because the customer gets ignored in the change process, the result is an organisation that ends up with a form in which the customer is no more central than before.

4. The process is driven by the few, ignoring the many. The Project Management Office (PMO for short) is the elite corps with access to the top management and close links to the consultants, taking decisions that affect the many without providing any opportunity for feedback or engagement. In the messy world of organisations, it soon gets perceived through lenses of mistrust and cynicism. Of course it is set up with the best of intentions, to expedite the change
process. But tell that to a 45 year old employee who’s been with the company for 15 years, who sees a bunch of rookie side-kicks to consultants behind closed doors in the PMO.

5. Real conversations are ignored, and are replaced by processes and jargon. Change happens when people start having conversations that reflect the shifts that are taking place in their attitudes and behaviour, not when managers communicate through processes and jargon. How many times have we heard of ‘cascading communication’ when all that is needed is an honest conversation with a manager? The one complaint I constantly hear about managers from people who are experiencing the change process, is that “they are never there”. When I ask the managers about this, they are sympathetic but say that they are busy with the strategic stuff. I’m not sure what can be more strategic than the conversations they can have with their people! This is an age-old affliction going back to the belief that managers must strategise, while the rest of the gang use their hands. It doesn’t work any more in a paradigm where knowledge has become the key resource. That is why talent walks away from a badly managed change process.

6. Espoused values clash with real-time behaviour. Change is a testing time for the company values and nowhere does the gap between the espoused values and the behaviour of managers come under such threat. Most managers do not take the time to engage with employees during this time, when perceptions of this clash derail the change process. “What’s happened to the company values?” is the oft-heard complaint in times of change. When the survival mode kicks in, any small action on the part of management can be misconstrued as going against the values of the company. This cannot be ignored, as it so often is. This is precisely what undermines trust.

7. Activity is perceived as action. Once the change juggernaut starts its heavy march through the organisation, it takes on a life and logic of its own and common sense is often the first victim. So it makes perfect sense for the PMO to declare a certain role redundant, although everyone including the managers agrees that the role is critical to the running of the function. But the juggernaut seems unstoppable because reflection and concerted action are not valued; although lots of activity is. In fact it is frenetic activity that so often defines the change process.

Change is primarily a psychological process: the survival mode. Come to think of it: what is it that changes in an organisation? Machines don’t change, and structures, processes and strategies have no life of their own. Change happens when a critical mass of people are able to change their attitudes and behaviour and align with a common source of organisational energy. Change is revealed through simple things: the conversations people have, the ‘stuff’ that leaders value and measure, the expectations and assumptions of the people, and the way decisions are taken and meetings are organised. It’s not the big things that change; it’s the little things. The secret is human psychology.

"It’s not the big things that change; it’s the little things. The secret is human psychology."

Change confronts human beings at deep emotional levels. Think of a scenario where your manager has just told you about an overseas posting you are being sent on. The manager then quickly begins to talk about the market there and the targets you have to hit. However, you have unconsciously
‘switched off’, are busy accommodating the information and all your thoughts are about how your family will cope, schools for the kids, the cat and all the other uncertainties. Just a small change stimulus has sub-optimised your rational brain and put the survival mode into overdrive. This is an age-old survival behaviour that was part and parcel of our evolutionary strategy.

When we talk about organisational change the stakes are clearly higher. There are uncertainties over roles, jobs, and the future, and that only serves to amplify the survival mode. Think of the en masse ‘switching off’ that is happening in the organisation and the flooding that the survival mode is creating. The only way to manage this is through clarity and the authentic engagement of people. It is impossible to prevent the sub-optimisation process; the only way is to minimise the effects of the survival mode. Instead, we so often do the contrary.

The three windows that leaders must open with their people at this first stage in the change process lie in these questions:

• What is the real need for change?
• What is being expected of people?
• What is not going to change?

Just getting clarity on these three questions is vital for the change to succeed. Leaders need to address the four major change hurdles as part of their strategy: the cognitive hurdle (their beliefs); the affective hurdle (their feelings and values); the behavioural hurdle (their behaviour and actions); and the connectual hurdle (their need to belong). Each one of these hurdles can potentially derail the change process as it ends up sub-optimising the process by allowing the emotional  survival mode to flood through the organisation.

When change is ‘rolled out’ and the communication is ‘cascaded’, these hurdles are effectively ignored. The ‘implementation’ then becomes a one-way process that creates a flash point at each of the four hurdles: beliefs get in the way of understanding the change; values clash with the change initiatives; behaviour sabotages the process; and the need for belonging inverts into creating coalitions and behaving politically. As we said earlier, the brain becomes sub-optimised and the survival mode floods it to the very detriment of the change process. No wonder then that a 1998 study by the Centre for Corporate Change University of NSW, Australia, listed employee resistance as the singular top reason for failure in organisation change.

But I don’t like to call it ‘employee resistance’ as that gives it a deliberate ring; it is an age-old survival mechanism of the human brain that automatically defaults into this mode. And that can be minimised with the right approach to change.

THE GENE PROCESS:
Taking into account all the dynamics that lead to the high rate of failure of change initiatives, I’d like to demonstrate a simple model for organisational change. This model works because it takes into account the deep psychological issues that disrupt change processes. The model is a combination of change that is led from the top and allowed to emerge through, and with, the people. There is no room for one-way communication; instead it is a cyclical flow of conversations that are managed and used for maximum success. This is what the GENE process looks like:

Grounding: planting the change programme in the ‘soil’ of the organisation. This first step is designed to overcome the four psychological barriers mentioned above. The language, metaphors and processes chosen, work best if they emerge from the soil of the organisation. For example, when initiating a large-scale change programme in a water company, we used the language of water and of the industry right through the change process. It worked, because it was familiar and didn’t come across as consultant-speak. Change works best when the past is not denied.

Emergence: allowing the change to emerge through iterative development of the process, rather than through a prescriptive process. It is important that the organisation continues to develop while the change is on-going; in fact the development is part of the change process. If the process gets too prescriptive, it stifles change and suppresses the innovative capacity of people.

Navigation: steering the change through processes that keep the customer at the heart of transition. The stage where clear processes start being implemented to steer the change in the direction it needs to go. The customer is placed at the focus of the value-chain. In traditional change management practice this stage would appear first and that automatically gets into the one-way communication mode. When it comes in after the ‘Grounding’ and ‘Emerging’ work has been done, it gives ownership of the processes to the organisation and provides the manoeuvring ability to steer them effectively.

Embedding: developing powerful practices, behaviour, procedures and methodologies to embed the change in day-to-day work. When behaviour is role-modeled by leaders and best practices in the change process are rewarded and made demonstrable, change gets the traction it needs. “Be the change that you want to see in the world” said Gandhi and nothing rings more true than demonstrable change.

By having created an authentic basis for change in the previous stages, managers are able to embed the change in daily procedures such as the way meetings are run, or the way decisions are executed.

CONCLUSION
Organisational change can be successful if it is approached differently. Rather than seeing it as something that needs to be implemented, it should be perceived as a process that grows and emerges from within the organisation. The implementation mode brings with it all the associated problems of lack of clarity; lack of resources; demoralised employees; and dis-empowered leaders. We have merely got used to seeing all these issues as part of the change process. Change the approach, and these issues get reframed and are open to creative solutions that emerge from within the organisation.