Conquering Organizational Change

© 2001, CEP

Perhaps your company, like so many these days, is being downsized. Maybe you're undergoing a merger or acquisition. Or perhaps you're scrambling to expand into a new territory or offer a new line of products, and operations must therefore be restructured. Whatever the reason for the change, you're worried. And rightly so: Up to 75% of all major organizational change efforts fail to meet the expectations of key stakeholders.

Why is organizational change so difficult? And what can you as a training or performance improvement professional do to help navigate your company safely through the storm? Here are some research-based tactical strategies that have been proven to work in a broad range of organizations and change initiatives.

Define change as a compelling element of organizational strategy

Change shouldn't be an end in itself, such as buying the latest software for the sake of being up-to-date. The change should extend the organization's capabilities in order to improve its financial or competitive position. Clarify how the change will move your organization toward a strategic advantage, and whether your organization is ready to commit the time and resources needed to implement the change successfully. To do so, advise executives and the project team to:

• Quantify the financial and other strategic impacts of continuing to do business in the current state vs. the potential impact of a change initiative

• Use an assessment tool, such as a questionnaire, to determine if executives, mid-level managers, and frontline employees believe the organization can commit to and sustain the change effort over the long term

Think small

One way to achieve this tactic is to identify "quick hits" - changes that require relatively little effort and which can be implemented within a month or less, while providing a positive impact on goal achievement. By thinking small, you not only boost morale as the small successes begin to pile up, but you develop skills that will serve you well at later stages of the game. Consider:

• Opportunities to pilot the change in a small setting

• Breaking down the change into discrete chunks that can be managed individually

Translate the change into job-level details

To be successful, the change must be translated into specific actions or activities for all affected employees. Otherwise, there will be too many opportunities for misunderstanding and you will waste time tracking down glitches in the implemented solution. To understand how a change effort will impact people and their jobs:

• Interview frontline supervisors and employees to identify who is supposed to do what, when they are supposed to do it, and how it is to be done

• Develop a skill-requirements list associated with each new role and responsibility and identify any existing skill gaps

Align recognition to support implementation (or "Don't move the carrot")

Recognition means both formal reward systems such as individual pay treatment, bonuses, and annual performance and promotional ratings, as well as informal ways of recognizing contributions, such as congratulatory notes, preference in work assignments or locations, use of the latest equipment, and so on. To be effective, rewards should be:

• Specific to the change effort

• Clearly communicated before the change effort is begun

• "Times Tied to the measurable achievement of accountabilities

How do you maintain the change effort?

You will know that you have achieved successful change when the change has survived the "shake down" period, when performance levels are consistently exceeding goals, when everyone is trained and comfortable with the new way of doing things, and when you can start to see the pay-offs. But while the work of the project team may be over, your role must continue. "Unless steps are taken to ensure that the new organizational state will be managed," say management consultants Pierre Mourier and Martin Smith, "then the organization will likely drift backwards to the old rules." To prevent this from occurring, you should work toward integrating the change effort into the organization's culture. While information programs and motivational programs may be useful for explaining expectations, real behavior change will more likely result from:

• Explaining why the behavior change matters to the organization and the employee

• Providing timely feedback about performance

• Rewarding the desired behavior

• Eliminating rewards for conflicting behavior

• Having managers and executives model desired behavior

• Removing barriers to desired performance

Conquering Organizational Change "deftly outlines the entire process of large-scale structural changes such as mergers, downsizing and hiring freezes. They also cover possible triggers to change; training employees to do their jobs differently and judging the effectiveness of change. It's a good impartial resource for keeping projects on track and double-checking that steps have been followed."

Publishers Weekly, 9/10/01