Change Management: One Size Fits All?

Choosing a t-shirt at the night market is easy.  Everything is free size.  Choosing the right change management strategy for your organization is not so easy.  One-size-fits-all won’t work.  The strategy you choose needs to suit the unique characteristics of the change you’re introducing and the needs of your organization.
 
Three different strategies you can choose from to implement change are persuasion, adaptation and coercion.  Persuasion means providing your staff with lots of information, explaining the benefits of the change and providing incentives for improved performance.  Adaptation means making incremental changes, redeveloping your processes slowly and retraining your staff so that they gradually accept the new status quo.  Coercion means exercising your authority and making unilateral decisions for change, imposing sanctions and eventually expecting compliance.

Although each of these strategies may be implemented in various degrees, choosing which one to use will depend largely on five different characteristics of your organization.  The first is the degree of resistance.  Weak resistance may allow for adaptation.  Strong resistance, on the other hand may call for strong persuasion or coercion, depending on what your employees best respond to.

The second characteristic to consider is the size of the group affected by the change.  Larger groups will call for a greater mix of the three strategies.  Persuasive incentives may need to be combined at times with a bit of enforcement.

The time frame is your third characteristic.  If you have a longer time frame in which to introduce the change, adaptation will work well.  A shorter time frame, however, means less time to plan.  Coercion may be necessary to implement the change in the short run and you can hope for adaptation in the long run.

Your fourth consideration is the level of expertise within your organization.  Greater expertise in change management and in the areas affected will allow for a greater mix of persuasion and adaptation.  Less expertise, however, may call for coercion to be thrown into the mix.

Your final consideration concerns levels of dependency.  If your organization is more dependent on its people, management power is weaker and persuasion will be more effective.  If the people are more dependent on the organization, however, people power is weaker and coercion may be more effective.

Every change management initiative is unique and the impact of each change on your organization may vary.  Ensuring that the change management strategy you choose fits the characteristics of your organization can make the transition smoother.

Planning Change Around Situation, Structure, and Strategy

An organization that is prepared for change knows how to strategize and manage change.  Since each project or change management initiative is unique, however, each may require separate and unique planning.  To ensure that your change management initiatives are most effective, remember these three criteria to plan around – Situation, Structure and Strategy.

Situation planning helps you understand the nature of the change that you are initiating or responding to.  Is the change a formal project?  A company-wide campaign?  In any case, knowing the characteristics of the change being introduced will help you recognize its scope and impact.
Situation planning also means understanding your organization.  Is your organizational culture accepting when change is introduced?  How has change been managed in the past?  The more responsive your organization is, the more successful your change initiatives will be.

Situation planning also means knowing which groups in your organization will be affected by the change.  Some groups may be more affected by others.  Knowing who will be affected and how they will be affected helps you customize your plan to ensure buy-in from everyone.

In addition to planning around your situation, it’s also important to plan your working structure.  This takes place on two levels – the teams responsible for the work and the management on board.
 
Individuals working on change management teams must be carefully chosen from the most affected groups to ensure full energy investment.  Likewise, management must also be fully invested to build support and communicate openly with their respective audiences.

Once you understand your situation and your structure, your final criteria to plan around is your strategy.  This will help you determine how the change will be implemented based on factors such as risk and resistance.  Dramatic, wider-reaching changes will have higher risk.  Greater resistance from the organization will also mean higher risk.  Both of these will affect your change management strategy.

The specific change initiative you’re implementing will determine the special tactics required.  This may involve training, choosing appropriate channels of communication, delegating responsibilities to the right people and status monitoring and reporting.  While your overall strategy shapes your plan, your tactics determine how the plan will be implemented.

Adapting to and initiating change is always a challenge for your organization.  But, knowing how to plan around Situation, Structure and Strategy helps you meet that challenge with greater success.

Fixed or Fluid: What's Your Perspective?

Heard this one?  How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?  Well, only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.

Light bulbs aside, it’s difficult to find people who want to change because, generally speaking, we look at life from a perspective that we call “fixed’.

If you have this perspective, you see life as static and nicely packaged with clear boundaries that define YOUR job, YOUR business, YOUR responsibilities and YOUR reality.  In other words, the fixed perspective draws a sharp line between the YOU ‘in here’ and the rest of the world ‘out there’.
Also, from the fixed perspective, time, for you, is a linear experience.  Events that have occurred in the past are separate from each other and may have no bearing on events occurring now or in the future. 

Change, as a result, is probably something that you dislike and resist if you can.  Change is something that happens to you from the outside and requires you to make unwanted adaptations.  As result, change is something to be avoided whenever possible.

The fixed perspective is the ‘default setting’ for us as human beings.  Much of what we do is motivated by the desire to maintain things as they are.  Consequently, the fixed perspective is also the ‘default setting’ for most businesses.

For you and your business to survive and remain relevant in a perpetually changing environment, the first change you can make is in your perspective.  Rather than seeing life as fixed, see it as fluid.

Developing this perspective enables you to view life as changing, moving and evolving.  Life, in other words, is a process for you rather than a thing.  As a result, time is less linear and more interconnected. 

From the fluid perspective, you see change as the natural order of your environment and change, therefore, defines your participation within it.  Because change is something you and everyone else will inevitably experience, you develop strategies to adapt to change when it comes and initiate change on your own when necessary.

Because the fluid perspective recognizes change, it also allows you to anticipate and prepare for change.  And this is why your business will thrive and remain relevant if you encourage the development of a change culture.

Change, after all, is no longer the exception.  It’s the rule.

How Adaptable is Your Corporate Dinosaur?

In July, 2011, 45 scientists from around the world pooled their data and confirmed that the extinction of the dinosaurs and 70% of the species living on earth was caused by the impact of a gigantic asteroid 65 million years ago.

According to their calculations, the scientists speculate that the asteroid was approximately 9.5 km across and traveling at the leisurely speed of 69 thousand km per hour.  It struck off the east coast of what is now Mexico, leaving an impact crater 38 km deep and 200 km across.

The pressure wave and the resulting fireball probably cleared most of the forest cover from the North and South American continents.  It took 15 million years for the planet to recover.

The dinosaurs, however, never did.  The resources required to maintain their massive bodies were gone.  The species that survived, however, were more adaptable to the abrupt change that had taken place around them.  The demise of the huge and powerful dinosaurs allowed for the emergence of the smaller, quicker mammals that inhabit the planet today.

Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change.”  In other words, external environmental changes must initiate internal changes for the organism (or the organization) to survive.

Now, take a look at your organization.  Are you now or are you becoming a corporate dinosaur?  Have your policies, processes, behaviors and cultures evolved enough to ensure that you can adapt to the changing realities that we experience more and more frequently in business today?

Most of us like to think we’re prepared, yet studies show that 70% of all business change management initiatives FAIL to deliver the promised benefits.
 
Mathematician and philosopher John Allen Paulos wrote, “Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.”
 
This means that for your organization to remain productive and relevant today, you must be changing and changing regularly.  And this is especially true in large businesses, where your challenge is to keep your people thinking smaller and quicker.

After all, you never know when the next asteroid might come and wipe out a few more dinosaurs.