Leadership & change management, lecture 6, by Rahat Kazmi

LEADERSHIP AND CHANGE
MANAGEMENT

- CHANGE MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES

CHANGE TECHNIQUES
LECTURE 6
BY
RA HAT KAZMI PREPARED BY: RAHAT KAZMI

SEPTEMBER 2010

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Objectives

 To discuss various types of “Change Techniques”
 To Cover the Methods of these Changes
 To Give and take examples of these change
techniques
 To have concluding discussion about each change
technique


Change Techniques

 Boiling the frog: Incremental changes may well not be noticed.
 Burning bridges: Ensure there is no way back.
 Burning platform: Expose or create a crisis to get things going.
 Challenge: Inspire them to achieve remarkable things.
 Coaching: Psychological support for executives.
 Command: Tell them what to do.
 Destabilizing: Shake people of their comfort zone.
 Evidence for change: Cold, hard data to show need for
change.
 Evidence stream: Show them time and again that the change is
happening.


Change Techniques
 Education: Learn them to change.
 Facilitation: Use a facilitator to guide team meetings.
 First steps: Make it easy to get going.
 Golden handcuffs: Keep key people with delayed rewards.
 Institutionalization: Building change into the formal systems and
structures.
 Involvement: Give them an important role.
 Management by Objectives (MBO): Tell people what to do, but
not how.
 Management causality mapping: Helping a team see its own
role.
 Open Space: People talking about what interests them.

Change Techniques
 Rationalization trap: Get them into action first.
 Re-education: Train the people you have in new
knowledge/skills.
 Restructuring: Redesign the organization to force behavior
change.
 Reward alignment: Align rewards with desired behaviors.
 Rites of passage: Use formal rituals to confirm change.
 Setting goals: Give them a formal objective.
 Shift-and-sync: Change a bit then pause to restabilize.
 Socializing: Build it into the social fabric.
 Spill-and-fill: Incremental movement to a new organization.
 Stepwise change: Breaking things down into smaller
packages.
 Visioning: Create a motivating view of the future.
 Whole-system Planning: Everyone planning together.

Boiling the Frog
Method:

 Make the changes very quietly and slowly without telling
anyone, so each small change is hardly noticeable. For
example:
 Make temporary changes that become long-term.
 Slip things in whilst people are distracted elsewhere.
 Bury changes in larger items.
 Gradually isolate unwanted people and organizations.


Boiling the Frog
Example:

 A company that wants to reduce the amount of social space in
a building nibbles at it during moves, taking small amounts out
for needed desk space. It also puts meeting equipment such as
tables, flipcharts and network points in what were once just
rest areas. Before long, the occasionally-used soft areas are in
constant use.


Boiling the Frog
Discussion:

 There is a story that if you drop a frog into hot water, it will
jump out. But if you slowly warm up the water, then the frog
will stay there until it boils to death.
 People notice change largely through contrast. The larger the
perceived contrast, the larger the change is assumed to be. So
if you change in a number small moves, you may well be able
to slip the whole thing under the wire without being noticed.
 There are no guarantees with this method. Vigilant resistors
may spot what is happening and mobilize a counter-response.
If this happens, you may have to give up the frog method and
be more open about the change.

Burning Bridges
Method:
 When you have made a change, ensure that there is no way
back to previous ways of working.

Example:
 A company that is moving to a new low-cost operational model
fires its high-cost sales force, sells it's fancy headquarters and
moves to a plain and simple out-of-town low-cost factory.

 An organization that is instituting new software deletes the old
software from the system, thus forcing people to use the new
software.

Burning Platform

Method:
 Show how staying where you are is not an option, and that
doing nothing will result in disaster.
 Look for a crisis that you can highlight. They are often lurking
nearby, forlorn and unnoticed.
 You can also engineer your own crisis that forces change.
Example:
 A company floats off a slow backwater division, forcing it to
compete without the shelter of the parent company.
 An organization educates its workforce in business finance and
shows its dire financial situation.


Burning Platform

Discussion:

 When the oil platform Piper Alpha in the North Sea caught fire,
a worker was trapped by the fire on the edge of the platform.
Rather than certain death in the fire, he chose probable death
by jumping 100 feet into the freezing sea.

 The term 'burning platform' is now used to describe a situation
where people are forced to act by dint of the alternative
being somewhat worse. The crisis may already exist and just
needs to be highlighted.


Challenge

Method:
 Stimulate people into change by challenging them to achieve
something remarkable. Show confidence in their ability to get out
of their comfort zone and do what has not been done before.
 This works particularly well with small groups, as well as
individuals. Once the group has bought the challenge, then they
will bounce off each other to make it happen.
 This is most effective when the people create their own stretch
goals, so rather than telling them to do something, challenge them
to achieve greatly, then, when they are fired up, ask them how far
they can go.


Challenge

Example:
 A manufacturing managers challenges his team to break
company records in building a new product at much reduced
costs. He does not give them actual targets, but they set their
own goals of halving normal assembly costs. Using concurrent
engineering in collaboration with the design group and DFM
(Design for Manufacturing) techniques, they reduce parts count
by 80% and turn what would otherwise be a 6 hour assembly
time into 30 minutes.


Coaching

Method:

 When you have individual people who are having difficulty in
managing to adapt to change, then hire an executive coach to
help them through this time.


Coaching

Example:

 An executive used to a command-and-control environment
where people did what he said without question finds himself in
a more 'empowered' environment, where he is supposed to be
supportive and trust others more. The company, realizing his
difficulty with this, get him a personal coach for six months.
Together, he and his coach explore his deeper motivations and
beliefs about other people, and find practical ways to change
these.


Coaching

Discussion:
 Coaches have the time and skills to understand the individual
person and uncover their internal problems which are causing
them problems.
 In many ways, coaches are actually therapists. However, in
many business circles, it is not acceptable to be in therapy.
 This is an expensive method, so it is usually only afforded to
senior executives.


Command

Method:

 Enforce change by telling people what to do and what is going
to happen.
 Do not accept any input or objection from them. If they do
object, punish them.


Command

Example:

 A person arrives for work on Monday to find that they no
longer have a job.
 A sales person is summarily moved to another region, selling
different products.
 A manager is demoted to a lower grade in a restructuring of
the organization.


Command

Discussion:
 Commands are the least considerate of the psychological
factors and simply use the principle of force. Typically in
organizations it means giving the person marching orders,
telling them to change rather than convincing them. The person
turns up for work and are simply told that change is going to
happen to them.
 The result of such methods is that people are very likely to fall
into the Kübler-Ross cycle. This can make commands seem
effective as those in shock and denial may seem to have
accepted the change without fuss.

Command

Discussion:
 It is an approach favoured by managers whose style is largely
task-oriented and transactional.
 Command does have its place when urgency is total and there
is no time for other methods. However, the backlash later can
be very costly.


Destabilizing

Method:
 Stimulate the need for change by creating instability that leads
people to seek somewhere other than where they are at present. For
example, you can:
 Make the current safe place less safe.
 Show that which is held to be true is not true, at least not in all
important areas.
 Open the doors of the house to show the real terrors just outside.
 Get in angry customers to berate people for poor products and
service.
 Show them the realities of financial instability.

Destabilizing

 Show them competitors' products (and how much better they are).
 Reorganize to break up cosy groups.
 Give them jobs that are outside of their current skills.
Example:
 A company seeking to re-stimulate a marketing team cannibalizes
the existing team, taking key players out to work on new product
areas, whilst requiring remaining people to keep the show on the
road.
 A company takes away a comfortable cash cow from one of its
divisions, forcing it to think harder about how to contribute in the
future.


Destabilizing

Discussion:
 When people are comfortable (in their 'comfort zone'), there no
driving need for them to change. If they are shocked too much then
they may freeze or rebel. If, however they are simply made less
comfortable by some destabilization technique, then when change is
announced they more likely to be ready for it and are less likely to
resist.
 We all have deep needs for safety, control and certainty. If these
(and other needs) are all met, then an announcement of change will
cause resistance as the change threatens these. If, however, they have
already been shaken, then there is less to react against when change
is announced (especially if the change promises to restore these).

Evidence

Method:
 Find evidence that supports the need for change.
 Use data and statistics to create impressive graphs and charts.

Example:
 A organization shows its people its financial performance in a
set of alarming graphs.
 A dissatisfied major customer is brought in to talk to the board.


Evidence

Discussion:

 When you have incontrovertible evidence staring you in the
face, where the numbers are showing the company in the red or
sales sinking into the sunset, it is difficult to put your head in the
sand and wish it away.
 Cold, hard evidence is a good way of changing minds as
counter-arguments require better data or sufficient strength to
show the data as invalid.


Evidence Stream

Method:
 Get people to accept that a change is real by providing a steady
stream of evidence to demonstrate that the change has happened
and is successful.
 Plan for change projects to reach milestones and deliver real results
in a regular and predictable stream of communications that is
delivered on a well-managed timetable. This is as opposed to the
early 'big bang' followed by a long period of relative silence.
 Communicate through a range of media. Get people who have been
involved to stand up and tell their stories of challenge and
overcoming adversity. Ensure the communications reach everyone
involved, and do so multiple times.

Evidence Stream

 Keep posters and data charts up to date. Regularly show progress,
demonstrating either solid progress against plan or robust action to
address any slippage.

Example:
 A global company that is implementing a project-based system of
work regularly prints photos of teams and tell success stories in the
company newspaper.
 A police force that is cracking down on low-level crime regularly
sends officers out to local community meetings with stories of the
actions taken and prosecutions that have been successful.


Evidence Stream

Discussion:
 Evidence is a powerful tool for persuasion, particularly when

people are doubtful whether something is real. This is
particularly powerful when presented by people who are
trusted by the audience for the information.
 Lack of evidence is evidence of nothing happening. Aging

charts and posters will be seen as evidence of change projects
that have either died or are quietly fading away. When
people hear nothing, they assume nothing is happening.


Evidence Stream

 A common trap in change management is to put lots of effort (and money)
into a big bang kick-off, with lots of announcements, hand-outs, posters, and
other marketing. This is successful in getting attention. It also sets
expectations. What often happens next is that the 'quick wins' are quickly
harvested, leaving a long dead space before the more difficult work starts
to complete. In this gap, commitment can easily wane as the initial flush is
forgotten and the tough stuff starts to bite.
 A steady stream of evidence is needed because people are not always
convinced by a few pieces of early evidence. However, if they see evidence
in every direction that they turn and that new evidence continues to appear
over a period of time, then eventually even the most hardened opponent will
have to concede that the change is real and is here to stay.


Evidence Stream

 How long the evidence stream should be is a good question. In
some cases, it need only be repeated three to six times, but
more often something more like weekly evidence for six months
is worth the communications effort. Even better is that the
communication becomes institutionalized and that provision (and
attention to) evidence of whatever change is going on is a
norm.


Education

Method:
 Teach people about the need for change and how embracing
change is a far more effective life strategy than staying where
they are or resisting.
 Teach people the methods of change, about how to be logical
and creative in improving processes and organizations.
Example:
 A 3-day class is set up in process improvement in which people
apply methods to a designed problem.
 Coaches work with teams, supporting their process of change.

Education

Discussion:
 A gentler way of helping people see the need for change is via
educative means. This includes presentations, communications and full-
on training sessions.
 Education, done well, is more of a process of elicitation, drawing out
understanding from the other person rather than talking at them. The
root of the word is the Latin duco, 'meaning to lead', and is the same
as duke. Leading in change is itself often a process of education, and
may be done in many situations.
 An issue in change is that people often feel powerless. Education
gives them the power to change.


Facilitation

Method:
 Use skilled facilitators to support change activities (if you don't
have any, either hire them in or train your own).
 Facilitators can be used to guide various group events, from
brainstorming and planning to improvement projects and
change activities.
 Facilitators can also act as team coaches, helping people to
improve within themselves and work together in better ways.


Facilitation

Example:
 A team wants to do some process improvement, but do not
know how, so they take on a facilitator who manages this
process for them, guiding them through the analysis and solution
processes.

 A leader wants to engage in a heart-to-heart discussion with
her team. She gets a facilitator to manage the meeting for her.
Afterwards, she sits down with the facilitator to discuss how well
the meeting went and to plan a follow-up session.


Facilitation

Discussion:
 Often in change people know what needs doing, but they do not
know how to change or work together in the new context. Facilitators
literally 'make things easier'. They do this in meetings and group
sessions by owning the process whereby decisions and other activities
are done, although they never own the content. Thus, they will help
you make a decision, but they will not make the decision for you.
 Normal coaching feeds people, helping them solve problems without
teaching them how to solve problems.
 'Developmental Facilitation' seeks to teach people to fish, for
example by having sessions at the end of meetings where
dysfunctional behaviours are surfaced and discussed.

First Steps

Method:
 Make the first steps of change particularly easy. Make them
the most obvious thing to do. Then make the next steps easy.
 Keep the people focused on the next steps. Before long, they
will have climbed a mountain.

Example:
 Instead of asking a person to move to another site, the
company first gets them to finish the task on the first site.


First Steps

Discussion:
 Actually starting something is often the hardest thing. The
Greek poet Horace said, „He has half the deed done who has
made a beginning.‟
 People look at the effort of the transition of change as a single
monolithic effort. It seems as a great big step to make. It is the
overwhelm that this creates that often stops people from
getting started.
 Taking the reverse approach is what works. Making the next
step so small and easy takes away all reasonable objections to
enacting it.

Golden Handcuffs

Method:
 When you want someone to stay with you who may be tempted to
leave, make it worth their while to stay by putting significant benefits
in their middle-term future.
Example:
 A company is closing down a division and needs a few key players to
stay engaged until the bitter end. They offer them significant bonuses
to stay on to the final date, even though they could leave for a new
job earlier.
 An engineer is kept on a dull project by promising him that he will
work on a sexy new project that is starting in six months time.


Golden Handcuffs

Discussion:
 When loyalty and the joy of the job are not enough to keep people,
then they may need some financial or other rewards. However,
paying them today could still lead them to leave. The promise of
future reward, however, may be enough to keep them engaged.
 The promised rewards cannot be too far out or they would not be
enticing -- usually reasonable reward needs to be within a twelve-
month timeframe.
 When a reward is gained, this could be a point at which the person
leaves. If you want them to stay, you may need to keep a rolling
handcuff system.


Institutionalization

Method:
 Make changes stick by building them into the formal fabric of
the organization, for example:
 Make them an organizational standard, building them into the
systems of standards.
 Put them or aspects of them into the primary strategic plan.
 Build them into people personal objectives.
 Ensure people are assessed against them in personal reviews.



Example:

 An R&D organization creates a review process to be
implemented before products are released to manufacturing.
They put the process into their ISO9000 system, which ensures it
goes through the organizational audit system and any non-
conformances will be identified.



Discussion:

 The formal systems and structures within the organization are
those which are not optional. People do them because they are
'business as usual' and because they will be criticized or
otherwise punished if they fail to do them.
 After a while, institutionalized items become so entrenched,
people forget to resist and just do what is required, even if
they do not agree with them.


Involvement

Method:
 Get them involved in the change. Invite them to participate in
discussions. Give them things to do.
Example:
 A manager whose cooperation with change is essential is given
a leading role where they are co-opted onto the main steering
committee and are required to go out to various places in the
organization and help persuade others.


Involvement

Discussion:

 When people are a part of something, they bond with it,
making it a part of their identity. When they become attached
then they attach their fate and objectives with that something.
 In this way, when they attach themselves to a change, if the
change succeeds, they succeed, and vice versa. In some sense,
they become the change and the change becomes them -- this is
what full bonding is: an undifferentiated merging of identities.


Management by Objectives (MBO)

Method:
 Set formal objectives for people that they will have to achieve,
but do not tell them how they have to achieve this.
 In particular, if you can, give people objectives that they can
only achieve by working in the intended change.
 Give them relatively free rein in how they go about achieving
the objectives. Particularly if you want encourage a change in
behaviour or attitude, then you might encourage them to 'look
outside the box' for creative new ways of achieving the
objective.



Example:
 A company that is seeking to get people to work more
collaboratively than individually gives its people objectives that
they cannot achieve alone. There is no explicit requirement to
work together, but the people soon find that they only way to
succeed is to collaborate.
Discussion:
 MBO uses a 'what-how' approach. The people in question are
told what to do, but not how. The 'how' thus becomes a part of
their contribution to a successful conclusion.



Discussion:

 MBO has received bad press in the past. This is typically where
it has been badly implemented, for example when managers
used it as an excuse to give people tasks that were impossible.
This may happen as a result of laziness on the part of the
particular managers in question or may even be a deliberate
ploy, such as to force people to work beyond their normal work
hours.


Management Causality Mapping

Method:
 Here is a basic mapping that can be used. You can also get more
complex (depending on what the team is ready to accept). A good
sequence that minimizes resistance is as follows:
 What the organization and my people say and do.
 What thinking and choosing leads them to this.
 What we as a management team say and do (is this the same as our
people?)
 Our methods of thinking and choosing that lead to our actions and
words.



 Pause here to reflect on discuss how what we say and do
affects what the people in the organization say and do.
 Next it is time to get personal:
 What I say and do.
 How I think and choose that leads to what I say and do.


 When it is realized how dysfunctional current thinking and
behaviour is, you can then move to discussing how these should
change.
Discussion:



Discussion:
 This process is based first on the following simple model, that
what people say and do is based on what they think and
choose.
 The extension to this (in the dotted lines in the first diagram) is
that what people think and choose is based on what other
people say and do, in particular significant others such as
managers, friends and social leaders.


Open Space

Method:
 Gather up to several hundred people in a large, open space, such as
a conference centre. You need at least half a day, although Open
Space sessions can be up to three days long.
 Explain the rules briefly and state the overall theme around which
you want people to talk.
 This should be very general and enable many different interests and
concerns.
 Individual people stand up, explain briefly a subject in which they
are interested (for a big room, give them a microphone), write their
name and the subject on a flipchart page, then sit down again. This
process is continued until no more people want to stand up.

Open Space

Example:

 A company implementing a cultural change programme holds
an Open Space session with the general theme of 'culture'.
Groups start talking about belief systems, management culture,
trust, national differences and so on.


Open Space

Discussion:
 'Open Space' (or, more fully, Open Space Technology, or OST)
is a simple but very useful way of getting people to openly
discuss issues that are of concern to them.
 It started when Harrison Owen was running conferences and
found that people preferred talking to others during the breaks
than listening to speakers. He then began running conferences
without speakers.
 In change, this is useful for getting people talking together. For
example, you can use it to get people to talk about their fears
and concerns.

Rationalization Trap

Method:
 Get them doing something for some trivial reason. Ask them
nicely. Put something in their way that they will naturally do.
 Then help them explain to themselves why it is important and
why they are doing it.
 When they have bought doing small things, get them doing
increasingly significant things.



Example:
 A senior manager who has been doubtful is asked to speak at
a meeting about the importance of a change project. She does
so, and later is seen in a corridor, reinforcing the importance of
the change with several other managers. With more
encouragement and being given a slide set to help, they are
soon presenting to the executive board on the subject.



Discussion:
 People have a deep need for consistency, and when they do
something they need to have consistency and alignment between
their actions and their beliefs. When there is inconsistency, they must
either change what they are doing or what they belief in order to
restore consistency.
 It is important that the person is unable to rationalize why they acted
in this way by thinking about the encouragement they were given.
Thus, for example, the person should not be paid or commanded to
act, otherwise they may rationalize that they did it for the money or
the boss, not because they really believed it was the right thing to
do.

Re-education

Method:
 When making a change that requires different skills, provide
education that ensures people have the skills and knowledge
they need in their new jobs.
 For knowledge education, you can use computer-based courses
as well as more traditional methods. A good way of ensuring
people have required knowledge is to put them through some
form of test at the end.
 For skill education, there is little substitute for actual practice,
and education courses should included a significant practical
element, for example with role-plays of the new situations.

Re-education

Example:
 An organization finds that sales have dipped significantly and
so decide to re-train a number of office-based people in
selling.
 After putting them out on the road, several of these are still
having difficulties, so further coaching is provided. Those few
who are unable to change and who want to stay with the firm
are re-integrated back into the office, albeit in lower salary
positions.


Re-education

Discussion:
 A big question when you need new knowledge and skills is whether to
fire and re-hire or to re-train your existing workforce. Fire and hire
may seem cheaper, but there are also costs. Retraining can give
great benefits in loyalty (even to those not affected).
 On the other hand, re-training may not work. People may not have
the appropriate aptitude (or motivation) and the result can be
wasted money and incompetent workers.
 To make this approach work, the people being trained should first be
assessed both for aptitude, ability to learn and motivation.


Restructuring

Method:
 Reorganize. Change the shape of the organization in ways that
force behavioural change.
 Break up ineffective teams. Put moves and shakers in charge.
Flatten the organization to stop micromanagement. Create self-
managed teams to get people to take responsibility.
 When doing this design work, think carefully about what
behaviours it might create that are not so desirable. A good
way of managing this is to create interlocking feedback
systems to prevent deviation from desired behaviour.


Restructuring

Example:
 A car manufacturer breaks work into separate units and gives
them to teams. It then publicizes the quality of the work of all
teams. Teams compete to have the best quality and, of course,
overall quality goes up!!


Restructuring

Discussion:
 Just as function follows form, so also will changing the shape of
the organization will change how people behave.
 Groups that can cohere into separate units are likely to become
very internally motivated. Motivation is good, but the internal
facing may be away from the organization, so you must ensure
that group goals are aligned, for example by regular external
communications.


Reward Alignment

Method:
 When you make a change, ensure that you align the reward system
with the changes that you want to happen.
Example:
 A company wants to increase team working. To support this, they
remove individual bonuses and only give bonuses for team success.
 An organization that wants to increase its customer base, pays sales
people for each new customer they gain. They also want to retain
customers, so they also cut bonuses when a customer assigned to a
sales person defects to a competitor.


Reward Alignment

Discussion:
 A surprisingly common trap in change is to ask (or even
demand) that people change, yet the reward system that is
driving their behavior is not changed. Requesting teamwork
and rewarding individuals is a very common example.
 Many people are driven by extrinsic rewards, and the saying
'Show me how I'm paid and I'll show you how I behave' is
surprisingly common.


Rites of Passage

Method:
 When a change is completed, celebrate with a party or some
other ritualized recognition of the passing of a key milestone.
 You can also start a change with a wake (which is a party that
is held to celebrate the life of someone who has died) to
symbolize letting go of the past.
 Create new rituals to help shift the culture to a new form. Use
these, if possible, to replace the rituals that already exist.


Rites of Passage

Example:
 When an acquisition begins a change, a ritual celebration is
used to mark the passing of the 'old organization', in which the
events and heroes of that time are marked out and recognized.
 Whenever a training class is completed in a change program,
all people on the class are given a certificate by the CEO of
the company, who congratulates them on joining the 'new
company'.
 An airline changes the standard set of greetings that are used
with customers, both to symbolize the new approach and also
to embody new philosophies.

Rites of Passage

Discussion:
 Rituals are symbolic acts to which we attribute significant
meaning. A celebration to mark a change is used in many
cultures, ranging from rites of passage to manhood for
aboriginal tribes to the wedding ceremonies of Christian and
other religions. Such ritual passings are often remembered with
great nostalgia, and even the remembrance of them becomes
ritualized.
 Ritual allows people to acknowledge and move on, letting go
of a past that has had an emotional tie that may be have been
holding them back.

Setting Goals

Method:
 Set the person a goal or formal objective that requires them to
change.
 Goal-setting may be used incrementally, where you set the
person a goal to do something that forces them to let go of
some small thing. Then you set a further goal and then one
further again. In this way, you are getting the person to walk by
focusing on one step at a time.


Setting Goals

Example:
 A person is given a formal objective to redesign their working
practices to come into line with new company regulations.
 A marketing manager is given the objective to introduce a new
direct-sales method.


Setting Goals

Discussion:
 The principle here is to use the organizational goal-setting
process to motivate people to change. If I give you an objective
to do something that you have never done before, then you will
need let go of something you have now in order to do that new
thing.
 When a person does something, they have to justify it to
themselves. When they do something that is outside of their
beliefs then they have to either discount it or maintain
consistency by changing their beliefs. Thus just getting
somebody to act may be enough to change them.

Shift-and-Sync

Method:
 Make a planned set of changes and then pause to make sure the
whole system is still working. Fix small problems to ensure the whole
show is still working together as one before setting off on the next
change.
Example:
 An organization which is slimming down its headquarters does it one
department at a time, with a one month break between each
departmental restructuring. During this time, remote divisions are
scanned to see what changes they feel, and the structure of the
department just changed may be readjusted to optimize service.


Socializing

Method:
 Seal changes by building them into the social structures.
 Give social leaders prominent positions in the change. When they
feel ownership for it, they will talk about it and sell it to others.
 Create rituals, utilize artifacts and otherwise build it into the culture.
Example:
 An organization that is introducing new working practices gets the
trade union engaged (after a long negotiation), including giving its
officials a new and more prominent role. Before long, all dissent
disappears.


Shift-and-Sync
Discussion:
 A danger with large changes is that when things stabilize again,
although parts of the system may work -- even the whole of the part
that was changed, it is possible that the change may now be out of
sync with its environment.
 Shift-and-sync is a method used in software development, where
changes to a large software product are regularly realigned and
tested, to ensure that the system does not lose connection with its
environment. The same principle is used here in human change, where
small changes are punctuated with pauses to resynchronize and
realign.
 Pauses in a change program are also very helpful for letting people
recover from the tension of change.


Socializing

Discussion:
 Society is almost invisible and people accept its rules without
even noticing that they are doing so. A change that is socialized
becomes normal and the 'way things are'.
 When something becomes a social norm, people will be far
more unlikely to oppose it as to do so is to oppose the group
and its leaders.


Spill and Fill

Method:
 When you are starting up a new organization and closing
down an old organization, do this in a tapered way, moving a
few people over at a time. Be careful here with your best
people: they both need to be involved in setting up the new
organization and also nursing the old organization to its grave,
ensuring a smooth handover.
 If you can, do the move in planned phases of activity, proving
each new part before you move people over to the next phase.


Spill and Fill
Example:
 A manufacturer is closing down one production line and opening up
another. They start by moving only a few key people over to get the
new line set up. They then move more to prototype and prove the
operational processes. Then they slow down the old line as they move
people over to start up the new line. As the new line gains speed,
people are continually moved across.
 Some of the best people are retained on the old line to keep it
going to the end and to work in the various different roles that are
left open. They are rewarded with a bonus for their loyalty and
given good roles when they finally move over.


Spill and Fill

Discussion:
 This approach does not suit all change situations -- it works only
where there is a move between two organizations, and when
this move can be done gradually.
 A benefit of this approach is being able to provide a smooth
change. This is particularly important if both organizations are
delivering a product or service to a single customer base. The
stepwise approach also allows each new change to be trialed
and proven before the next stage. Doing a change all in one
can be rather risky, as failure of the new organization can be
disastrous.


Stepwise Change

Method:
 Have clear steps in the change. Break the work into distinct
packages and talk about each separately. Communicate about
the change not as a single, monolithic entity, but as a set of
activities, each of which gains specific value.
 When a step has been completed, tie up all the loose ends and
celebrate the completion almost as if it were the end of the
change. Then start the next step.


Stepwise Change

Example:
 A company that is introducing new IT systems breaks the change
work down by introducing one package at a time. It also does
this in pieces for separate departments. At the end of each
implementation, they have a celebratory lunch.

 A company developing a new product brings it to market
initially as a simple device that is easy to understand. Then
each new version adds increasing functionality.


Stepwise Change

Discussion:
 Video game manufacturers know how to attract and keep the attention
of people in a challenging game. A key trick they use is to break the
game down into stages and levels. After a quest or fight, there is a
period of respite. The player gains treasure and experience points and
goes up to the next level. They also get a sense of closure about the
previous stage and can look forward to what comes next.
 Breaking things down into individual and separate steps has a number
of advantages.
 Smaller changes are easier to plan and manage. With less
interdependencies, each step is a coherent whole and is less likely to
unravel.

Stepwise Change

Discussion:
 When people look at a big change, they are easily overwhelmed by the
size of it and cannot see past the endless pain and suffering they
associate with it. When things are broken down into smaller pieces, and
especially when most talk and attention is about the next stage, then it
does not look anywhere near as bad.
 A pause between stages gives time to re-think and replan. When you are
in the thick of the change, things can start to unravel and you have
insufficient time to regroup.
 Ending a stage with a celebration lets people pause and relax. It also
helps create a sense of closure and reduces any tendency to revert to old
ways.

Visioning

Method:
 Create a motivating vision of the future.
 Share it with others.
 Live it until it comes true.
Example:
 A management team creates a vision of their company winning
an industry award for excellence. This results in them setting up
a small team to study what is needed, which leads to a
program of change in which they improve significantly. When
they win the award, it is secondary.


Visioning

Discussion:
 Visions work only when they act to motivate and inspire the
large numbers of people that are needed to make the change
happen. For the vision to be motivating, then it must be
memorable. For it to be memorable, it must be surprising and
short. To be surprising, it should be different from everyone
else's vision. To be believed, it must be a regular part of the
conversation of senior people.


Whole-System Planning

Method:
 Gather together the participants in the Whole-system Planning in
a large room, where everyone can work together as equals. The
number of people are sufficient to represent all groups, but small
enough to discuss matters as a whole. Typically, this ranges from
20 upwards, sometimes to several hundred, although 50 may be
a more normal number. It is also important that there are people
from all areas who can make serious decisions and take away
actions with them.
 The format and content may vary significantly, but here is a
common framing.


Past:
 The first day is focused on the past. Delegates tell stories of success
and struggles. The older members of the company tell about its
beginnings and the 'wild days'. Younger members tell how it was to
join more recently. The past is honored and recalled with its full
range of emotion, from nostalgia to humor and also to the less
comfortable times. Depending on the age of the company, this
section may be shorter, but it must not be made too short.
 Attention to the past also can be used to take a view of the culture
of the organization, understanding its roots and why it holds its
present form.



Present:
 The next day is focused on the present. The external forces on the
organization are explored. Competitors, new legislation, technical
changes, environmental effects, the pressures of globalization are
all looked at openly. Customers and markets are also considered,
with information about how market share is going up or down,
how products and services are faring, what customers are saying
about the company (quotes and examples are good here). Focus
then moves further in, to how the organization is responding to
these forces, how it is coping, how it is structured. Strengths and
weaknesses are explored, in all departments as well as in the
leadership.


Future:
 Finally, on the third day, the focus is on the future. This may well start
with a visioning exercise to determine a desired future state. This vision
is shared and developed and given local meaning for all involved.
 Plans are then built to reach from today to this desirable future. These
may start with overall strategic thoughts, developed collaboratively,
then broken down into more localized plans that are discussed in smaller
groups.
 Finally, the management structure for how the changes will be assured is
identified, for example with a regular re-convening of key members of
this group and perhaps less frequent full conferences to re-synchronize
and re-plan as needed.


Example:
 An organization that includes many diverse and powerful sub-
groups uses a Whole-system Planning conference to bring these
people together to understand one another and build the main
bones of a plan to realign the organization around current and
future realities.
Discussion:
 The Whole-system Planning approach is particularly useful for
collaborative change settings where you want to engage a large
audience in actively planning for the future and then taking
forward those actions.


Discussion:
 Celebrating the past can seem like a waste of time, but it has several
benefits. First, it is an excellent socializing process. It brings people
together in a common frame. It also plays strongly to older members of
the group, many of whom may have strong social, if not political,
influence. When they feel recognized, people from this group who may
resist are far more likely to now collaborate. It is also an easy
beginning to presage the increasingly hard work beyond. Having
invested in this, people will already feel a part of the change. This
activity also tends to show how everyone is intimately connected in
many ways, and that any one individual cannot hide or sit back whilst
others take the heat.


Discussion:
 A focus on the present identifies the current issues from which there is no
escape. It highlights the inescapable burning platform which forces
people to contemplate change. It also identifies those things which are
good and which must be kept.
 Of course not all plans may be created in detail, but the overall shape
can be built together. In particular, where there are interdependencies,
having everyone in the same room lets you quickly and easily walk
across to another table to negotiate and agree how you will work
together.
 There are a number of variants on the principle of Whole-system
Planning, including 'Search Conference', 'Future Search' and 'Real-time
Strategic Change'.

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Email: rahat@SoftSkillsExperts.com


Leadership & change management, lecture 6, by Rahat Kazmi

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