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The People Side of Change

4/3/2011 12:00:00 AM
We have all experienced change and have heard change mantras such as, ‘change we can believe in’ or ‘the only thing constant is change’.   But when change happens, no matter the intention behind it, there are a minimum of three types of responses: 

When a change is announced there is a group of people who are deep within their comfort zone. They execute routines with very little effort because they are in the realm of the familiar.  These comfortable employees may be good performers or they may be poor performers.  Whatever the case, they can become a group of resistors if their routine, hierarchy or status is threatened in any way.

Then you have the employees who sit on the fence.  They are undecided and want to find out what the majority thinks before they commit to a change.   They may listen to compelling arguments from various perspectives and don’t make up their minds immediately.  Alternatively, they may have a well defined opinion but their allegiances may cause them to straddle the fence.

Early adopters buy into the vision of change immediately and they are willing to work through the uncertainties of the process because they understand how the change will help them and everyone else.  Early adopters are an asset to any company during a change process because when employees witness other employees buying into a change initiative, they may be more inclined to move in the same direction.

Sabotaging Change 

When a change is initiated, the change leaders can sabotage the change process in various ways:

  1. Change is organic and needs to be led through continuous communication.  It is usually ineffective if managers facilitate a single meeting where they make an announcement and leave everyone to their own devices.  
  2. Management may collectively decide to implement a change, but in the throes of chaos that typify the initial stages of change, they may stifle the creativity that helps the best possible outcomes to emerge.  By trying to overly control the process, they muzzle the flow of information and as a result, are disconnected from what is really going on
  3. There are change leaders who either don’t buy into the change project or they are unable to fully comprehend it so they create an appearance of change by superimposing the new operational framework over the old one.  More specifically, they end up creating the illusion of change, but they haven’t made any real change because they want to remain within their comfort zone.  For instance, when coaching is introduced to a company as a people development tool, what typically happens is some managers grasp how to use the process to develop employees.  Others are unwilling to relinquish a predominantly autocratic leadership style so they use the tool but they manage to continue to suffocate employees.

Change leaders may be formal leaders like managers and executives or they may be informal leaders such as early adopters.  Regardless of who the leaders are, they set the pace and tone of the change.  They can allay fears or create them.  They can make the change process easy, or complicated.

Change and Uncertainty

In the midst of any change, there is uncertainty.  Will I have a job when this is all done?  Will I be able to operate with the same level of competence once the changes are implemented?  Will my status within the organization remain the same?  Will my coworkers respect me as a supervisor if my knowledge level is the same as theirs?  How does this change impact my career plans? Do I possess the basic skill set necessary for succeeding under the new working conditions?  These are all the kinds of questions that generate uncertainty, anxiety and inevitably resistance if left unanswered.

The People Side of Change

In change projects there are three important components: process, content and people.  Architects of change tend to focus more on the content and process of the change, scoping the old processes to determine what needs to be changed, creating process maps for the new procedures and troubleshooting potential implementation set-backs.  Sometimes change leaders become inflexible about their implementation plan because the original vision was theirs and they spent time and other resources planning the initiative.

Change leaders sometimes discount the destabilizing effect change can have on the team so they don’t place the same amount of emphasis on the people side of the change.   The key to a healthy change process is the active facilitation of top-down, bottom-up and lateral communication channels where employees, who have to perform the daily tasks, can provide and receive immediate feedback.   Feedback is critical because the change architects can’t possibly think of every eventuality if they are not intimately involved with the process on a daily basis.  

Once concerns with the change are revealed, change leaders should establish an investigative process that will provide an understanding of the root causes of the people, process or content issues.  Focus groups or meetings with individuals are used as tools to explain concerns raised during a change initiative.  By listening to issues (no matter how trivial) and seeking and implementing solutions, change leaders can shorten the period of resistance. 

In order to lead an effective change process, it is important for change leaders to manage their resistance to modifying the original change plans.  A new perspective can be the difference between a disaterous change initiative and a successful one. 

Yvette Bethel is CEO of Organizational Soul, an HR Consulting and Leadership Development company.  If you are interested in exploring how you can create a higher performing organization, you can contact her at info@orgsoul.com. 

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