Skills for Promoting Change

necessary for the manager to use external reinforcers, which can be positive or negative.6 For example, the manager might encourage the employees to keep working at the change by predicting that the desired positive results will occur. A small reward, such as a lunch or an afternoon off, might be awarded when the change has been completed successfully. The goal of this phase of the change process is to cause the desired attitudes and behaviors to become a natural, self-reinforcing pattern.

SKILLS FOR PROMOTING CHANGE

Major change does not happen easily. The change process goes through stages, each of which is important and requires a significant amount of time. Exhibit 15.1presents an eight-stage sequence

1.Create awareness of the need to change

• Unfreeze current complacency • Demonstrate the need for change • Create a sense of urgency

2.Form a guiding coalition

• Establish a team of opinion leaders • Assess problems and how to approach them • Develop a shared commitment for change

3.Develop a shared vision and implementation plan

• Formulate a compelling vision that will aspire people to change • Develop strategies for achieving the vision.

4.Communicate the vision widely

• Continually communicate the vision and strategy to all stakeholders • Members of guiding coalition model new behaviors

5.Empower Action

• Overcome resistance to change • Provide knowledge, resources, training, and necessary authority • Create systems and structures to facilitate and reward change

6.Generate short-term wins

• Begin by targeting highly visible projects that can be easily achieved • Visibly reward people who achieve wins with bonuses, recognition, and praise

7.Evaluate changes achieved, consolidate gains, and motivate greater change

• Avoid experiencing letdown after achieving short-term change goals • Use credibility achieved by short-term wins to consolidate improvements and motivate employees to tackle bigger problems • Change systems, structures, and policies that impede change efforts

8.Make Change Stick

• Refreeze new values and beliefs in the culture by rewarding new behaviors • Articulate connections between new behaviors and organizational success

EXHIBIT 15.1 Eight Skill Sequence for Planned Change. Sources: Based on J. S. Osland, D. A. Kolb, I. M. Rubin, and M. E. Turner, Organizational Behavior: An Experiential Approach, 8th ed., (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2007), pp. 637–642; J. P. Kotter, Leading Change (Boston: Harvard Business School Press 1996), p. 21; P. L. Hunsaker, Management: A Skills Approach, 2nd Edition (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2005), pp. 481–484, J. P. Kotter and D. Cohen, The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories about How People Change Their Organizations (Cambridge MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

of skills that managers need to apply to bring about planned change successfully.7 Stages in the change process generally overlap, but skipping stages or making critical mistakes at any stage can cause the change process to fail.

CREATING AWARENESS OF THE NEED TO CHANGE At stage 1, leaders unfreeze people by establishing a sense of urgency that change is needed. If the organization is obviously facing a threat to its survival, this kind of crisis gets people’s attention. Dramatically declining profits and stock prices at IBM in the early 1990s, for example, provided a sense of urgency for all stakeholders. In many cases, however, no current crisis is obvious, but leaders have identified potential problems by scanning the external environment, looking at such things as competitive conditions; market position; and social, technological, and demographic trends. In these cases, leaders need to find ways to communicate the information broadly and dramatically to make others aware of the need for change.

FORMING A POWERFUL GUIDING COALITION Stage 2 involves establishing a team of opinion leaders with enough power to guide the change process. The critical variable at this point is the development of a shared commitment to the need for and direction of organizational change. Mechanisms such as off-site retreats can get people together and help them develop a shared assessment of problems and how to approach them. It is also important to include all levels of management in this coalition to ensure support from top leaders and enthusiastic implementation from middle and lower managers.

DEVELOPING A COMPELLING VISION AND STRATEGY Leaders of change need to formulate and articulate a compelling vision that people will aspire to and that will guide the change effort. The vision of what it will be like when goals are achieved should illuminate core values and principles that pull followers together in a common endeavor. Effective visions create passion in followers to achieve specific goals because they can visualize a common contribution to a cause they believe in. Leaders also need to develop the strategies for achieving that vision.

COMMUNICATING THE VISION WIDELY Leaders need to use every means possible to communicate the vision and strategy to all stakeholders. Transformation is impossible unless the majority of people in the organization are involved and willing to help. This should start with the managers in the change coalition themselves, who should set an example by modeling the new behaviors needed from employees.

EMPOWERING EMPLOYEES TO ACT ON THE VISION At this stage, people are empowered with knowledge, resources, and discretion to make things happen. Leaders should encourage and reward risk taking and nontraditional ideas and actions. Also, they need to revise systems, structures, or procedures that hinder or undermine the change effort. For example, with the survival of the company at stake, labor and management at Rolls-Royce Motor Company revised hundreds of precise job descriptions that were undermining the change into a new contract and specified that all employees would do anything within their capabilities to support the company.8

GENERATING SHORT-TERM WINS Major change takes time, and a transformation effort loses momentum if no short-term accomplishments can be recognized and celebrated by