Organizational Change

Marilu Goodyear

EDUCAUSE and University of Kansas

Facilitative Change

Discussing small and large scale changes; not short-term crisis

Goals of Change

• Two Ways to Meet the Challenge of Change

• Analysis that shifts thinking– Essential for higher level support and resources

• Demonstrating a truth that influences feelings– Seeing Feeling Changing

– Essential for those supporting change and implementing change

Achieving Change in Behavior

• See Feel Change

• Help People See

• Seeing Something New Hits the Emotions

• Emotionally Charged Ideas Change Behavior or Reinforce Changed Behavior

• Analysis Think Change

• Give People Analysis

• Data and Analysis Influence How We think

• New Thoughts Change Behavior or reinforce Changed Behavior

Do you feel your way into acting? or Do you act your way into

feeling?

Increase Urgency

• DO: Show others the need for change with a compelling object that they can see, touch, and feel.

• DO: Validate change with dramatic evidence from outside the organization

• DON’T: Depend only on the rational case

Building a Guiding Team• Relevant knowledge about what is happening outside the

enterprise or group – Essential for creating vision

• Credibility, connections, and stature within the organization– Essential in communicating the vision

• Valid information about the internal workings of the enterprise – Essential for removing the barriers that disempower people from

acting on the vision• Formal authority and the managerial skills associated with

planning, organizing, and control – Needed to create a short-term wins

• The leadership skills associated with vision, communication, and motivation– Required for ensuring change sticks.

Get the Vision Right

• Vision is an end state where all the plans and strategies will eventually take you.

• Vision must speak to all stakeholders

• Vision should be short: told in one minute or on one page

• A good story is always helpful

• “Sell” vision to the top management and clients

– Same See Feel Change applies

Communicate for Buy-In

• Announcing changes:– Urgency

– Vision

– Strategy: how to achieve vision

– Plan: step by step how to implement vision

– Most Important: Speak to anxieties; Prepare answers to anticipated questions

• Communicate, communicate, communicate– Everyway and Everyday

Empower Action

• Removing barriers– People

• Ignore them

• Change them (new experiences and perspectives)

• Remove or transfer

– Systems• Align as many as possible

• Pay versus Attention and Recognition

• Information feedback

– Change burnout• Focus on 2-3 things at once

• Maintaining the current system is one

Characteristics of Good Short-Term Wins

• Visible

• Unambiguous (so fewer people argue about whether it REALLY is a success)

• Meaningful

• Speaks to employee issues, concerns, and values

• Focus on powerful person or group whose help you need.

Purposes of Short-Term Wins

• Wins provide feedback to change leaders about the validity of their visions and strategies.

• Wins give those working hard to achieve a vision a pat on the back, an emotional uplift.

• Wins build faith in the effort, attracting those who are not yet actively helping.

• Wins take power away from cynics.

Provide Resources

• Failure to provide adequate resources leads to– Feeble efforts to implement change

– Higher levels of stress

– Neglect of core organizational activities and functions

• Need to allocate three types of resources:– Diagnostic

– Implementation

– Institutionalization

Overcoming Resistance to Change

• If urgency is high; resistance is less

• Participation in change process, including employee feedback on process (most frequently cited approach)

• Create as much psychological ownership as possible

• Allowing employees to openly voice their ambivalence.

• Offer employees instrumental and emotional support

– “Every change needs a funeral”

– Create pride in the organization’s history

Two Important Roles for Overcoming Resistance to Change • Toxic Handler

– Shoulders the sadness, frustrations, bitterness and anger

– Listens to employees while they are in “the pit”

• Sages– Focus on reducing uncertainty

– Enhance and transmit knowledge, especially meaning behind actions

– Speaks up and asks the questions that others fear to ask

Making It Stick

• Recognize that “day to day” takes energy and time

• Aggressively rid the organization of work that is no longer relevant– Does this add value?– Our biggest mistake: we add on but we don’t

subtract

• Look for ways to keep urgency up• Alignment is important:

– Does this fit with our vision? – Does it pull in the right direction?

Ethical Issues During Change

• Three types of justice:

– Distributive justice (fair allocation of resources)– Procedural justice (a voice in the matter)– Interactional justice (process and communication)

• Important values:– Integrity: The manager remains dedicated to their

responsibilities (whom and why)– Honesty: To employees and stakeholders– Commitment: To what’s important, what needs to be

accomplished, values

– Stewardship: Maintaining, promoting and improving the vital interests of the organization and the larger society.

Eight Step Process

• Increase urgency

• Build a guiding team

• Get the vision right

• Communicate for buy-in

• People start telling each other “Let’s Go”

• A group is formed and works together well

• The guiding team develops the right vision and strategy

• People begin to buy into the change; their behavior begins to change

Eight Step Process

• Empower action

• Create short-term wins

• Don’t let up

• Make change stick

• People feel able to act, and do act on the vision

• Momentum builds as people try to fulfill the vision, fewer resist change

• People make wave after wave of changes until vision is fulfilled

• New behavior changes continue despite pulls otherwise

The IT Silo and Change

• Alignment between IT and the institution requires individual and organizational boundary spanning

• Achievement of cross-functional integration between the IT organization and the institution is a key factor in IT success.

• Integration can also improve the speed of response to change

Integration Maturity Model• Effective Partnerships

– Seamless interaction– Sophisticated systems– Transparent communication

• Data and Needs Resolutions– Proactive collaboration– Shared understanding

• Basic Understanding– Trust– Appreciation– Priority discussions– Medium and frequency of communication important

• Dis-Integration– Open hostility– Lack of understanding– No interaction

Resources• The Heart of Change: Real-life Stories of How People

Change Their Organizations. John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen (Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, 2002)

• Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change. William Bridges. 2nd edition. (Cambridge, Mass: Da Capo Press, 2003)

• Breaking Out of the IT Silo: The Integration Maturity Model. Mark R. Nelson. (Boulder, Colorado: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, March 15, 2005).

• Cultivating Careers: Professional Development for Campus IT. Cynthia Golden. (Boulder, Colorado: EDUCAUSE, 2006).