Managing Change

1. Managing Change Transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations to a desired future state

2. Why do Employees Resist Change?Paul Strebel • Managers are focused in the fact that the change is an opportunity to strengthen the business by aligning operations with strategy, take on new professional challenges and risks, and advance their careers. • Employees tend to view change as disruptive and intrusive, upsetting the balance. Generally change is not sought after or welcomed from an employees stand point. • An employment relationship has three dimensions: formal, psychological, and social. • Change alters the terms of the personal contracts that employees have with the organization effecting these three dimensions. • The goal for employers is to define and persuade employees to accept the new terms as they affect all three dimensions of the work relationship. If this is not done it is unrealistic to expect that workers will fully buy into the change effort. • Employers must put themselves into their employees shoes to understand change from their perspective to be successful. • Alignment between a company's statements and management's  behavior is key in relation to the social dimension and that a manager's credibility, once lost, is most difficult to recover.  • Unless the revision of personal compacts is treated as integral to the change process, companies will not accomplish their goal. Without this employees will remain skeptical of the change and distrustful of management, likewise management will be frustrated by employee resistance.

3. Leading and Managing Organizational Change InitiativesClaudia Peus, Dieter Frey, MaritGerkhardt, Peter Fischer, Eva Traut-Mattausch • Although necessary for continued success and growth, organizational changes are often met with resistance. • The ability to quickly and adequately adapt as the environment changes is crucial for the success of your business. • Leading employees to support change can be a challenge but us critical for the success of any business. • Explanations for this resistance include uncertainty, loss of control, fear of failure, and disruptions in sense making.  • Negative reactions to change can have serious implications for the organization • Employees have to perceive the process underlying the change as fair and feel that they have been treated appropriately and given adequate information about the changes and the reasons for them and also the quality of that information (i.e. timeliness, accuracy, perceived, usefulness) is important in determining employee reactions. • An inspiring vision (which justifies sacrifices on the way to achieving it) is important to achieving positive employee reactions to change. • A transformational leadership style has been found to be effective in leading organizational changes. • Employees in core positions should be chosen carefully and under consideration of variable that are relative to their ability adapt to change. People who have a high need for achievement have a more favorable view of organizational change and see them as an opportunity. • Implementing a series of small changes and celebrating victories is useful, changes of high magnitude are more likely met with employee resistance.

4. Exercise 1 • Face the Fear: A Change Management Exercise This exercise is designed to allow individuals to share their fear of an upcoming event or change anonymously with their team, promoting open and frank discussion. Best for groups of six to ten people. Allow one hour to one hour 30 minutes for completion. • Aim This exercise is designed to allow individuals to share their fear of an upcoming event or change with their team, promoting open and frank discussion.  Allow between one hour and one hour 30 minutes for completion (depending on the size of the group). • Learning Objectives Participants will be able to …-share worries and concerns -generate solutions as a team • Facilitator Guidance In this exercise, participants write their personal fears (anonymously) on sheets of paper which are then collected in a hat and read aloud. Each person in the group describes their thoughts about what might be contributing to the fear. The idea is that an open discussion is generated, and potential solutions found. Best for groups of six to ten people.  No separate task sheet is required. • What to Do When you are ready to start, explain that the purpose of the exercise is for participants to share any fears or worries they have about an upcoming event or change. There are a few ground rules which participants should observe:-no fear or worry is too small to be shared -every point shared should be treated with equal respect -participants must be honest and upfront .

5. Cont. • 1. Give the participants five minutes to think about what is concerning them and ask them to write it on a bit of paper. • 2. Once everyone has added their paper to the hat, the trainer should read the first of them out. • 3. Moving clockwise around the group, ask each participant to share what they think about the concern. For example, if the concern raised was 'I'm worried that I don't know enough about our new technology to perform well', participants' responses might include:-this person is worried that they haven't received enough information about how the technology will change -this person is worried that they haven't understood how to use the new technology  -this person is worried about not having received any training • 4. Once everyone has shared their thoughts, encourage the group to suggest things that could help assuage this fear. Suggestions may include:-ask for more clarification from a team manager -ask another member of the team to support or buddy them through the change in technology -request some time to practice • 5. Once all the fears in the hat have been discussed, encourage the group to identify any similarities or trends and agree any actions. For example, if a gap in knowledge is consistent across the group, do they need more information, or perhaps more training? Once actions have been identified, ask for volunteers to ensure each action is addressed.

6. Exercise 2 • Employee Input Activities When workplace changes are on the horizon companies can institute employee input activities, such as satisfaction surveys, feedback questionnaires and the solicitation of new ideas for the structure of the workplace. Employee input activities make workers know they are part of the transition and that their opinions matter. When you give employees the chance to speak their minds about something, they may feel more valued, which is essential to the culture of the workplace during restructuring or other changes.

7. Exercise 3 • Purpose This exercise helps the delegates to examine our changing world and provides an opportunity to discuss what it means for future. You can use this as part of a change management course or to run it for staff who are subjected to a change management program. • Objective Discuss the evolution of change on a particular topic based on the images provided. • What You Need Pictures that represent change. These are sets of images from past to present on a particular topic. Here are some examples: • Evolution of telephone, from old dial phones, to landlines, to brick cordless phones to mobile phones to smart phones. • Computers • Cars • Bicycles • Fashion • Music players • Hair styles • Singers • Actors • Movies • Interior design • Shopping behaviour • Overall attitudes in society • Roles (from being a daughter, to a sister, to a wife, to a mother and to a grandmother)

8. Cont. • Setup Divide the delegates to groups of 3 or 4. Make sure there is an age variation in each group. • Give one set of images on a particular topic to each group at random. • Ask the groups to discuss the changes that took place in that topic based on experience and memory while getting inspired by the images. • Naturally, those who are older can talk about the past and explain how they had to deal with the change at each stage. • Encourage groups to discuss the significance of these changes in the society and also specifically in their own lives. • Encourage groups to talk about the future of that topic, what they expect to happen next, how it would impact their organisations, what they should do to prepare for it. • Allow 10 minutes for this part. • Collect all images and distribute a different set of images to all groups. • Repeat as before for another 10 minutes. • Repeat for a third round and then bring back everyone together. • Follow with a discussion. • Timing Explaining the Exercise: 2 minutes • Activity: 10 min * 3 rounds = 30 minutesGroup Feedback: 10 minutes • Discussion What do you think of change? Is it inevitable? How does it affect us all? What should we do to survive a change? What areas do you expect to be most challenging in the future in terms of change and what can you do about them now to stay one step ahead?