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).