failure of changes, characteristics of effective change

FAILURE OF CHANGES,

CHARACTERISTICS OF

EFFECTIVE CHANGE

1/23/2015

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Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model


STEP 1

CREATE URGENCY

In Kotter’s Words: Create a Sense of Urgency

Helping others see the need for change &

the importance of acting quickly

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STEP 2

BUILD A GUIDING TEAM

In Kotter’s Words: Build a Guiding Coalition

Ensuring there is a powerful group, with the

appropriate leadership skills, credibility & authority to

guide the change process

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STEP 3

CREATE A VISION FOR CHANGE

In Kotter’s Words: Form a Strategic Vision and

Initiatives

Creating a picture of the future & how it

will be different from the present

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STEP 4

COMMUNICATE THE CHANGE VISION

In Kotter’s Words: Enlist a Volunteer Army

Ensuring everyone understands

& accepts the vision

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STEP 5

REMOVE OBSTACLES

In Kotter’s Words: Enable Action by Removing

Barriers

Removing the barriers to making change successful

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STEP 6

CREATE ‘SHORT TERM WINS’

In Kotter’s Words: Generate Short-Term Wins

Create clear, visible success stories early in the

process

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STEP 7

CONSOLIDATE GAINS &

PRODUCE MORE CHANGE – DON’T LET UP

In Kotter’s Words: Sustain Acceleration

Recognise more change opportunities following the

‘quick wins’ to take full advantage of the momentum for change

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STEP 8

ANCHOR THE NEW APPROACHES

IN THE CULTURE

In Kotter’s Words: Institute Change

Ensure the new ways of behaving are recognised & rewarded to embed the change into the

organisational culture

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Applying Kotter 8-Step Change

Model12

Failure of Change - Reasons

Lack of Knowledge

Lack of Skill and practice

Hidden Conflict working against change

Culture working against change

Lack of Plan

Weak follow through

Not investing resources

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But What is the Key

Reason..???

Technology

People

Process

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Transition Steps

Review current roles and jobs

Review new skills needed

Assess skills and roles to support new process

Determine skill gaps

Review organisational jobs and roles

Suggest methods for updating skills

Obtain agreement regarding the new job

Support transition

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Why Transformation Efforts Fail

Error 1: Not Establishing a Great Enough Sense of

Urgency

Error 2: Not Creating a Powerful Enough Guiding

Coalition

Error 3: Lacking a Vision

Error 4: Under communicating the Vision by a

Factor of Ten

Error 5: Not Removing Obstacles to the New

Vision

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Why Transformation Efforts Fail

Error 6: Not Systematically Planning for, and

Creating, Short-Term Wins

Error 7: Declaring Victory Too Soon

Error 8: Not Anchoring Changes in the

Corporation’s Culture

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Failure of Change can be due to

Lack of vision: When the corporate vision and/or

strategies are unclear, people are unsure about

how to interpret major new directives.

A history of poor implementation: When there is a

track record of poorly implemented endeavours,

people tend not to expect much when new

changes are announced.

Lack of middle-management support: When

midlevel managers are not enrolled in the change

process and lack a sense of involvement and

ownership, change objectives are jeopardized.

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Lack of understanding or belief: When people

don’t understand or believe in changes being

attempted, they typically don’t support them.

An environment of low risk taking: When there is a

tendency to overly punish errors or reward their

absence, people tend to avoid change.

No consequence management: Where there are

few negative consequences for failing to comply,

people usually ignore new directives.

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Lack of clear communications: When information is allowed to filter down unmanaged, it often becomes diffused and less specific and is open to interpretation.

Lack of planning for and management of resistance: When overt resistance is not acknowledged and managed properly, it goes underground, creating slowdowns, malicious compliance, or even outright sabotage.

Lack of time: When insufficient time is allowed for implementation, problems prevail and the maintenance costs for change are high.

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Poor follow-through: When projects are started with much fanfare but there is no follow-through o their finish, a legacy is created that threatens future change efforts.

Lack of synergy: When interdependence is not recognized between key players or groups, engaging change in one area will often cause resistance from another.

Rhetoric unsupported by actions: When leaders say one thing but their behaviour suggests the opposite, change goals are difficult to reach.

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Role Definitions During Change

Initiating sponsor

The individual or group who strategically

legitimizes implementation of a change, either

within several major areas of the organization or

enterprise wide. Sponsors (regardless of their

level) sanction initiatives through influential

communications and meaningful consequences.

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Primary sustaining sponsor:

The individual or group who formally sanctions the

change within relevant areas of responsibility,

providing a “united front” of leadership support for

the endeavour and coordinating implementation

activities (across functional or geographical lines

as necessary).

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Local sustaining sponsor:

The individual or group who orchestrates the

communications and consequences within

relevant tactical areas of responsibility necessary

to ensure successful change implementation.

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Change agent:

The individual or group who facilitates the

development and execution of the implementation

plans.

Target:

The individual or group who must actually change.

Advocate:

The individual or group who wants to achieve a

change but does not possess the necessary

legitimization power.

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Relationships Among Key Roles in

the Change Process 26

Characteristics of Highly Effective

Change Leaders

Low Level of Anxiety

Emotional Stability

Action Orientation

Confidence

Openness

Risk Tolerance

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Characteristics of Change

management

Resistance

Consistent Communication

Training and Goal setting

Recognition

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Characteristics of organisational

change management team

Lead by example

Recognize achievements

Promote accountability

Include change agent

Communicate effectively

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Change Curve30

Our Iceberg is Melting31

Norfolk Southern

The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I railroad in the United States, owned by the Norfolk Southern Corporation. With headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk Southern serves domestic and international customers.

As a leading transportation provider, Norfolk Southern operates 20,000 route miles in 22 states and D.C., supports international trade with service to every major Eastern seaport, 10 river ports, and nine lake ports, and operates the most extensive intermodal network in the East.

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Norfolk Southern: Case Study

When Katie Frazier first joined Norfolk Southern’s Atlanta terminal, she felt it was running well but still felt more could be done to improve operations. She was also concerned about safety issues.

As she got comfortable in her new job, she was wracking her brain, struggling with how to help the company take its safety and operations standards from just “good enough” to a higher level.

One day, while in a local bookstore’s business section, she noticed a book with penguins on the cover. Penguins had always been her favourite animal, but she wondered what such a book was doing surrounded by books on management!

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The book, needless to say, was “Our Iceberg Is Melting.” Once she started reading it, she thought to herself, “wow, this is really helpful.”

She noticed that behaviors in her company sometimes mirrored the penguins’ behaviors, for example, people would see a complex problem, and then either ignore it or wait for someone else to fix it.

Katie thought that if she could get other people in the company to read the book, it might be a big help in giving people perspective on the bigger picture. Katie, being one of the few relatively young workers around, faced an enormous challenge in getting her older co-workers to buy in to the notion that penguins could help the organization.

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There were many skeptics. She showed the book

to her manager, a former Marine. He told her

that the book was something his granddaughter

might read, not something he would value as a

business leader.

Katie persevered and insisted that he read it. After

her manager actually did, he quickly began to

realize the same lessons could apply at Norfolk

Southern.

He gave Katie approval to start applying the

learnings.

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Norfolk Southern: Case Study -

Step 1

Katie started by trying to create a sense of

urgency around a willingness to raise safety and

operational standards.

Through evaluation of these problems, not only by

Katie but also by the broader leadership team,

people began to feel that urgency was more than

just the latest fad.

That process of raising the urgency level inside

the Atlanta terminal of Norfolk Southern took about

2 months from start to finish.

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Step 2

After sufficient urgency was raised, a guiding coalition formed made up of a few conductors, engineers & supervisors. Katie’s fear was that the group was too homogenous – she actually wanted to include a few of the company’s more skeptical employees to get their feedback and help strengthen the group’s decision making.

The Guiding Coalition began meeting regularly and called themselves “The Iceberg Group.” This group started out small, but eventually grew to have about 9 people, changing over time, from different parts of the organization, meeting regularly to see how to implement the rest of the 8 Steps.

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Step 3

The vision that the group created was designed to

change everyone’s mentality and attitude about

safety. Injuries could not be treated as an

acceptable risk at a railroad – they had to be

reduced in order to get the railroad’s efficiency up

and costs down.

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Step 4

Communicating this vision was a constant battle, since most of a railroad’s employees are on the move at any given time. Furthermore, most of the crew members did not have access to modern communications like e-mail.

As a result, the vision was communicated through a vehicle called “job briefings,” where the days weather & track conditions were discussed for crews about to go out on to the tracks. These briefings happen 3 times a day, at the beginning of every shift.

The Iceberg Group started communicating the change vision at job briefings, around the clock, for two weeks straight. Over time, every crew member was touched by the vision multiple times, right at their point of highest awareness – before going out to work on the trains.

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Step 5

The largest barrier Katie felt she needed to overcome were related to the concept of raising the bar on safety standards – how can you make people really care about the highest possible safety standards, when current standards are already high? The way to do it, she said, was to make it personal – get to the heart and not just the mind.

They forced people to think about their families and how they would feel about an injury to their loved ones. Over time, the message began to sink in and people started to change their behaviour. This created a high level of engagement with the crew.

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Step 6

The Iceberg Group set a goal for a short term win –six months injury free and communicated it broadly. Since the inception of the Iceberg Group’s work, with the exception of a small muscle pull, the Atlanta terminal has gone almost 9 months injury free.

Other outcomes resulted as well, for example, because the terminal became so proficient, they’ve never had to reduce the number of shifts running, even as other companies have cut back.

With injuries down about 97% over last year, the Atlanta terminal has had fewer missed days of work, fewer injury-related costs and more productive workers, enabling it to gain a critical advantage over the competition.

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Step 7&8

Even with this success, the Atlanta terminal isn’t

content to let up. As they continue to move

through the 8 Step process, they hope to make the

change permanent by anchoring these new

changes into the culture.

The Iceberg Group continues to meet, looking for

other ways in which they can help the company

improve its operations, and hopefully, spread the

Iceberg philosophy to other divisions of the

company

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Norfolk Southern - Vision

Be the safest, most customer-focused, and

successful transportation company in the world

Norfolk Southern believes having a vision helps

create prosperity. It pushes boundaries, creates

new possibilities, and challenges people to roll up

their sleeves and do what it takes to achieve

goals.

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Hmm…44

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