Leading Human Resources: An Analysis (part 24)

Planning and Implementing Change

by

Charles Lamson

Mark Twain once said, "The only person who likes change is a baby with a wet diaper!" Like it or not, in the dynamic society surrounding today's organizations, the question of whether change will occur is no longer relevant. Change will occur. It is no longer a choice. Instead, the issue is, How do managers and leaders cope with the inevitable barrage of changes that confront them daily in attempting to keep their organizations viable and current? Although change is a fact of life, if managers are to be effective, they can no longer be content to let change occur as it will. They must be able to develop strategies to plan, direct, and control change.

Resistance to change is contradictory to the manager's primary role as a leader. You will recall that in an earlier post, we defined leadership as influencing the behavior of others, individually and in groups. Influencing means moving from one behavior to another; in other words, change. American scholar, organizational consultant and author, Warren Bennis, defined leadership as the process of creating and implementing a vision. To be a leader, therefore, implies that you must learn to love change because it is intrinsic to the leadership process. Leaders must overcome their resistance to change and become change managers.

To be effective managers of change, leaders must have more than good diagnostic skills. Once they have analyzed the demands of their environment, they must be able to adapt their leadership style to fit these demands and develop the means to change some or all of the other situational variables.


General Framework for Understanding Change

Managers who are interested in implementing some change in their group or organization need a road map for change. The road map developed by Beckhard and Harris shown in Figure 1 is regarded as being among the best by prominent behavioral scientists such as Edgar Schein, professor emeritus at the Sloan School of Management, MIT. Furthermore, it is strongly supported by research. Let us take a journey using this road map to understand the change process.

Figure 1
A Map of the Change Process

Diagnosis  (Why Change?)

The first, and in some ways the most important, stage of any change effort is diagnosis. The central issue is identifying the need to change. Broadly defined, the skills of diagnosis involve techniques for asking the right questions, sensing the environment of the organization, establishing effective patterns of observation and data collection, and developing ways to process and interpret data. In diagnosing for change, managers should attempt to find out (a) what is actually happening now in a particular situation; (b) what is likely to be happening in the future if no change effort is made; (c) what would people ideally like to be happening in this situation; and (d) what are the blocks, or restraints, stopping movement from the actual to the ideal?



There are at least three steps in the diagnostic process: point of view, identification of problem(s), and analysis.

Point of View

Before beginning to diagnose in an organization, you should know through whose eyes you will be observing the situation---your own, those of your boss, your associates, your followers, an outside consultant, or others.

Ideally, to get the full picture you should look at the situation from the points of view of the people who will be affected by any changes. Reality, however, sometimes restricts such a broad perspective. At any rate, you should be clear about your frame of reference from the start.

Identification of Problem(s)

Any change effort begins with the identification of the problem(s). A problem in a situation exists when there is a discrepancy between what is actually happening (the real) and what you or someone who hired you (point of view) would like to be happening (the ideal). For example, in a given situation, there might be tremendous conflict among individuals in a work group. If this kind of conflict is not detrimental, there may be no problem. Until you can explain precisely what you would like to be occurring and unless that set of conditions is different from the current situation, no problem exists. On the other hand, if you would ideally like this work group to be harmonious and operative, then you have a problem---there is a discrepancy between the  real and the ideal. Change efforts involve attempting to reduce discrepancies between the real (actual) and the ideal. It should be pointed out that change efforts may not always involve attempting to move the real closer to the ideal. Sometimes, after diagnosis you might realize that your ideal is unrealistic and should be brought more in line with what is actually happening.

It is in problem identification that the concepts and theoretical frameworks presented in this analysis begin to come into play. For example, two important potential areas for discrepancy are, in Rensis Likert's terms, end-result variables and intervening variables.

In an examination of end-result variables, the question becomes: Is the organization, work group, or individual doing an effective job in what it was asked to do; that is, production, sales, teaching the three Rs and so on? Are short-term goals being accomplished? How does the long-term picture look? If performance is not what it should be, there is an obvious discrepancy.

If performance is a problem, you might want to look for discrepancies in the intervening variables, or condition of the human resources. For example, is there much turnover, absenteeism, or tardiness? How about grievances, accident rate, and such? The concepts you have been learning in this analysis can generate diagnostic questions for the change situation you are examining, such as:

• What leadership, decision-making, and problem-solving skills are available? What is the motivation, communication, commitment to objectives, and climate (morale)?
• What is the readiness level of the people involved? Are they willing and able to take significant responsibility for their own performance?
• What need level seems to be most important for people right now?
• What are the hygiene factors and motivators? Are people getting paid enough? What are the working conditions? Is job security an issue? How are interpersonal relations? Do people complain about the manager? Are people able to get recognition for their accomplishments? Is there much challenge in the work? Are there opportunities for growth and development? Are people given much responsibility?

Good theory is just organized common sense. Therefore, use the theories and questions presented here to help you sort out what is happening in your situation, what might need to be changed, and the degree of choice about whether to change.

Analysis---An Outgrowth of Problem Identification

Problem identification flows almost immediately into analysis. Once a discrepancy (problem) has been identified, the goal of analysis is to determine why the problem exists. The separation between problem identification and analysis is not always that clear, however, because identifying areas of discrepancy is often a part of analysis.

Once a discrepancy has been identified in the end-result variables or intervening variables, the most natural strategy is to begin to examine what Likert calls casual variables---the independent variables that can be altered or changed by the organization and its management, such as leadership or management style, organizational structure, and organizational objectives. In other words, can you identify what in the environment might have caused the discrepancy? Again, close examination of this analysis raises various questions. 

• What is the dominant leadership style being used? How does it fit with the readiness level of the people involved?
• What are the prevailing assumptions about human nature adhered to by management? How well do those assumptions match the capabilities and the potential of the people involved?
• Are people able to satisfy a variety of needs in this environment? How do the opportunities for need satisfaction compare with the high strength needs of the people involved?
• How do the expectations of the various situational variables compare with the leadership style being used by management?

*SOURCE: MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR: LEADING HUMAN RESOURCES, 8TH ED., 2001*

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