Over the last decade, organizations
have invested huge sums of money and vast amounts of
time and energy in change initiatives.
Despite all the rhetoric, books, effort, and money
thrown into change efforts, most organizational change
efforts fail to fully achieve what they planed to
achieve. Arthur D. Little and McKinsey & Co, have
studied many organizations that entered into change
initiatives and have found that about two-thirds fail to
produce the results expected. In their recent surveys,
CEOs report that up to 75% of their organizational
change efforts do not yield the promised results. These
change efforts fail to produce what had been hoped for
and yet always produce a stream of unintended and
unhelpful consequences.
Everyone knows that any
transformation can become successful only when people
can embrace, deliver and sustain meaningful change.
Whether the change is large or small,
transactional or transformational, the ability to manage
human side of change is a critical competency for high
performance organizations. At every stage organizations
are faced with various challenges in the form of
People’s reactions like Why do we need this change?
We're OK the way we are; We don't have the skills to do
this. What will happen to me? What if we fail? Why do
they really want to do this? Keep your head down and it
will go away. All this almost certainly results in what
we call as ‘undercurrents of change’ - worry, low
morale, confusion, internal politics, lack of supporting
climate and the ultimate failure of the program through
lack of belief, understanding and most importantly,
involvement.
From our experience of supporting
Transformation Initiatives in the past, three foremost
initiatives that can make the change extremely
effective, are-
First, the company’s new future/
new vision —the "where to"—must be clear and exciting to
everyone. How well the change story has reached every
corner of the organization is important. So craft a
strong and compelling change story and involve the whole
organization in the beginning itself.
Second, We found Top Management alignment and
building change Leadership or Transformational
Leadership among a critical mass of people drives
Transformation Initiatives effectively. These critical
mass of change leaders creates a compelling future for
themselves and source others in the organization to the
future vision
Third, mobilizing the change in
such a manner that it touches every part of the
organization. We found that large Group Intervention
tools like Appreciative Inquiry and Future Search really
help in aligning the whole system to the Transformation
Goals.
ODA Transformation Support Model®
This is a comphrehensive transformation support model
that aligns people to the transformation goal.
DIAGNOSTIC STAGE: This is a visioning process that helps
us define and understand the scope and subtext to change
at an individual and team level. This will establish the
people issues related to change and provide direction
and guidance to the larger intervention. Some of the
tools that assists in this stage are
CRS(Change Readiness Survey) -
This will help us determine where the organization is
today, the current state of its ability and readiness to
change, the key disconnects and the possible
vulnerabilities that can arise during the change
process.
SNA (Social Network Analysis) – This will help
reveal the informal networks of the organization and
helps in tapping, managing and employing the knowledge
resources that is hidden in these networks.
CULTURE MAPPING – Maps the current and desired
culture that is built out of the assumptions, values,
norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of organization
members and their behaviors. We use tools like OCAI
(Organization Culture Assessment Inventory) and CTT
(Culture Transformation Tools)
Create a CHANGE STORY that is constantly and
effectively communicated in order to create a shared
sense of a desirable future, which helps motivate and
coordinate the transformation effort.
Having mapped the organization through the diagnostic
stage, we now enter the actual change design and
implementation phase.
TOP TEAM ALIGNMENT: It is important to get all the
senior players in the same plane. Many a time teams at
the top are most difficult to integrate.
Transformation Leadership – There is a strong need
for a critical mass(30 – 40%) of Middle and Lower
Management Team to be engaged in the transformation
process. These leaders then become the source of
inspiration, and they show the conviction in every
action that they take. They create an energy field and
manage to help align Senior Leadership to the future
Vision and make them operate from that future
possibility. Our Leadershift® workshop, helps the
leaders look at critical insights around:
Large Group Intervention: Whole
System Approach helps to reach to every corner of the
organization faster and cheaper, it creates Mindset
change as Every part of the system is present in the
room and also brings ownership and responsibility
amongst all. Our Whole System Intelligence® is a format
that ensures that the management involves and engages
with a larger set of representative stakeholders to
align to the Change Story in a short time bound
framework
Team Alignment – Like in the
case of Top Team alignment, every Functional
Team/workgroup is a mini organization that needs to be
constantly molded to the new vision. We perform this
process by studying four critical elements of an
effective team - Role, Goal, Relationship and Leadership
and the intervention focuses on their Personality
Styles, Team Structure and Systemic elements. This helps
aligning and integrating the group goals to
organizational goals.
Following this, is the stage that will represent the
desired destiny of the organization. Here we anchor the
change, by creating positive energy at all levels of the
organization. A Large Group Intervention with every
employee including the front line employees creates the
required positive change energy and internal ownership
of the new change vision.
- Swathi Dhilip
