What is Change Management?

Introductory course

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 Masolow

cognitive

affective
Behavior

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What are the three types of change in management?

• Within directed change there are three different types of change management:
1. developmental,
2. transitional, and
3. transformational.
• It is important to recognize that the different kinds of change require different
strategies and plans.
• This is necessary in order to gain engagement, reduce resistance, and ease
acceptance.

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Images of managing change (VUCA and
(Leadership style)

• From Troubling times to turnaround case study due next week.

• “Change is depicted as a series of planned processes through which

obstacles and barriers to the realization of individual potential are removed
and is a participatory process through which people are increasingly
empowered.”
• Some accounts also incorporate the idea of ‘sensemaking’, the process by
which people seek to construct a narrative that brings meaning to events.

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VUCA
• Terminology the US army invented in 1979
• Volatility
• Uncertainty
• Complexity
• Ambiguity

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What is social construction and social nature
of sensemaking?

• Recent accounts suggest that change should always be regarded as

continuous and emergent and place a heavy emphasis on social
constructionist theory and the social nature of sensemaking

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• Sensemaking as a process by which people rationalize their own actions
and the actions of others.
• The outcome of sensemaking is the ability to articulate the meaning of
circumstances in a way that serves as a springboard into action.
• Sensemaking can therefore be a high-stakes process because issues of
identity are involved.

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Social Identify Theory and Self-Categorization
Theory

• The sensemaking process is complex because people may have multiple

identities.
• (SIT) and self-categorization theory (SCT).
• SIT deal with that people tend to classify themselves and others into
categories.
• (SCT)The process of categorization enables people to define themselves
relative to others and with respect to their workplace.

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Perceived self concept

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Faultline Theory:

• how coalitions develop within organizations on the basis of homogeneity

and heterogeneity.
• Sources of commonality and difference are based on identity.
• These faultlines may be activated, to the detriment of organizational
effectiveness, by triggers such as differential treatment, differing values,
an expectation that all members of a group will act similarly, insult, or
simply being forced to interact with a different subgroup

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 If change is the outcome of
sensemaking, and sensemaking is a social process,
this
positions social interaction at the heart of change

change emphasize the importance of facilitated interactions

between members of an organization.

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Do You Believe This will work?

•Many of these change efforts designed

to increase participation are
monologic, with the emphasis placed
on persuading others to align to a
predetermined ‘common’ vision.

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 Why do 87% of change management attempts fail?

Efforts to achieve consensus are

often framed as dialogic, but the
Effective interaction as an desire to arrive at a
ongoing dialogic process in which predetermined outcome usually
a multiplicity of meanings is means that they are actually
encouraged. monologic, such that a
consensus apparently attained is
often fragile and illusory.

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 • Similarity between an
organization and the type of
change required should be
considered in making a choice,
Contingency and that we need to be able to
and Context categorize change initiatives in
service of being able to
determine which approaches will
work best in different situations.

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The Emerging Change Model (ECM)

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 ECM Requires Dialogue:

The nature of emergent

change is a consequence The model thus posits
of the interplay between dialogue at the heart of
patterns of dialogue and change.
power.

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 Leaders and the Dialogue
Aspect:
• Explore what change leaders actually do.
• The abilities of the change leader to understand others’ perspectives, to tailor the
message to the audience and to assess issues in a non -judgmental fashion.
• ‘Resistance to Change’:
• Perfectly normal response, recognizing the need to create time and space for
people to engage with change on their own terms, and acknowledging their own
role in seeking to understand how others related to change.
• It is not an obstacle and more as a call to dialogue

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Three categories of
leadership behavior:
1.Shaping,
2.Framing change
3.Creating capacity.

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 Power:

• With its positioning of dialogue at the heart of change and its emphasis on
sensemaking and identity, the ECM appears consistent with many narratives on
the nature of emergent change.

• The leader articulating the purpose of the organization, and the

identity of the leader as being confident, courageous and
authentic.
• The dialogic process, as described by the leaders in this study, takes place
against a backdrop of power and the expression of that power, labelled here as
‘politics’.

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 Positional Power is
Privileged
Different forms of power, for example,
relational power and expert power.
This hints at a dynamic perspective in which the power of the individual is
framed as an aspect of identity, socially constructed through meaning
making

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 ECM and the Story Teller of Change:

• The ECM implies that effective leaders consciously choose who to engage in
dialogue taking into account power dynamics.
• A key component of the ‘traditional/rationalist’ story is the extent to which the
storyteller depended on the support of the CEO and CFO.
• It appears that we make a deliberate choice not to engage the majority of
employees in that dialogue because we had already formed a clear purpose as
determined by the regulator who to include and who not to include.

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 How to Use the ECM Model:
• A reflective device and as such it may be used alongside
traditional change models, not instead of traditional
change models.

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 Conclusion:
1. To suggest that the prescriptive use of traditional change models is unlikely to lead to effective
outcomes is not to say that such models may not be useful when used with a mindset that
acknowledges the complexity of the environment and the impossibility of being able to predict what will
happen at every stage of the journey.
2. In a complex environment, different models may prove to be useful in different situations at different
times. Van de Ven and Sun (2011) define reflection in these terms, as an ongoing questioning of one’s
mental models based on the results of actions.
3. The ECM may be best used as such a tool, directing the practitioner’s attention to aspects of change
that may be relevant, for example, patterns of dialogue taking place across the organization, aspects of
identity and the dynamics of power.
4. Ultimately, the extent to which such reflections lead to change being implemented more effectively will
remain impossible to quantify and practitionersare bound to make their own judgements (Stacey, 2012).

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 Now think • What is happening now in your
about your organization.
positions in • Is change introduced easily?
• Why?
your
organizations

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