General Model of Change

Introduction

Change seems like a difficult process to manage. People are hardwired to use their daily ways of doing business and getting them to change that appears to be difficult to achieve. Although it seems that way, there are methods that can ease the process through changing the people themselves in the organization.

Part 1

Key Points of Leading Change

The article defines a “General Model of Change”. According to the article, after we get used to doing things a certain way and seeing that they work, we get into a routine. These routines are our baseline behaviors, or at workplace it is our organizational culture. If we get new data/feedback that confirms that our action is correct, meaning our routines yield positive results, we confirm our baseline behavior.

If we encounter a new data that is sizable enough and disconfirming, there are two things that can happen. We can either get hurt and deny the data and eventually go back to our baseline behavior, or we can accept the disconfirming data and start experimenting. Even if we experiment, if we get a disconfirming data to our experiment, we again snap back to our baseline behavior. If everything goes well and we confirm our experiment, only then we can form a new baseline behavior.

The change can be externally motivated, which may result in being too late in the market etc., or it can be internally motivated.

There are several steps for managing change. We first need to clarify the disconfirming data, to ensure the organization doesn’t try to deny the data or the organization gets to a point where it’s too late to make the change. As step 2, a change team must be built. The vision must be transferred to everyone through the team. After, change experiments need to be designed and lead. Experiments need to be well designed and have clear goals and objectives and they must be provided with support to ensure the experiment is not discarded. Finally results need to be relentlessly reinforced with the vision. This must be done to make sure everything gets across, and it should be done with positive reinforcement.

Change will result in denial. There are 4 forms of denial, questioning; validity of messenger, credibility of message, relevance of the message to own situation and ability to do something about the message. Denial has the following phases; anger, bargaining, despair and exploration. Once at the exploration stage, people start seeing the possibilities and getting little hopes. They will slowly become bigger and eventually result in forming a new baseline.

Key Points of Leading Strategic Change

People resist change, and faster the force the more resistance there is. People have brain barrier of mental maps. Change fails because of 3 reasons; people fail to see the need for change, they fail to move and/or they fail to finish.

When we get continuous success after doing the same thing, we form mental maps, because they work. Our maps maybe successful but they may be mistaken. For example, the map may not work once we move outside of our circle etc. This causes us to fail to see the need for change. Contrast and confrontation methods ensure that we see the need for change. We create high contrast by focusing on the key differences (80-20 method) and enhancing conceptual distance with visuals. We create high contrast by repeating old and new maps constantly, focusing on core contrasts while using as many senses as possible.

If people do see the need to change, they may fail to move. This happens if the destination is not clear, so they are unsure towards what to change. It also happens because people don’t want to start doing a new thing and be bad at it. A strategic map must be formed that has a map to guide people to doing the right thing badly at first and then doing it well. There are several keys to ensure movement. First people need to see the destination clearly; they can be asked to define each element and their effects. Second people need to be given the tools to reach their destination; we must ask and ensure they believe they have the tools they need. Finally there must be valuable rewards; the rewards should mostly be intrinsic rewards like; achievement, improvement, control etc.

People also may fail to finish. People tend to get tired or get lost. They may get punishment from customers, think the effort is greater than the reward or get lost what the objective was. Two things need to be done to ensure people finish. Champions can be placed to check progress. They need to be around where the work happens, they need to be focusing on effort, not results and they need to give positive motivation. Employee’s progress needs to be recorded (charting). The employee must know how much progress he or she made, there must be advice and counseling regarding each situation and person and employee’s performance needs to be clearly communicated to them.

Comparison

Both writings recognize the difficulty in change, and they have similar opinions as to how people block change, for example by disregarding new information and confirming to the original way of doing things. They both recognize that change in organizations only happen when people in the organizations change themselves.

They describe change quite similarly, with little differences; people have their own ways of doing, then something happens and they are required to make a change. In “Leading Change” what happens after that is defined as the “General Change Process”, and in “Leading Strategic Change” is begins with the “Strategic Change Matrix”.

Both charts start with a point in time where we have taken some actions, they have given us positive results so we formed our comfort zone and started doing things well, we are at the stage “Doing Right Thing Well”. While we are in our comfort zone, something happens that makes us question if we are doing things right, we are now at the stage “Doing Wrong Thing Well”. This new event can make us feel bad and we may deny this event and go back to our baseline behavior. We deny this event because we don’t believe the validity of the messenger, we question the credibility of message, we don’t relate the message to our own situation or we don’t believe we can do something about the message. If we accept the new event, then we start experimenting,