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ASQ Quality Press - Brien Palmer

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56 pages

English

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As organizations strive to remain ahead of the competition, there will inevitably and often come the need for change. All successful organizations regularly use change to improve processes and increase performance. While these times of change can be a great opportunity for an organization, it also can be a time of stress and angst for all involved. Not all organizations are in a position to make these changes effectively and efficiently, and for many their efforts often fall short of the intended goals.
Making Change Work: Practical Tools for Overcoming Human Resistance to Change was written to help organizations prepare for and successfully implement change. The price of a failed change effort can be steep, both monetarily and in a loss of credibility. Making Change Work will first provide tools to measure your organization’s readiness to change, helping make sure that the efforts will not be doomed to fail from the beginning. The book then provides many tools to apply sequentially and logically in order to gain acceptance of the change throughout the organization. In helping your organization make change successfully, Making Change Work addresses buy-in, acceptance, motivation, anticipation, fear, uncertainty, and all the other messy human considerations that cause change to fail in the real world.

Sujets

Business

Qualité, hygiène, sécurité, environnement

Gestion et management

Economics

Management

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Publié par	ASQ Quality Press
Date de parution	03 juillet 2003
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781636941042
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1750€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Making Change Work
Practical Tools for Overcoming Human Resistance to Change
Brien Palmer
ASQ Quality Press
American Society for Quality, Quality Press, Milwaukee 53203
© 2004 by ASQ
All rights reserved. Published 2003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Palmer, Brien, 1952– Making change work : practical tools for overcoming human resistance to change / Brien Palmer.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87389-611-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Organizational change. I. Title.
HD58.8.P346 2003
658.4'06—dc22 2003020728
ISBN 0-87389-611-4
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Publisher: William A. Tony
Acquisitions Editor: Annemieke Hytinen
Project Editor: Paul O’Mara
Production Administrator: Barbara Mitrovic
Special Marketing Representative: David Luth
ASQ Mission: The American Society for Quality advances individual, organizational, and community excellence worldwide through learning, quality improvement, and knowledge exchange.
Attention Bookstores, Wholesalers, Schools, and Corporations: ASQ Quality Press books, video, audio, and software are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchases for business, educational, or instructional use. For information, please contact ASQ Quality Press at 800-248-1946, or write to ASQ Quality Press, P.O. Box 3005, Milwaukee, WI 53201-3005.
To place orders or to request a free copy of the ASQ Quality Press Publications Catalog, including ASQ membership information, call 800-248-1946. Visit our Web site at www.asq.org/quality-press .
Preface
Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.
—King Whitney Jr.
This book was written for people trying to improve their organizations, such as executives, managers, project sponsors, project leaders, team leaders, and team members. All improvement requires change, and all change causes a predictable resistance by those people who are affected by the change. Unfortunately, this tendency—the lack of acceptance of the change—often causes a project to fail, even if the desired change is perfectly logical and necessary.
This book will help change leaders, particularly technical managers, understand and deal with the human aspect of change. The ability to deal with the human elements can mean the difference between the success or failure of a project—or a career!
WHAT THIS BOOK PROVIDES
This book will help you in several ways. First, it provides tools to measure your organization’s readiness to change. Do not attempt a change until you have demonstrated your organization’s readiness. The price of a failed change is a widespread loss of credibility of the noble objective that you were trying to achieve. That price is too high.
It also provides an easily understood model for making sure that your change project will be accepted by the organization (see Figure 1). This model is not academic—it provides a framework for hands-on actions designed to gain the organization’s acceptance of the change you are trying to make. It also provides your team with a way to work together effectively on this project.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, this book provides many practical tools to apply sequentially and logically at specific stages of your project. The tools are illustrated with actual examples from real companies. The layout of the model and the tools in the book mimics the structure of a well-designed project. This structure will appeal to technical and project-oriented people and provide practical structure to an area (human behavior) often viewed as soft or nebulous.
These tools and principles work best if they are shared openly with all members of your core team. They should comprise an integral part of the project plan. Encourage open and frank communication about change management issues throughout your project. If you have internal opposition, lack of management support, or other obstacles, name them. Use the tools to quantify them and take appropriate action. The use of candid communication and shared leadership will encourage personal growth and help develop a stronger team.
CHANGE HAPPENS
Some change will always happen, but not necessarily the change you want. It is far better to plan for and manage change systematically, rather than simply react to events as they occur. This book will help you do just that. Best of luck to you and your team!
Introduction
Change comes in all sizes, from one person simply doing something slightly different to major programs involving thousands of people. This book applies best to any change that requires a project : a group of people with dedicated resources working towards a defined end. Examples of projects might include: Installing a new software system such as an inventory control system Developing a new administrative process such as a 360° performance evaluation Implementing an organizational change such as a restructuring Introducing new technology such as voice recognition software Moving to a new location or opening a new facility Creating a new product or service
WHY CHANGE FAILS
An incredibly high percentage of changes introduced in business organizations do not reach their full potential—that is, do not reach full implementation or do not produce the benefits envisioned by their sponsors.
Changes that fail usually do not fail because of technical reasons— something inherently flawed about the change itself. They usually fail because of human reasons—the promoters of the change did not attend to the healthy, real, and predictable reactions of normal people to disturbances in their routines (see Figure 2).

These failures create large losses of time, productivity, and morale. They also undercut the legitimate business objectives that the change was meant to engender. For example, one manufacturer attempted to replace several disjointed software systems with one integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Because of poor project management, the user community was insufficiently involved in the planning stages, and the project failed dramatically. Opponents then said, “Told you, we just can’t do an ERP in our business.” In fact, having an ERP was a great idea. The project failed because of poor change management practices, and it took years for the organization to recover and install an ERP successfully.
This human tendency to want consistency—to resist change—is actually healthy , in the balance. Without consistency, life would fall out of control and into chaos. We would be unable to predict people’s behaviors or establish our own routines and positive behavioral patterns. Thank goodness for the steadying force of our own behavioral inertia.
However, this same steadying force can work against us when we try to introduce a change. People tend not to want to deviate from behaviors that work for them.
Why do they not want to change when the need for change is so clear to you? It is precisely because the need for change is not clear to them. It is often said that people don’t resist change so much as they resist being changed . So your job is clear: in a nutshell, you have to explain why the affected people should want to change. You have to convey the same understanding and enthusiasm that you and your team have. You have to cultivate readiness, not resistance.
This book provides specific tools and principles to accomplish this task. Using these tools will make change work.
Measure Your Organization's Readiness for Change
This chapter provides tools for you and your team to use in evaluating whether your organization is prepared for a change. It also helps highlight specific areas that need work before you start. The first tool helps determine if your organization is unable to absorb any more change. The second tool evaluates your readiness with respect to the change model introduced in the next chapter.
As with most of the tools throughout, these evaluations are best done as a team effort. You might invite your sponsor, unless you feel that his or her presence could hinder the open exchange of ideas. A sponsor can be defined as a manager with the authority to provide revenues, authorize people’s involvement, and gain the organizational acceptance sufficient to implement the project.
CAN YOUR ORGANIZATION ABSORB ANY MORE CHANGE EFFORTS?
The ability of any organization to assimilate change is finite. No matter how worthy your project is, it will not succeed if your organization faces too many other changes. Picture a sponge filled to capacity—it will not pick up more water until some capacity opens up.
In general, you should not undertake any project unless it has a reasonable chance of success. In management consulting circles, for example, there is a general reluctance to accept an engagement that has a likelihood of failure. Many consultants consider it unethical to accept such a project.
First, determine if your organization has more than a 50 percent chance of having the capacity to make this change without becoming overwhelmed. To do so, list all of the major ongoing activities that will compete for manpower, money, and attention. Estimate the level of effort that each project will take (small, medium, or large). Then, estimate the level of effort required by this current project. (Be sure to consider all the activities recommended in this book.) Finally, consider the current load of the organization. Most organizations already run lean, so they have limited time to address any additional efforts.
Hold a dialogue with team members and use good judgment to estimate the chance of success for this pro