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articles & white papers on
Talent Retention Team
Building
& Managing Change
http://www.scoop.co.nz
Scoop.co.nz (press
release) - New Zealand
16
February 2006
Employer focus firmly on retention
Employer focus firmly on
retention: You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone
Retention has become a major
focus for employers, with almost half rating it ahead of compliance and
recruiting talent, reflecting increasing concerns over the skills shortage and
the importance of keeping the talent an organisation has. In a survey of
over 1,000 employers by specialist recruiter Hays, 43.18 per cent rated
retention as the most important issue to their organisation in 2006. Compliance
was considered most important by 29.28 per cent while recruiting talent was most
important to 27.54 per cent. “This result isn’t surprising given the
ongoing skills shortage,” said Jason Walker, General Manager of Hays NZ.
“Companies are using a variety of strategies to attract new talent, but it seems
retaining them has now become more important to employers. With a
candidate-driven market where skills at all levels are in demand, it is
understandable that retention has become more important than ever – even rated
above attracting talent.
“Career progression, the
provision of new challenges, salary, training and development and strong
management are all important elements of a retention strategy. Living up to
employment branding is also essential – once you’ve attracted people based on a
description of what it’s like to work for your company you need to make sure
that description becomes reality,” Jason said. “However, a retention plan
cannot be approached with a ‘one size fits all’ mentality. One employee may
value flexible hours, while for another it is the opportunity for career
advancement. Meeting the needs of the whole workforce is essential, and an
understanding of the differences between Generations Y, X and Baby Boomers will
make this easier.
“It is fair to say the cost
of replacing staff would also be a factor in this retention focus, as the
average performing staff member costs around 90 per cent of their salary to
replace,” said Jason. For hints and tips on how to retain staff, view our
previous reports on www.hays-hps.co.nz
1152 people were surveyed on
Hays’ website www.hays-hps.co.nz
http://www.management-issues.com
Management-Issues -
London,UK
Author: Nic
Paton
February 6, 2006
Managers' dreams
founder on the rocks of corporate reality
The high hopes and
ambitions of Britain's managers are often let down by the mundane and
bureaucratic reality of corporate organisational life, a study has suggested.
More and more managers are motivated by "making a difference", enjoyment of
their job and personal achievement, according to the study by leadership and
development centre Roffey Park. In addition, 87 per cent will "go the extra
mile" to get things done and 83 per cent feel committed or very committed to
their organisation.
Managers are also
making headway in finding meaning in their working lives and when it comes to
work-life balance, said the study, published in the organisation's Management
Agenda survey. Intriguingly, of the 967 managers polled, there is a strong
correlation between managers' quest for meaning and their perception of
organisational purpose and the extent to which the organisation is
environmentally and socially responsible, said Roffey. The more uplifting the
purpose and the more responsible the organisation was perceived to be, the less
managers were looking for meaning and the more prepared they were to "go the
extra mile".
Corporate social
responsibility was personally important to 86 per cent of those polled and there
was an increase in organisations having CSR policies, from 39 per cent in 2005
to 46 per cent this time around. With managers now feeling more secure in their
jobs and confident of finding work elsewhere, work-life balance was becoming an
increasing priority in their lives, with 57 per cent saying their senior
managers were committed to work-life balance, a significant increase from 33 per
cent reported last year. There was a corresponding increase in senior managers
being seen to practise work-life balance for themselves, from 22 per cent in
2005 to 33 per cent in 2006.
-
Seven out of 10 said
they refuse a promotion if it affected their work-life balance
-
Seven out of 10 said
they refuse a promotion if it affected their work-life balance and almost six
out of 10 (57 per cent) felt they had a satisfactory work-life balance.
Managing change
remained the biggest issue for organisations, despite some stating the biggest
challenges they were facing related to succession planning, retention,
recruitment and skills shortages. Some were responding by focusing on core
business and cost/spending restrictions but there was also a significant
increase in organisations looking for new markets.
Organisations, the
research found, were often good at initiating change but poor at consolidating
benefits and managing employee motivation. Organisational life was far from
comfortable, with just 19 per cent reporting a high level of morale in their own
organisation, falling to 7 per cent in the public sector. While nearly half said
their organisation had become more values driven over recent years, 60 per cent
believed that its espoused and practised values did not match.
This represented a
significant rise in scepticism from last year, with the rise most noticeable in
the private sector, said Roffey. In addition, 78 per cent of managers thought
senior managers do not "walk the talk". Performance management was still
problematic, with only 11 per cent believing it was managed very well, compared
with 9 per cent in 2005. This fell to 2 per cent in the public sector, where a
third believed it was not managed at all.
HR continued to be
seen as reactive and only 17 per cent of non-HR respondents believed the
function added value to the business. The top challenge for HR therefore was
developing a performance management culture, said Roffey. Conflict at work was
still rising, but less sharply than in previous years, with the increase
greatest in the public sector.
Different goals,
purpose and agenda topped the list of causes, with 45 per cent of respondents
reporting some extent of bullying in the workplace, predominantly verbal but
also in the form of long hours and work pressure. Leadership also emerged as a
central issue for organisations. A third of the managers polled rated leadership
as poor or very poor in their organisation. Just 36 per cent trusted their top
leadership to a great extent. Leadership was rated much more positively in
organisations where it was being actively developed.
For organisations
with an organisational development function, leadership development was now the
most pressing issue and it was also the top strategy that organisations were
embracing for the future. "There is still some way to go until organisations
provide the ideal environment in which managers can achieve their high
aspirations but there are signs that a corner may have been turned," said report
authors Valerie Garrow and Annette Sinclair.
"By focusing on
'softer' issues such as values, purpose, social responsibility and leadership
development, organisations will be better placed to recruit and retain the
best," they added.
management.about.com
- USA
Managing Change: Managing People's
Fear
Change is
natural and good. Reaction to change is unpredictable, but manageable.
Managing change means managing
people's fear. Change is natural and good, but people's reaction to change is
unpredictable and irrational. It can be managed if done right.
Change
Nothing is as upsetting to your people as change. Nothing has greater potential
to cause failures, loss of production, or falling quality. Yet nothing is as
important to the survival of your organization as change. History is full of
examples of organizations that failed to change and that are now extinct. The
secret to successfully managing change, from the perspective of the employees,
is definition and understanding.
Resistance to change comes from a
fear of the unknown or an expectation of loss. The front-end of an individual's
resistance to change is how they perceive the change. The back-end is how well
they are equipped to deal with the change they expect.
An individual's degree
of resistance to change is determined by whether they perceive the change as
good or bad, and how severe they expect the impact of the change to be on them.
Their ultimate acceptance of the
change is a function of how much resistance the person has and the quality of
their coping skills and their support system.
Your job as a leader is to address
their resistance from both ends to help the individual reduce it to a minimal,
manageable level. Your job is not to bulldoze their resistance so you can move
ahead.
Perception Does Matter
If you move an employee's desk six inches, they may not notice or care. Yet if
the reason you moved it those six inches was to fit in another worker in an
adjacent desk, there may be high resistance to the change. It depends on whether
the original employee feels the hiring of an additional employee is a threat to
his job, or perceives the hiring as bringing in some needed assistance.
- A promotion
is usually considered a good change. However an employee who doubts their
ability to handle the new job may strongly resist the promotion. They will
give you all kinds of reasons for not wanting the promotion, just not the real
one.
- You might
expect a higher-level employee to be less concerned about being laid off,
because they have savings and investments to support them during a job search.
However, the individual may feel they are over extended and that a job search
will be long and complicated. Conversely, your concern for a low-income
employee being laid off may be unfounded if they have stashed a nest egg in
anticipation of the cut.
- Your best
salesperson may balk at taking on new, high potential account because they
have an irrational feeling that they don't dress well enough.
If you try and bulldoze this
resistance, you will fail. The employee whose desk you had to move will develop
production problems. The top worker who keeps declining the promotion may quit
rather than have to continue making up excuses for turning you down. And the top
salesperson's sales may drop to the point that you stop considering them for the
new account. Instead, you overcome the resistance by defining the change and by
getting mutual understanding.
Definition
On the front end, you need to define the change for the employee in as much
detail and as early as you can. Provide updates as things develop and become
more clear. In the case of the desk that has to be moved, tell the employee
what's going on. "We need to bring in more workers. Our sales have increased by
40% and we can't meet that demand, even with lots of overtime. To make room for
them, we'll have to rearrange things a little." You could even ask the employees
how they think the space should be rearranged. You don't have to accept their
suggestions, but it's a start toward understanding.
Definition is a two-way street. In
addition to defining the problem, you need to get the employees to define the
reasons behind their resistance.
Understanding
Understanding is also a two-way street. You want people to understand what is
changing and why. You also need to understand their reluctance.
- You have to
help your people understand. They want to know what the change will be and
when it will happen, but they also want to know why. Why is it happening now?
Why can't things stay like they have always been? Why is it happening to me?
- It is also
important that they understand what is not changing. Not only does this give
them one less thing to stress about, it also gives them an anchor, something
to hold on to as they face the winds of uncertainty and change.
- You need to
understand their specific fears. What are they concerned about? How strongly
do they feel about it? Do they perceive it as a good or a bad thing?
Manage This Issue
Don't try to rationalize things. Don't waste time wishing people were more
predictable. Instead, focus on opening and maintaining clear channels of
communication with your employees so they understand what is coming and what it
means to them. They will appreciate you for it and will be more productive both
before and after the change.
http://searchcio.techtarget.com
SearchCIO.com - USA
By Sarah Lourie, Associate Editor
September 14, 2005
Survey:
Retention HOT, BI NOT
BOSTON -- Polling some 90 IT executives
from its roster of members, the Society for Information Management (SIM)
announced some surprising preliminary results to a crowd of 600 at its annual
SIMposium event this week. The most surprising was the absence of business
intelligence (BI) -- which ranked second in 2004 -- from the list of the Top 6
Application and Technology Developments of 2005.
"It's surprising because
if you talk to people, it appears to be something that most organizations are
still focusing on. Unfortunately, surveys don't explain their results," said
Jerry Luftman, a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, who conducted
the survey for SIM.
Top application and technology developments
In addition to BI,
business process management, Web services and customer portals dropped off the
list. "I think that's a good thing [that those topics aren't priorities]. We
know how to do them. They're there; we've done them, but let's move on," Luftman
said. So what are CIOs focusing on today? Security technologies remained the No.
1 priority for CIOs, as they had for the last few years. New to the list in 2005
was enterprise resource planning (ERP), coming in second, and service-oriented
architecture (SOA), rounding out the top three. Other newcomers to the CIO's
list of priorities included mobile and wireless applications and system
integration.
Offshore outsourcing trends
Another surprising result
was the percentage of IT budgets allocated for offshore outsourcing in 2005
versus 2004. In 2004, 73% of the more than 300 respondents said they wouldn't be
allocating any money for offshore outsourcing. That number fell to 63.9% in
2005. In addition, 3.14% of IT budgets were allocated for offshore outsourcing
in 2005, but 4.22% was projected for 2006. "People are starting to engage a
little more in offshore outsourcing. They're starting to try it with some small
projects, which I think is the right thing to do," Luftman said. "I think we
should be experimenting to see where it might or might not fit. It's clearly an
indication that offshore outsourcing is on the rise."
Top IT management concerns
As for the 2005 Top 10 IT
Management Concerns, it's no surprise that business/IT alignment remained the
No. 1 issue. "That's just pervasive," Luftman said. "Everyone is looking for a
silver bullet -- the one magic answer -- and there is no one magic answer.
There's a bunch of things you have to do." Following IT/business alignment, CIOs
listed
attracting and retaining skilled IT
professionals as one of their top three concerns. The survey found
that 40.14% of 2005 IT budgets were spent on employees. That percentage is
expected to grow to 41.13% in 2006. In addition, 84% of respondents expect to
hire experienced staff over new graduates in 2006.
"We're churning. I'm
hiring someone from your company, you're hiring someone from his company and so
on," Luftman said. With 78.5% of this year's respondents admitting their staff
headcount grew or stayed the same and 83.3% forecasting similar growth in 2006,
retaining good employees is a dilemma for a lot of CIOs.
University of
Miami CIO M. Lewis Temares said the biggest mistake both CIOs
and their business counterparts make when it comes to retaining top talent is
that they're not paying attention to their people.
"There's a lot of tension
and stress with employees. They don't know where senior management is going.
They're pushing outsourcing, they're pushing costs, they're pushing total cost
of ownership. If employees are not informed, they're more nervous even if it's
bad news. Tell them the news. You have to communicate," Temares said.
More interesting findings
to note:
- 17.5% of
respondents have been in their current role for three years, 12.6% for five
years and 9% for 11 years or more.
- 42.2% of
respondents report to the CEO of the company, while 22.9% report to the CFO
and 19.3% report to the COO.
- Enablers to
alignment include senior executive support for IT and close partnerships
between IT and business.
- Inhibitors to
alignment include business communication with IT and influence of
headquarters' leadership.
Note: These findings are not final, only
preliminary. SIM is still receiving surveys and the full findings will be
presented in the spring of 2006.
13 September 2005
PersonnelToday.com -
UK
Global talent drought to hit in next five
years
Personnel Today13
September 2005 01:00This
article first appeared in Personnel Today magazine.
Subscribe online and save 20%.
Three-quarters of
organisations expect to experience a shortage of staff talent within the next
three to five years, a new global study shows.
The Talent Pulse Survey
2005 by consultancy Deloitte questioned almost 1,400 HR practitioners worldwide
and confirms that the most critical people management issues are attracting and
retaining high-calibre workers.
The study shows the
level of significance is consistent, irrespective of the size of the
organisation, with 69% citing recruitment as important and 66% concerned about
retention.
Respondents identified a
clear link between talent management and business performance. More than half
(54%) believe talent issues have an impact on the overall productivity and
efficiency of the organisation and 40% say that a lack of good people affects a
firm's ability to innovate.
Ashley Unwin, consulting
partner at Deloitte, said organisations now needed to be agile in turning this
understanding into clear people strategies that will create attractive working
environments.
"[Organisations must]
nurture talent so staff make the biggest possible contribution, and retain them
throughout their career rather than losing them to a competitor," he said.
The survey shows that firms
are more aware of the issue - almost half (46%) said demographic changes and
skills shortages had been discussed at board level and a fifth (20%) said it was
an emerging issue for the chief executive.
The survey shows most
organisations plan to change their investment priorities to attract, retain and
develop talent.
http://www.fastcompany.com
From:
Issue 94,
Page 53
May 2005
By: Alan
Deutschman
Change or
Die
All
leadership comes down to this: changing people's behavior. Why is that so damn
hard? Science offers some surprising new answers -- and ways to do better.
What if you were given
that choice? For real. What if it weren't just the hyperbolic rhetoric that
conflates corporate performance with life and death? Not the overblown
exhortations of a rabid boss, or a slick motivational speaker, or a
self-dramatizing CEO. We're talking actual life or death now. Your own life or
death. What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make
difficult and enduring changes in the way you think and act? If you didn't, your
time would end soon -- a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change
really mattered? When it mattered most?
Yes, you say? Try again.
Yes? You're
probably deluding yourself. You wouldn't change.
Don't believe it? You
want odds? Here are the odds, the scientifically studied odds: nine to one.
That's nine to one against you. How do you like those odds?
This revelation unnerved
many people in the audience last November at IBM's "Global Innovation Outlook"
conference. The company's top executives had invited the most farsighted
thinkers they knew from around the world to come together in New York and
propose solutions to some really big problems. They started with the crisis in
health care, an industry that consumes an astonishing $1.8 trillion a year in
the United States alone, or 15% of gross domestic product. A dream team of
experts took the stage, and you might have expected them to proclaim that
breathtaking advances in science and technology -- mapping the human genome and
all that -- held the long-awaited answers. That's not what they said. They said
that the root cause of the health crisis hasn't changed for decades, and the
medical establishment still couldn't figure out what to do about it.
Dr. Raphael "Ray" Levey,
founder of the Global Medical Forum, an annual summit meeting of leaders from
every constituency in the health system, told the audience, "A relatively small
percentage of the population consumes the vast majority of the health-care
budget for diseases that are very well known and by and large behavioral." That
is, they're sick because of how they choose to live their lives, not because of
environmental or genetic factors beyond their control. Continued Levey: "Even as
far back as when I was in medical school" -- he enrolled at Harvard in 1955 --
"many articles demonstrated that 80% of the health-care budget was consumed by
five behavioral issues." Levey didn't bother to name them, but you don't need an
MD to guess what he was talking about: too much smoking, drinking, eating, and
stress, and not enough exercise.
Then the knockout blow
was delivered by Dr. Edward Miller, the dean of the medical school and CEO of
the hospital at Johns Hopkins University. He turned the discussion to patients
whose heart disease is so severe that they undergo bypass surgery, a traumatic
and expensive procedure that can cost more than $100,000 if complications arise.
About 600,000 people have bypasses every year in the United States, and 1.3
million heart patients have angioplasties -- all at a total cost of around $30
billion. The procedures temporarily relieve chest pains but rarely prevent heart
attacks or prolong lives. Around half of the time, the bypass grafts clog up in
a few years; the angioplasties, in a few months. The causes of this so-called
restenosis are complex. It's sometimes a reaction to the trauma of the surgery
itself. But many patients could avoid the return of pain and the need to repeat
the surgery -- not to mention arrest the course of their disease before it kills
them -- by switching to healthier lifestyles. Yet very few do. "If you look at
people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have
not changed their lifestyle," Miller said. "And that's been studied over and
over and over again. And so we're missing some link in there. Even though they
know they have a very bad disease and they know they should change their
lifestyle, for whatever reason, they can't."
Changing the behavior of
people isn't just the biggest challenge in health care. It's the most important
challenge for businesses trying to compete in a turbulent world, says John
Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor who has studied dozens of
organizations in the midst of upheaval: "The central issue is never strategy,
structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing
the behavior of people." Those people may be called upon to respond to profound
upheavals in marketplace dynamics -- the rise of a new global competitor, say,
or a shift from a regulated to a deregulated environment -- or to a corporate
reorganization, merger, or entry into a new business. And as individuals, we may
want to change our own styles of work -- how we mentor subordinates, for
example, or how we react to criticism. Yet more often than not, we can't.
CEOs are supposedly the
prime change agents for their companies, but they're often as resistant to
change as anyone -- and as prone to backsliding. The most notorious recent
example is Michael Eisner. After he nearly died from heart problems, Eisner
finally heeded his wife's plea and brought in a high-profile number-two exec,
Michael Ovitz, to alleviate the stress of running Disney. But Eisner proved
incapable of seeing through the idea, essentially refusing to share any real
power with Ovitz from the start.
The conventional wisdom
says that crisis is a powerful motivator for change. But severe heart disease is
among the most serious of personal crises, and it doesn't motivate -- at least
not nearly enough. Nor does giving people accurate analyses and factual
information about their situations. What works? Why, in general, is change so
incredibly difficult for people? What is it about how our brains are wired that
resists change so tenaciously? Why do we fight even what we know to be in our
own vital interests?
Kotter has hit on a
crucial insight. "Behavior change happens mostly by speaking to people's
feelings," he says. "This is true even in organizations that are very focused on
analysis and quantitative measurement, even among people who think of themselves
as smart in an MBA sense. In highly successful change efforts, people find ways
to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions,
not just thought."
Unfortunately, that kind
of emotional persuasion isn't taught in business schools, and it doesn't come
naturally to the technocrats who run things -- the engineers, scientists,
lawyers, doctors, accountants, and managers who pride themselves on disciplined,
analytical thinking. There's compelling science behind the psychology of change
-- it draws on discoveries from emerging fields such as cognitive science,
linguistics, and neuroscience -- but its insights and techniques often seem
paradoxical or irrational.
Look again at the case
of heart patients. The best minds at Johns Hopkins and the Global Medical Forum
might not know how to get them to change, but someone does: Dr. Dean Ornish, a
professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and
founder of the Preventative Medicine Research Institute, in Sausalito,
California. Ornish, like Kotter, realizes the importance of going beyond the
facts. "Providing health information is important but not always sufficient," he
says. "We also need to bring in the psychological, emotional, and spiritual
dimensions that are so often ignored." Ornish published studies in leading
peer-reviewed scientific journals, showing that his holistic program, focused
around a vegetarian diet with less than 10% of the calories from fat, can
actually reverse heart disease without surgery or drugs. Still, the medical
establishment remained skeptical that people could sustain the lifestyle
changes. In 1993, Ornish persuaded Mutual of Omaha to pay for a trial.
Researchers took 333 patients with severely clogged arteries. They helped them
quit smoking and go on Ornish's diet. The patients attended twice-weekly group
support sessions led by a psychologist and took instruction in meditation,
relaxation, yoga, and aerobic exercise. The program lasted for only a year. But
after three years, the study found, 77% of the patients had stuck with their
lifestyle changes -- and safely avoided the bypass or angioplasty surgeries that
they were eligible for under their insurance coverage. And Mutual of Omaha saved
around $30,000 per patient.
Framing Change
Why does the Ornish
program succeed while the conventional approach has failed? For starters, Ornish
recasts the reasons for change. Doctors had been trying to motivate patients
mainly with the fear of death, he says, and that simply wasn't working. For a
few weeks after a heart attack, patients were scared enough to do whatever their
doctors said. But death was just too frightening to think about, so their denial
would return, and they'd go back to their old ways.
The patients lived the
way they did as a day-to-day strategy for coping with their emotional troubles.
"Telling people who are lonely and depressed that they're going to live longer
if they quit smoking or change their diet and lifestyle is not that motivating,"
Ornish says. "Who wants to live longer when you're in chronic emotional pain?"
So instead of trying to
motivate them with the "fear of dying," Ornish reframes the issue. He inspires a
new vision of the "joy of living" -- convincing them they can feel better, not
just live longer. That means enjoying the things that make daily life
pleasurable, like making love or even taking long walks without the pain caused
by their disease. "Joy is a more powerful motivator than fear," he says.
Pioneering research in
cognitive science and linguistics has pointed to the paramount importance of
framing. George Lakoff, a professor of those two disciplines at the University
of California at Berkeley, defines frames as the "mental structures that shape
the way we see the world." Lakoff says that frames are part of the "cognitive
unconscious," but the way we know what our frames are, or evoke new ones,
springs from language. For example, we typically think of a company as being
like an army -- everyone has a rank and a codified role in a hierarchical chain
of command with orders coming down from high to low. Of course, that's only one
way of organizing a group effort. If we had the frame of the company as a family
or a commune, people would know very different ways of working together.
The big challenge in
trying to change how people think is that their minds rely on frames, not facts.
"Neuroscience tells us that each of the concepts we have -- the long-term
concepts that structure how we think -- is instantiated in the synapses of the
brain," Lakoff says. "Concepts are not things that can be changed just by
someone telling us a fact. We may be presented with facts, but for us to make
sense of them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain.
Otherwise, facts go in and then they go right back out. They are not heard, or
they are not accepted as facts, or they mystify us: Why would anyone have said
that? Then we label the fact as irrational, crazy, or stupid." Lakoff says
that's one reason why political conservatives and liberals each think that the
other side is nuts. They don't understand each other because their brains are
working within different frames.
The frame that dominates
our thinking about how work should be organized -- the military chain-of-command
model -- is extremely hard to break. When new employees start at W.L. Gore &
Associates, the maker of Gore-Tex fabrics, they often refuse to believe that the
company doesn't have a hierarchy with job titles and bosses. It just doesn't fit
their frame. They can't accept it. It usually takes at least several months for
new hires to begin to understand Gore's reframed notion of the workplace, which
relies on self-directed employees making their own choices about joining one
another in egalitarian small teams.
Getting people to
exchange one frame for another is tough even when you're working one-on-one, but
it's especially hard to do for large groups of people. Howard Gardner, a
cognitive scientist, MacArthur Fellow "genius" award winner, and professor at
Harvard's Graduate School of Education, has looked at what works most
effectively for heads of state and corporate CEOs. "When one is addressing a
diverse or heterogeneous audience," he says, "the story must be simple, easy to
identify with, emotionally resonant, and evocative of positive experiences."
In Louis V. Gerstner
Jr.'s successful turnaround of IBM in the 1990s, he learned the surprising
importance of this kind of emotional persuasion. When he took over as CEO,
Gerstner was fixated on what had worked for him throughout his career as a
McKinsey & Co. consultant: coolheaded analysis and strategy. He thought he could
revive the company through maneuvers such as selling assets and cutting costs.
He quickly found that those tools weren't nearly enough. He needed to transform
the entrenched corporate culture, which had become hidebound and overly
bureaucratic. That meant changing the attitudes and behaviors of hundreds of
thousands of employees. In his memoir, Gerstner writes that he realized he
needed to make a powerful emotional appeal to them, to "shake them out of their
depressed stupor, remind them of who they were -- you're IBM, damn it!" Rather
than sitting in a corner office negotiating deals and analyzing spreadsheets, he
needed to convey passion through thousands of hours of personal appearances.
Gerstner, who's often brittle and imperious in private, nonetheless responded
admirably to the challenge. He proved to be an engaging and emotional public
speaker when he took his campaign to his huge workforce.
Steve Jobs's turnaround
at Apple shows the impact of reframing and telling a new narrative that's
simple, positive, and emotional. When he returned to the company after a long
exile, he recast its image among employees and customers alike from a
marginalized player vanquished in the battle for market share to the home of a
small but enviable elite: the creative innovators who dared to "Think
different."
When leaders are
addressing a small group of people who have a similar mind-set and shared
values, the reframed message can be more nuanced and complex, Harvard's Gardner
says. But it still needs to be positive, inspiring, and emotionally resonant. A
good example is how chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. rescued
The New York Times
from crisis. Former editor Howell Raines had alienated much of the newsroom's
staff, undermining its communal spirit with a new culture of favoritism. Raines
fell when a star reporter he had shielded from criticism was exposed for
fabricating news stories. The scandal threatened the famed paper's credibility.
Gardner says that Sulzberger successfully reframed the narrative this way: We
are a great newspaper. We temporarily went astray and risked sacrificing the
community spirit that made this an outstanding place to work. We can retain our
excellence and regain our sense of community by admitting our errors, making
sure that they don't happen again, and being a more transparent and
self-reflecting organization. To achieve these goals, Sulzberger replaced Raines
with a new top editor, Bill Keller -- a respected veteran who reflected the lost
communal culture -- and he appointed a "public editor" to critique the paper in
an unedited column. Now, Gardner says, "the Times is a much happier place and
the news coverage and journalistic empire are in reasonable shape."
Radical Change
Reframing alone isn't
enough, of course. That's where Dr. Ornish's other astonishing insight comes in.
Paradoxically, he found that radical, sweeping, comprehensive changes are often
easier for people than small, incremental ones. For example, he says that people
who make moderate changes in their diets get the worst of both worlds: They feel
deprived and hungry because they aren't eating everything they want, but they
aren't making big enough changes to quickly see an improvement in how they feel,
or in measurements such as weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol. But the
heart patients who went on Ornish's tough, radical program saw quick, dramatic
results, reporting a 91% decrease in frequency of chest pain in the first month.
"These rapid improvements are a powerful motivator," he says. "When people who
have had so much chest pain that they can't work, or make love, or even walk
across the street without intense suffering find that they are able to do all of
those things without pain in only a few weeks, then they often say, 'These are
choices worth making.' "
While it's astonishing
that most patients in Ornish's demanding program stick with it, studies show
that two-thirds of patients who are prescribed statin drugs (which are highly
effective at cutting cholesterol) stop taking them within one year. What could
possibly be a smaller or easier lifestyle change than popping a pill every day?
But Ornish says patients stop taking the drug because it doesn't actually make
them feel any better. It doesn't deal with causes of high cholesterol, such as
obesity, that make people feel unhealthy. The paradox holds that big changes are
easier than small ones.
Research shows that this
idea applies to the business realm as well. Bain & Co., the management
consulting firm, studied 21 recent corporate transformations and found that most
were "substantially completed" in only two years or less while none took more
than three years. The means were drastic: In almost every case, the CEOs fired
most of the top management. Almost always, the companies enjoyed quick, tangible
results, and their stock prices rose 250% a year on average as they revived.
IBM's turnaround hinged
on a radical shift in focus from selling computer hardware to providing
"services," which meant helping customers build and run their
information-technology operations. This required a momentous cultural switch --
IBMers would have to recommend that a client buy from competitors such as
Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft when it was in the client's interest. But the
radical shift worked: Services have grown into IBM's core business and the key
to its success.
Of course, radical
change often isn't possible in business situations. Still, it's always important
to identify, achieve, and celebrate some quick, positive results for the vital
emotional lifts that they provide. Harvard's Kotter believes in the importance
of "short-term wins" for companies, meaning "victories that nourish faith in the
change effort, emotionally reward the hard workers, keep the critics at bay, and
build momentum. Without sufficient wins that are visible, timely, unambiguous,
and meaningful to others, change efforts invariably run into serious problems."
Supporting Change
Even when leaders have
reframed the issues brilliantly, it's still vital to give people the
multifaceted support they need. That's a big reason why 90% of heart patients
can't change their lifestyles but 77% of Ornish's patients could -- because he
buttressed them with weekly support groups with other patients, as well as
attention from dieticians, psychologists, nurses, and yoga and meditation
instructors.
Xerox's executives
learned this lesson well. Four years ago, when the company was in crisis, they
came up with a new vision that required salespeople to change the way they had
always worked. "Their whole careers, salespeople had done one thing," says James
Firestone, president of Xerox North America, who leads a sales force of 5,400.
"They would knock on doors, look for copiers, see how old they were, and sell a
refresh. They knew how to do that." The salespeople had such predictable
routines that they could plan their days, weeks, even years. It was comforting.
But it just wasn't succeeding any longer.
Under the new strategy,
the salespeople were supposed to really engage with customers so they could
understand the complexities of how their offices operated and find opportunities
to sell other products, such as scanners and printers. Maybe they would find
that the customer actually needed fewer machines that could do more than the old
ones had. Learning about the client's needs meant that the sales reps had to
take a lot more time and talk to more people about broader issues. It undermined
the cozy predictability of their routines. The reps became anxious, Firestone
recalls. "They'd say, 'I know how to sell and make a living the old way, but not
the new way.' "
Their anxiety was
compounded by the fact that Xerox lagged in giving them the support they needed.
It often took a couple of months before the salespeople received their scheduled
training in the new approach. And it took two years before the company changed
its incentive pay system to fit better with the new model, in which the reps had
to invest a lot more time and effort before they signed deals. Eventually,
though, the change effort, by expanding the sales focus to a larger range of
products, helped Xerox avoid bankruptcy and return to profitability. "People
need a sense of confidence that the processes will be aligned internally,"
Firestone says. "For large companies, this is where change usually fails." Even
if change starts at the top, it can easily die somewhere in the middle. That's
why Xerox now holds "alignment workshops" that ask middle managers -- the people
who make processes work -- to outline the ways its systems could inhibit its
agendas for change.
This Is Your Brain on Change
Are most of us like the
fearful copier salespeople who dread disruption to their routines? Neuroscience,
a field that has exploded with insight, has a lot more to say about changing
people's behavior -- and its findings are guardedly optimistic. Scientists used
to believe that the brain became "hardwired" early in life and couldn't change
later on. Now researchers such as Dr. Michael Merzenich, a professor at the
University of California at San Francisco, say that the brain's ability to
change -- its "plasticity" -- is lifelong. If we can change, then why don't we?
Merzenich has perspective on the issue since he's not only a leading
neuroscientist but also an entrepreneur, the founder of two Bay Area startups.
Both use PC software to train people to overcome mental disabilities or
diseases: Scientific Learning Corp. focuses on children who have trouble
learning to read, and Posit Science Corp. is working on ways to prevent, stop,
or reverse cognitive decline in older adults.
Merzenich starts by
talking about rats. You can train a rat to have a new skill. The rat solves a
puzzle, and you give it a food reward. After 100 times, the rat can solve the
puzzle flawlessly. After 200 times, it can remember how to solve it for nearly
its lifetime. The rat has developed a habit. It can perform the task
automatically because its brain has changed. Similarly, a person has thousands
of habits -- such as how to use a pen -- that drive lasting changes in the
brain. For highly trained specialists, such as professional musicians, the
changes actually show up on MRI scans. Flute players, for instance, have
especially large representations in their brains in the areas that control the
fingers, tongue, and lips, Merzenich says. "They've distorted their brains."
Businesspeople, like
flutists, are highly trained specialists, and they've distorted their brains,
too. An older executive "has powers that a young person walking in the door
doesn't have," says Merzenich. He has lots of specialized skills and abilities.
A specialist is a hard thing to create, and is valuable for a corporation,
obviously, but specialization also instills an inherent "rigidity." The
cumulative weight of experience makes it harder to change.
How, then, to overcome
these factors? Merzenich says the key is keeping up the brain's machinery for
learning. "When you're young, almost everything you do is behavior-based
learning -- it's an incredibly powerful, plastic period," he says. "What happens
that becomes stultifying is you stop learning and you stop the machinery, so it
starts dying." Unless you work on it, brain fitness often begins declining at
around age 30 for men, a bit later for women. "People mistake being active for
continuous learning," Merzenich says. "The machinery is only activated by
learning. People think they're leading an interesting life when they haven't
learned anything in 20 or 30 years. My suggestion is learn Spanish or the oboe."
Meanwhile, the leaders
of a company need "a business strategy for continuous mental rejuvenation and
new learning," he says. Posit Science has a "fifth-day strategy," meaning that
everyone spends one day a week working in a different discipline. Software
engineers try their hand at marketing. Designers get involved in business
functions. "Everyone needs a new project instead of always being in a bin,"
Merzenich says. "A fifth-day strategy doesn't sacrifice your core ability but
keeps you rejuvenated. In a company, you have to worry about rejuvenation at
every level. So ideally you deliberately construct new challenges. For every
individual, you need complex new learning. Innovation comes about when people
are enabled to use their full brains and intelligence instead of being put in
boxes and controlled."
What happens if you
don't work at mental rejuvenation? Merzenich says that people who live to 85
have a 50-50 chance of being senile. While the issue for heart patients is
"change or die," the issue for everyone is "change or lose your mind." Mastering
the ability to change isn't just a crucial strategy for business. It's a
necessity for health. And it's possibly the one thing that's most worth
learning.
By WALLACE
IMMEN
May 18, 2005
A
poker ace's guide to play a winning career hand
Andrew Goetsch, Cryptologic's new vice-president of poker, shares the lessons
he's learned from the game.
After a hard day at the office, Andrew Goetsch likes nothing
better than to do battle against wily competitors at a poker table. While
his wife considers the game nothing more than "gambling and luck," he says he's
found being a skilled poker player is the best training you can have for the
competitive life of the executive suite.
"I've found poker is the same as strategic business
negotiation. It teaches you to continually analyze your position and assess your
opponents," says Mr. Goetsch, who has finished "in the money" in more than 200
poker tournaments and played in nine World Poker Tours, finishing 83rd out of
452 entrants in the most recent championship in April.
He says
his poker skills have served him well over his 20-year career. In fact, Mr.
Goetsch, has just been named vice-president of poker by the Toronto-based gaming
software company CryptoLogic Inc., where he will use his experience to help
develop on-line tournaments the company licences worldwide.
Here's
his advice on applying the lessons of a winning hand to a winning career:
Read
your competition Whenever Mr. Goetsch sits down to a poker table or to make a
deal, he takes time to assess the competitive styles of his fellow players.
"I
plan to fold for the first few hands, unless I get dealt aces and kings, and
just observe how the rest of them react," he says. This gives him insights into
how they'll behave when the chips are down.
He's
found that people tend to fall into one of four categories that he relates to
animal behaviours:
-
Alligators: These are very aggressive, ego-driven opponents who won't back
off, often try to press their luck with marginal hands or ideas and tend to
become flamboyant deal-makers.
"They can be effective and get to lofty places quickly. However, alligators
tend to risk it all at certain key points without a backup plan," which can
wipe them out, Mr. Goetsch says.
You
can beat them if you play offensively with a strong hand and don't get into an
ego contest.
-
Elephants: This type of player or manager tends to be passive and tight, and
is all too common among managers of mature companies.
"They simply do their jobs but are not emboldened with the burning flame to
strive to succeed above and beyond through creative means," he says. "Because
poker and life are not dealt with a consistently favourable deck, the elephant
is destined to mediocrity."
Even
when they do have a powerful hand, elephants tend to doubt themselves and not
to raise the stakes high enough. The way to win against them is to stay
confident.
-
Chameleons: They readily adapt their approach to changing situations. But
that's quite difficult because being able to shift strategies rapidly on the
fly is not instinctive behaviour and needs to be learned and consciously
worked on, Mr. Goetsch says.
Adept
chameleons are formidable opponents because you can't predict their next move
or plan a long-term defence against them.
-
Jackals: These are wild cards who will play almost anything and use bluster
and uncertainty to scare off the competition. Their strategy depends on
aggressiveness, intimidation and luck, and jackals tend to burn out quickly.
Jackals can get lucky several times, but in the long run, if they keep
betting, no matter what their cards, they will go broke, Mr. Goetsch says. The
best defence is not to follow their example.
Use
your position to advantage
In
poker, your betting position is important. Being the "button," or dealer, means
you are the last person to have to respond as the bets go around the table.
That's powerful, because you don't have to commit yourself until you've seen how
everyone else has played.
At
work, too, it's good strategy to not to reveal yourself straight off.
Positioning to be the last one to react gives you power "because those who come
before you don't know what you are capable of," Mr. Goetsch says.
Don't
play by the book
"I read
the popular books on poker and business strategy not because I'm going to play
that way but because I know the people I am playing against are reading them and
are likely to play that way," Mr. Goetsch says.
Read
up on what people are saying about how to get ahead in your career, then gain an
advantage by coming in with a twist the competition won't expect, he advises.
Don't
be predictable
Mr.
Goetsch says he works hard at being a chameleon because being unpredictable
keeps competitors off balance. If you become known for using the same approach
throughout your career, people will learn to work around you. But there are
times when he becomes "positively alligator-like." That's when he realizes he
has "the nuts -- a hand so strong it is virtually assured of winning, or a deal
that will guarantee him a promotion. Then he becomes unwavering in pursuit of
his goal.
Know
when to fold 'em
Most of
the time, in poker or at work, outcomes aren't that clear, and Mr. Goetsch says
it's important to not waste time and effort on marginal efforts.
When
he looks at tournaments in which he has come out ahead over the years, "I find
often I have only played between 13 and 15 per cent of the hands before the
flop. That means I fold at 85 to 87 per cent of the opportunities I am given."
In his
career as well, he has chosen to sit it out about the same percentage of
opportunities. He finds he is better off devoting full attention to a few big
opportunities than over-extending himself on too many smaller ones.
And in
all of his jobs, he's always avoided going "all in" -- betting it all on one
venture or client. That's the important difference between the game of poker and
the game of work, he concludes.
In
poker tournaments, you must take ultimate risks to win, but if you lose it all
one day, there is always another game the next.
In your
career, though, it's a lot harder to get back in the game if you bet it all and
fail, Mr. Goetsch says. "But if you do the appropriate planning, you should
never have to."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com
By HARVEY
SCHACHTER
May 18, 2005
 Command
and control mentality hurts living organizations
Review of
Finding Our Way: Leadership For An Uncertain Time
By Margaret
Wheatley
We
carry within us a mental image of organizations as machines. Someone must be in
command, sending out orders that the various cogs of the machine respond to.
When everything is synchronized well -- in alignment, as the organizational
gurus preach -- the machine works efficiently.
Margaret Wheatley begs to differ. The acclaimed author of Leadership and The
New Society likes to talk about how, in the first Gulf War, the tanks and
armoured vehicles could travel at 50 miles an hour. But after speeding across
the desert, they were forced to wait because they were supposed to be
accompanied by another vehicle, literally called Command and Control, that could
move only at 20 miles an hour.
Command
and control holds us back. She sees organizations ideally as living systems,
without command and control, in which people are free to act on their own
accord, experimenting, building connections and responding to their environment
efficiently and effectively.
"Self-organizing systems have the capacity to create for themselves the aspects
of organization that we thought leaders had to provide. Self-organizing systems
create structures and pathways, networks of communication, values and meaning,
behaviour and norms," she writes in Finding Our Way: Leadership For an
Uncertain Time, a collection of recent writing.
We have
known for more than half a century that self-managed teams are far more
productive than any other form of organizing. A clear correlation exists between
participation and productivity.
Studies, she points out, have shown that productivity gains in truly
self-managed work environments are at least 35 per cent higher than in
traditionally managed organizations.
"Leaders consistently have chosen power over productivity. They would rather be
in control than have the organization work at optimal efficiency," she says.
The
latest excuse is that we live in tumultuous, risky times. Somebody must be in
control, to protect our organizations - and the people within them -- from harm.
But
again, she begs to differ. "Reflective leaders, including those in the military,
have learned that the higher the risk, the more we need everyone's commitment
and intelligence. In holding onto power and refusing to distribute decision
making, leaders have created unwieldy, Byzantine systems that only increase risk
and irresponsibility. We never effectively control people or situations with
these systems, we only succeed in preventing intelligent work."
For
leaders, distributing power promises not only greater productivity but also
release from intolerable pressure. Under the machine view of management, the
leader is assumed to be overseeing a group of lifeless, empty automatons who are
waiting to be filled with vision, direction and intelligence. The leader is
responsible for providing mission and values, using incentives and coercion to
pump energy into the group, and overseeing day-to-day operations to ensure they
run smoothly.
Since
machines are built to handle repetitive functions, she notes that, under our
machine way of thinking, creativity is essentially unwanted because it is
surprising and uncontrollable. "Guaranteed levels of performance are preferable
to surprising breakthroughs. In our machine-like organizations, we try to
extinguish individuality in order to reach our goal of compliance. We trade
uniqueness for control, and barter our humanness for petty performance
measures."
While
we hear much moaning these days about employees not being sufficiently willing
to change, she says it is machines that have trouble adjusting to change, while
living systems constantly do so. "It is possible to create organizations rich in
people who are capable of adapting as needed, who are alert to changes and their
environment, who are able to innovate strategically."
That
starts with meaning, which motivates people. Most people want their work to
serve a greater good, to help other people, and leaders must create time for
people to remember why they are doing their work. Relationships are also vital
since they keep a living system operating.
Those
themes are repeated, and probed, in the various essays. It's a thought-provoking
critique, without a machine-like guidebook.
http://www.kuenselonline.com
Kuensel, Buhutan's
National Newspaper – Bhutan
By Kinley Dorji
May 11, 2005
Change management
 With
Bhutan at an exciting cross-roads, poised for historic
reform, the people would be challenged to manage unprecedented change, according
to the Chief Justice, Lyonpo Sonam Tobgye. To achieve this the country faced the
“daunting challenge of developing its most precious resource, the people of
Bhutan”. Addressing a group of about 50 senior executives of the civil
service who are attending a three-day workshop on change management in Thimphu,
the chief justice said that the draft Constitution of Bhutan envisioned “an
independent and apolitical civil service that will discharge its public duties
in an efficient, transparent, and accountable manner to render professional
service, guided by the highest standards of ethics and integrity to promote good
governance and social justice...”
“You are the backbone and lifeblood of a compact and efficient civil service
which will be instrumental in achieving the visions of His Majesty the King, the
goals of the nation, and the aspirations of the Bhutanese people,” he said,
opening the workshop on May 9. “It is your direct responsibility to enhance
professionalism in the civil service, to facilitate decentralisation, to instill
ethical and moral values in our civil servants, and to help achieve Gross
National Happiness.” The workshop is organised by the Royal Civil Service
Commission and Singapore International Foundation, a significant step taken
after the two organisations signed an MOU last February to strengthen
cooperation and people to people contacts between the two countries.
Conducted by the Executive Director of SIF, Dr. Tan Tay Keong, and four senior
professors from the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of
Public Policy and its business school, the theme of the workshop is “change
management”, focusing on governance and reform. Dr. Tan Tay Keong described the
workshop as a “milestone in capacity building”. He said that it was an
opportunity for Bhutanese officials to “reflect on issues and challenges
confronting them and to learn about ideas, theories, successes and failures in
change management in Singapore and around the world with the four professors
coming from a number of different countries. “It will not provide silver
bullets for long-standing problems,” he said. “It will be an opportunity to
reflect and clarify problems and purposes through free and open discussions.”
The sessions will cover overall governance and reform, leadership of public
organisations, human resource management, corruption and integrity, new trends
in development thinking, and the challenges of decentralisation. According
to the RCSC secretary, Dasho Bap Kesang, it was with His Majesty the King’s
’farsightedness to envision the future and unparalleled ingenuity that Bhutan
had proactively anticipated and responded to the changing forces. With the
coming of the Constitution the public administration system and the civil
service could no longer be complacent to change management, he added. Present
and future demands would require civil service executives and managers to be
creative, decisive, efficient and fully committed in managing change. He
said he hoped that senior civil servants would develop a better understanding on
the need for change, understand the logic of the constructive change process,
and update information on the reform programmes initiated or planned.
“Today the rules of change management have changed,” he said. “Forces driving
change, be it globalisation, technological advances, or political, social, and
economic market changes are more powerful.”
http://www.onrec.com
Online Recruitment - UK
May 11, 2005
Employers must face up
to the challenges of managing diversity
Ignoring diversity can reduce productivity and performance, but
badly managed efforts to introduce diversity run the risk of creating conflict
and doing just as much to undermine business performance. Managers need to work
to ensure diversity drives inclusiveness and cooperation, and is about more than
just box ticking and employment quotas, instead diversity focuses on changing
working cultures and embracing difference, according to a new report from the
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
Dianah Worman, CIPD Diversity Adviser, says, “A diverse workforce bringing
different people together, with different views, ideas experiences and
perspectives can bring real benefits for business performance. But managed
badly, efforts to improve diversity can have the opposite effect – creating
conflict and tension in the workplace.” According to the report, Managing
diversity: linking theory and practice to business performance, the benefits of
a diverse workforce include:
-
Customer focus – matching internal employee diversity to population diversity
can provide performance benefits which enhance awareness of consumer needs
-
Business process – recruiting diverse talent will help inject new ideas and
challenge the organisational mindsets and ways of doing things that can hinder
change and organisational progress.
-
Innovation – the flexibility, creativity and ability to innovate are enhanced
by the existence of dissimilar mindsets (constructive conflict supports ‘out
of the box’ thinking).
-
Learning – employers have more choice from a greater skills base, improved
employee satisfaction, reduced internal disputes, greater workplace harmony,
improved retention and more effective and fairer promotion of talent.
Knowledge is retained in the business and shared more effectively.
Managing diversity is about achieving a balance between different forces and
challenges therefore employers should also consider the areas that prevent
diversity generating benefits to the organisation. These include the
following:
-
Ensure diversity is not
blocked by rigid systems or regulations
-
Do not adopt the just in time approach – this will allow little opportunity to
change team structures without opposing existing structures.
-
Ensure diversity talent is not cloned into the existing culture
Debate continues over whether or not there is a business case for diversity
despite the huge amounts of anecdotal evidence indicating the benefits.
Measurement will enable employers to move forward and help them understand
what characteristics their employees possess. The new CIPD report suggests
using a diversity-balanced scorecard as one form of measurement – it looks at
both the positive and negative impact of diversity, as a model for measuring
the success of diversity within the workforce. CIPD research suggests that
measuring the contribution employees make to a business significantly improves
management decision-making.
Dianah Worman, CIPD Diversity Adviser, says, “Measuring diversity will help
employers to gain a genuine understanding of their staff, enabling them to
understand the problems diversity can trigger, and look at ways to prevent
problems from occurring. Measurement will allow employers to make full use of
their assets and motivating them to apply their abilities in the interest of
the business.”
The Globe and Mail
newspaper
By WALLACE
IMMEN
May 11, 2005
HR
staff have trouble building talent, study finds
A majority of
human resources officers say they have difficulty identifying and developing
skills and talents organizations need to remain competitive, according to a
worldwide poll.
The
survey of 300 multi-national companies, including 12 based in Canada, found
fewer than half of the chief HR officers could confirm that their company was
adequately equipped to respond to the chief executive officer's growth
priorities. "We have become too focused on recruiting and compensation but are
not putting emphasis on recognizing and building talent from within," says
Teresa Lister, Ottawa-based partner for Canada of IBM Business Consulting
Services, which did the Global Human Capital study.
IT Manager's Journal - Fremont,CA,USA
www.itmanagersjournal.com
February 07, 2005
by: Ian Palmer
Why Change Management
Shouldn't Leave People Out
Employers pushing for organizational changes without first considering the
importance of employee buy-in should think about the possible consequences:
Replacing workers can cost from 50 percent to 200 percent of their annual
salaries, an employee retention expert told ITMJ.
According to Roger Herman, co-author of
"Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People," factors such as the
improving economic environment and an increasing number of unsatisfied workers
could coalesce to produce conditions favorable to running toward greener
pastures. This, in turn, could prove disastrous to employers hoping to retain
the best and the brightest, because employees, who for years may have felt
trapped, will be able to pick up and leave.
Get
everybody involved from the outset
Commenting on a report by Bridgewater, N.J.-based
people3, a Gartner company, suggesting that through this year 75 percent of
IT companies contemplating widespread changes will fail to properly consider
their organizational ability and willingness to adapt, Herman said one way to
win support from employees is to get them involved from the onset.
"We have an expression: People support what they help to create," said Herman,
CEO of
The Herman Group, a firm in Greensboro, N.C. that concentrates on workforce
and workplace issues. "If they're not involved in the process, they don't have
any invested interest in it. Give people the opportunity to be as involved as
they want to be."
As the economy roars back to life, and as organizations switch from
cost-reduction and cost-containment modes to revenue-growth and
profitability-growth modes, IT businesses will face serious decisions about
whether or not to spearhead organizational adjustments, the people3 report
notes. Adequately dealing with these issues will involve addressing not only
technologies and budgets but also companies' most important assets -- people.
"If people are not treated well, their attitude is, 'Why should I support what
the company is doing?' Studies show that between 30 and 40 percent of today's
employees expect to change jobs in the next six to eight months," said Herman.
So employers had better not forget the people aspect of organizational changes
if they want to retain the workers they need to remain competitive.
Reforms
need to be pursued logically
Understanding how employees are likely to respond to changes is key if
organizations are to successfully implement the adjustments needed, according to
the people3 report, entitled "Leading IT Organization Change: Moving Beyond
Change Management. Enterprises." According to the study, managers should ensure
that reforms are carefully planned and are pursued logically so that personnel
and leadership can see the benefits at the various phases.
"Before starting, you need to understand why it's needed, what you want to
accomplish," said Diane Berry, managing vice president for people3/Gartner. "One
of the competencies of leaders is determination. So often you'll have someone
who'll lead an organization through change, and once they hit a hurdle, things
start to fall apart."
Businesses should consider rationales, objectives, processes, obstacles,
opportunities, and success measurements before moving ahead, she stressed.
Create
buy-in -- don't force it
"Create buy-in rather than forcing it on them," said Berry. She also mentioned
that communication is the cornerstone to any successful change initiatives. "You
can to some extent force people to change, but is it successful?"
It might not be a good thing to force changes upon employees, said Bill Crane,
vice president of engineering at
Proofpoint in Cupertino, Calif., but other problems could arise if employers
are forced to wait while staff members travel through the valleys of indecision.
"IT leaders or CIOs need to look at the people impact," said Crane, adding that
firms still have to weigh the benefits of employee buy-in against the need to
implement changes on schedule and on budget. "As soon as you come to people
change, that's where the art comes in."
http://www.expertclick.com
NewsReleaseWire.com (press release) -
USA
Sylvania,
OH
April 21, 2005
Change
Management Theory – Vital Knowledge for All Types of
Organizations
Most businesses
recognize that they cannot expect to operate the same way tomorrow as they did
yesterday, so change management is a hot topic in today’s business world. Change
management requires that businesses scan the horizon for change and alter their
course accordingly. Faced with slumping vehicle sales, for instance, General
Motors recently announced a major change – a restructuring with CEO Rick Wagoner
taking direct responsibility for North American operations. Such a major change
in the firm’s operations must be carefully managed to maximize its benefits.
And businesses like GM are not alone. All types of organizations – for-profit
and non-profit, privately held and publicly traded, and government agencies –
face the daunting challenge of effectively managing change in the tumultuous
world of the 21st century. Take schools, for instance. A host of changes face
K-12 educational institutions – changes in family structure, children’s eating
habits, technology and learning theory, to name just a few.
“When it comes to change, the smallest local non-profit agency or family
business is really no different than a Fortune 500 company. All types of
organizations must learn how to effectively – and proactively – manage change,”
says Kevin Joyce, an organizational and change management consultant and
principal of The Quantum Group, LLC. “And empowerment, communication and
accountability, as well as effective leadership, are among the key elements of
any successful change process,” he adds.
Managing change is not a task that leaders can afford to delegate. John Adams of
the Saybrook Institute says that the leader of a successful change initiative is
vocal, visible, consistent and persistent. Leaders must not only sponsor planned
change, they must roll up their sleeves and help make the desired change happen
– and they must do so publicly and for as long as it takes to achieve the
desired results. Otherwise, complacency will set in and the planned change
effort is likely to fail.
Effective leadership must be carefully balanced with empowerment, meaning that a
representative cross-section of all stakeholders must be actively involved in
planning and implementing the change. To use education as an example again,
stakeholder groups who might participate in a change effort include
administrators, teachers, staff, parents and students. Engaging everyone in the
change process enhances the likelihood of success in two ways. First,
empowerment results in broach support for the change process – people will
support a plan which they had a role in creating. Second, diversity of
perspective is proven to increase a group’s ability to generate more good ideas
and to solve problems.
Regular communication reduces the anxiety that inevitably accompanies change.
Leaders must convey a compelling reason to change, as well as the plan of action
and regular reports on progress. To be most effective, communication must take
place through every available means. A business that has an employee newsletter,
board meetings, an intranet, and employee town hall gatherings is well-advised
to use all of these avenues, and more, if other channels exist.
Goal-setting and assignment of responsibility result in the accountability that
assures the desired change will occur. Goal-setting is one of the bedrock
principles of human motivation. As baseball Hall of Famer and “philosopher” Yogi
Berra once said, "If you don't know where you're going, you might not get
there." SMART goals – goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant
and time-based with specific deadlines – are most effective. Assignment of
responsibility ensures that an individual or group is held accountable for goal
achievement.
“Change is all around us,” says Joyce. “So leaders of today’s organizations have
only two choices: Be passive and allow change happen to their organization. Or
proactively plan for their future success. The most effective leaders are agents
of change. They are adaptable and know how to proactively manage change.”
Times On Line UK
www.timesonline.co.uk
February
03, 2005
Lost in Transition
In a
world where things move fast and organisations have to adapt or die, the process
of managing change is usually a stressful and difficult one. So how best to deal
with redundancy-fearing and disgruntled staff reeling from management-structure
upheaval; and how to make them feel better about thinking that everything they
used to know was wrong?
1. Ensure that there is a
desire for change.
There must be a strong commitment from senior management. Ask yourself: “Is the
urgency real?” You will need to convince everyone in the organisation with
missionary zeal.
2. Have a clear, shared
vision.
Obviously, not of “I have a dream” quality, but one with purpose and
adaptability. According to the UK’s Government Office for the South West: “For
change to be effective, it needs to be implemented at all levels; embedded in
the culture of the organisation.”
3. Plan for the lo |
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