The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management

Kathryn Zukof

Description

Change isn’t going anywhere. Learn how to manage it.

We live in a wild world of volatility, unpredictability, chaos, and ambiguity, with change seemingly as the only constant. Change can be difficult. It often induces resistance, panic, and fatigue. And, as you may expect or have experienced first-hand, many organizations aren’t handling change all that well, with many efforts resulting in failure. What you may not realize, however, is that some workplace change initiatives are stunning successes, rolling out smoothly and more easily embraced. Why do some change initiatives fail while others succeed? How can organizations and employees handle change better?

In The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management, Kathryn Zukof offers practices and approaches to help you and your organization roll out, receive, and manage change effectively. Namely, Zukoff shows that you need to manage the process (or the “hard”) side and the people (or the “soft”) side of change and find the sweet spot between the two. She demonstrates that when you integrate both sides, you and your organization can make change less of a hit-or-miss affair. Successful change management means deploying sound project management techniques that increase the odds of achieving the outcomes of your change initiative. It also means helping employees understand the need and vision for change, so they feel less threatened by it and become excited and energized by what’s ahead.

To deliver best results, you need to:

Define the change and how to get there—with project charters and plans.

Involve the right people in the right ways—from dedicated change teams to affected stakeholders.

Build support, understanding, and awareness—with communication, training, and resistance management plans.

Assess progress and adjust along the way—through action reviews and steps to tackle thorny issues.

Capturing the inherently messy nature of workplace change—from technology implementations, mergers and acquisitions, and business transformations to office relocations and more—this book offers tangible insights to help you and your organization tackle change challenges. Follow the book’s tools and practices to lessen the messy and objectionable parts of change and actively give your change initiatives the best chance for positive outcomes.

Sujets

• Gestion de projets
• Gestion de projet
• Organizational Development
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Economics
• Business
• Gestion d'équipe

Informations

• Publié par: Association for Talent Development
• Date de parution: 23 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781950496884
• Langue: English

Extrait

© 2021 ASTD DBA the Association for Talent Development (ATD)
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
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ATD Press is an internationally renowned source of insightful and practical information on talent development, training, and professional development.
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Ordering information: Books published by ATD Press can be purchased by visiting ATD’s website at td.org/books or by calling 800.628.2783 or 703.683.8100.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020951580
ISBN-10: 1-95049-687-2 ISBN-13: 978-1-95049-687-7 e-ISBN: 978-1-95049-688-4
ATD Press Editorial Staff Director: Sarah Halgas Manager: Melissa Jones Community of Practice Manager, Change Management: Lisa Spinelli Developmental Editor: Jack Harlow Production Editor: Hannah Sternberg Text Design: Shirley E.M. Raybuck Cover Design: Rose Richey
Printed by BR Printers, San Jose, CA
For Max and Will
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Challenge of Change Management
Section 1. Defining What’s Changing and the Path to Get There
Chapter 2. The DBZ Applicant Tracking System Case
Chapter 3. Determining What’s Changing
Chapter 4. Creating the Path
Section 2. Involving the Right People in the Right Way
Chapter 5. The JCo Acquisition Case
Chapter 6. Leading and Managing the Change
Chapter 7. Generating Advocacy on the Ground
Chapter 8. Listening to Opposing Views
Chapter 9. Accounting for Key Stakeholders
Chapter 10. Designating Roles, Responsibilities, and Authority
Section 3. Building Awareness, Understanding, and Support
Chapter 11. The PCo Business Transformation Case
Chapter 12. Communicating About Change
Chapter 13. Developing Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Needed to Support the Change
Chapter 14. Anticipating and Addressing Resistance
Section 4. Assessing Progress and Making Adjustments
Chapter 15. The TCW Relocation Case
Chapter 16. Learning From Successes and Mistakes
Chapter 17. Dealing With Thorny Issues
Chapter 18. And Then Everything Changed
Acknowledgments
Appendix
References
Index
About the Author
Introduction
It’s quite a predicament, isn’t it? At work, and maybe even in our personal lives, we hear that change is the only constant. We live in a wild, wild world, characterized by volatility, unpredictability, chaos, and ambiguity. To adapt to this ever-changing environment, our organizations introduce even more change. We implement new technology, policies, and procedures. Employees transition to working from home, or they transition back to a brick-and-mortar office environment. New leaders join our organizations and introduce different ideas about how to interact with customers. They change the structure of our workplace, establishing new departments one day and eliminating entire divisions the next. Sometimes these changes produce the kinds of results our organizations are striving to attain. Employees embrace the new technology, and productivity levels increase. The new customer interaction protocol really works, and fewer customers leave.
And yet, far too often, our change efforts come up short. Change is introduced, and we don’t achieve the outcome our organization is looking for. Productivity remains the same—or gets worse. Customers continue to leave, perhaps in greater numbers. We try to figure out what went wrong, what we missed, and we’re told that we shouldn’t be surprised by our lack of results. People just don’t like change, we hear. Change is hard. It’s painful. And most change efforts fail anyway, don’t they? You might conclude that implementing change is a hit or miss affair. Sometimes changes work. Often they don’t.
So why do we keep at it? Why do we keep introducing changes in the workplace when it’s something we may not really want to do, when it’s so challenging, when we do it so badly anyway? Why do we keep trying if we haven’t figured out how to do it right—or at least, how to do it right more consistently? If our chances of success are just hit or miss, is this really something we should keep on doing?
The easy answer is, we keep at it because we have to. Much of the change happening in today’s workplace is driven by factors outside our organizations—by variables that fall, at least in part, outside our control. Customers want less expensive and more personalized products and services, and that means changing what we offer to clients and implementing new forms of delivery. With globalization, companies face increased competition; our workforce is more diverse, and the co-workers we collaborate with may be all around the world, instead of just down the hall or across the street. Rapid advances in technology mean that our business processes may now incorporate artificial intelligence or robotics. We’ve had to adjust—both at work and at home—as we take steps to protect our data and ourselves from cyberterrorism. Government regulations that we need to comply with change—and then they change again. Add in a global pandemic, and we may find ourselves reeling.
To respond to all of these external factors, maybe your company has decided to overhaul its business model, like so many retail firms and companies in the hospitality, food, and dining industry did during the COVID-19 crisis of 2020. Maybe your organization is implementing new technologies and work processes. Perhaps you’ve started to adopt new safety protocols or you’re introducing new guidelines for setting up telemedicine appointments. Maybe your workplace is relocating some or all of its employees. Maybe you are relocating. Perhaps you are in the midst of an organizational restructure, in which job roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships are changing. Maybe your company has acquired a new business, and you now need to figure out how to merge two distinct organizations into one. Or maybe your employer has been acquired, and you have to figure out how to work well with the new parent company. Your organization may be facing financial losses and may be downsizing its workforce. Or business may be booming and you find that the employee population is growing by leaps and bounds. Perhaps new leaders have joined your organization and have announced new ideas they plan to introduce in your company right away.
Maybe change in your workplace truly is the only constant.
How We Respond to Change
The external sources of change—and the steps our organizations take in response—may seem endless and continuous. In fact, in a recent study conducted by Harvard Business Review in partnership with the consulting firm Strativity, 86 percent of the organizations studied reported that they were conducting multiple change initiatives simultaneously (Percy 2019). That is, “different business functions—from operations and IT to marketing and finance—[were] trying to tackle different issues concurrently.” And that study was conducted prior to COVID-19, when suddenly everything—from the technology we used to stay connected to our customers and co-workers to our business priorities to simple procedures we needed to follow to enter our places of business—changed and then changed again and then changed yet again. We’re facing lots of changes, constantly, all over the place, and all at once.
Sadly, research also shows that we really aren’t handling all that change all that well. One often-cited study found that 70 percent of change initiatives fail to deliver on the objectives that were set for them (Ewenstein, Smith, and Sologar 2015). In another, 91 percent of respondents reported that a change initiative had failed in their organizations (Percy 2019). And although some companies successfully navigated the changes that were required to survive during the crisis of 2020, far too many organizations saw their efforts fall short. Research by the consulting firm McKinsey (Blackburn et. al 2020) suggests that companies that will struggle the most to deal with the COVID-19 crisis are reticent to test out new approaches. They aren’t willing to try something new, fail, learn from their mistakes, and then quickly try a different approach. Change fatigue, defined as “the exhaustion that comes from excessive change,” may be just one reason employees are reluctant to try something new (Carucci 2019). Our change initiatives also fail when we neglect those affected most by the change and fail to secure their buy-in, when we underestimate the scale and scope of the change as we create project plans, when communications regarding the change are inadequate, and when support from senior leadership is insufficient (Dickson 2019; Sirkin, Keenan, and Jackson 2005).
All that said, some workplace change initiatives are stunning successes. Some companies change their leadership team, organizational structure, processes, and technology—even all at once—and it just seems to work. They grow dramatically. Employees describe the company as a “best place to work.” Consider Google, which figured out how to help employees focus on the change initiatives that really mattered, and weed out projects that were unlikely to succeed. As a result, 80 percent of Google’s employees said that they understood the changes the company planned to implement (up from 50 percent before the company changed the way it managed change) and employee adoption of changes inc