Organizational Change - Its DNA Part 1
Guesting with us in this issue is Rose O. Fuentes, PhD. She has been in OD education and practice for over 3-decades now. She has spent her life in development work as an educator in prestigious universities like, Ateneo de Manila University, and as an OD practitioner with colleagues from SAIDI alumni network and other OD-groups she networks with. She continues to be engaged in the wonders of change and helping individuals and institutions dive into change initiatives through her newly established Loyola Institute of Positive OD.
Citing from a module of Lumen Learning, Organizational Change is the movement of an organization from one state of affairs to another. It can take many forms. Metaphorically, organizational change may be likened to choosing a new play, requiring the transition of company roles, costumes, and sets. However, in this organizational change drama, making change happen requires connecting some of the right ideas to practical actions. It must be remembered that It may involve a change in a company’s structure, strategy, policies, procedures, technology, or culture. Organizational change can be radical and can swiftly alter the way an organization operates, or it may be incremental and slow. Robert W. Rogers, et al, wrote “organizational change is a fact of life - it won’t go away, no matter how hard you try.”
Perhaps it would be a good idea to striptease the phrase “Organizational Change” to understand its DNA and thus understand better and clearer descriptions and definitions of the phrase/concept. The key word/concept from the phrase is CHANGE. The specific context for the change is ORGANIZATION.
Change is a fact of life for All! Hence change cannot just be a project. The experience of change is a movement from what is known and done through a period of transition to arrive at a desired new way of behaving and doing our job. This concept of three states of change is prevalent in change management literature and other improvement disciplines.
Not everyone likes change. But change, like the passing of time, is unavoidable. No matter how you define it, change is almost always met by some resistance. It’s human nature to want.
things to remain as is. Change often means the stress of new, uncharted territory, more work resulting in less confidence. Change is stressful, and people avoid it because they want to avoid the pain, anguish, frustration and lack of confidence that goes along with it. Whether a positive change, like a promotion or minor changes can require a brief adjustment period. Worse, large- scale changes can take a long time to adjust to.
Resistance manifests in different ways. Managing change effectively is to understand what change is and where it comes from. Resistance to change is as much an organizational and group issue and/or as it is an individual issue. Organizational resistance is the tendency for an organization as a whole to resist change and want to maintain the status quo. Companies that suffer from this kind of resistance become inflexible and can’t adapt to environmental or internal demands for change. Some of the signs point to internal power struggles, poor decision-making processes and bureaucratic organizational structures. Group resistance begins to manifest when groups start to work well together within established norms and cohesion and any change to these is likely to be resisted as group members will work to protect each other and preserve the group. Group cohesion can affect the acceptance of change. If a cohesive group has been disbanded in favor of a different kind of team structure, the group’s desire to stick together may make them resistant to change. But just as group cohesion can work against change, it can also work for change. A cohesive group looking to implement change can typically overcome any one member’s resistance to it. Individual traits can make one change resistant. Culture, personality and prior experiences can contribute to one’s level of acceptance where change is concerned. People resist change because they fear the consequences. Change means learning new habits and facing new situations. Learning new skills comes with the uncertainty of being able to master those skills. It’s easy to see why change can seem threatening. Furthermore, if individuals sense that there will be economic insecurity or risk regarding the change, or if they don’t trust management, this could further add to the resistance. The individual perspective reqires an understanding of how people experience change.
The experience of change moves one from what is known and done through a period of transition to arrive at a desired new way of behaving and doing the job. Neither a single pathway nor a neatly defined timeline for change exists. Change brings uncertainties and surprises. It ushers a metanoia (a conversion). Being prepared for all these can ease the challenges and burden of a change process. Participation in change grows from clear plans translated into manageable, doable and measurable actions. Change, although challenging, can be a major opportunity for growth and career advancement, so long as you know how to approach it. Changes can be internally motivated or externally motivated. The change can be a dramatic departure from what we know or it can be minor. Change can be anticipated or unexpected. It does not happen overnight but goes through layers or cycles of iteration. When embarking on a change journey, bubbles in the air do not create pathways for change. The map must be clear enough to show the direction, the productive ways and the traps or surprises that could get in the way.
Not everyone likes change. But change, like the passing of time, is unavoidable. It does not choose any one. It is there always - at times, un-noticed and, at other times, noticeable. And at significant times, not only noticeable but compellingly demanding to be noticed.
No matter how you define it, change is almost always met by some resistance. It’s human nature to want things to remain as is. Change often means the stress of new, uncharted territory, more work resulting in less confidence. Change is stressful, and people avoid it because they want to avoid the pain, anguish, frustration and lack of confidence that goes along with it. Whether a positive change, like a promotion or minor changes can require a brief adjustment period. Worse, large- scale changes can take a long time to adjust to.
Resistance manifests in different ways. Managing change effectively is to understand what change is and where it comes from. Resistance to change is as much an organizational and group issue and/or as it is an individual issue. Organizational resistance is the tendency for an organization as a whole to resist change and want to maintain the status quo. Companies that suffer from this kind of resistance become inflexible and can’t adapt to environmental or internal demands for change. Some of the signs point to internal power struggles, poor decision-making processes and bureaucratic organizational structures. Group resistance begins to manifest when groups start to work well together within established norms and cohesion and any change to these is likely to be resisted as group members will work to protect each other and preserve the group. Group cohesion can affect the acceptance of change. If a cohesive group has been disbanded in favor of a different kind of team structure, the group’s desire to stick together may make them resistant to change. But just as group cohesion can work against change, it can also work for change. A cohesive group looking to implement change can typically overcome any one member’s resistance to it. Individual traits can make one change resistant. Culture, personality and prior experiences can contribute to one’s level of acceptance where change is concerned. People resist change because they fear the consequences. Change means learning new habits and facing new situations. Learning new skills comes with the uncertainty of being able to master those skills. It’s easy to see why change can seem threatening. Furthermore, if individuals sense that there will be economic insecurity or risk regarding the change, or if they don’t trust management, this could further add to the resistance. The individual perspective reqires an understanding of how people experience change.
That’s a mountain of resistance. If organizational, group and individual resistance can get in the way of initiating change, how can leaders make sure that they minimize change resistance and do the right thing for the organization? There are different strategies that can help. And this is when the leader ventures into change leadership and management to bring organizations, groups or individuals to higher levels of performance and productivity. Strategies range from education and agreements. Foremost in managing resistance is conquering fear - of the unknown, which education and communication take care of. When the people are participants and involved, buy-in and ownership grow. These strategies, participation and involvement, conquer resistance slowly! Facilitation and support and, negotiation and agreement are support strategies. In facilitation and support, the leaders and the people are able to grow their competencies and skills pushing the change process towards the desired future. Along the way, the leaders are able to spot where areas of growing the organization or group or individuals are detected. And more strategies evolve to address the situation.
But here’s a crucial rub on change: timing of the introduction of change. Thinking about the order and timing of a planned change can help managers avoid employee resistance. If the organization or group or the individual is recovering from a state of confusion or hurt, this may not be an ideal time to introduce change. Because change is chaotic at its inception stage. Adding another chaos to an existing yet unresolved turmoil may just be too much to handle for the leaders and the rest of the organization’s community.
“An organization is many things at once ...complex and multi-faceted and even paradoxical” (G. Morgan). This explains why the challenges are often so difficult. And the current VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) environment has made leading and managing organizations super-difficult. The demands are aplenty, different mindsets are shaping the world and new skills and competencies are needed to understand the environment. Organizational leaders and managers who remain open and accepting of new ideas, who suspend judgments until a more holistic view emerges empowering them to steer and navigate effectively the environment. They are able to find an alternative to the VUCA-ness of the an organization’s situation into a RUPT- driven environment:
Rapid, Unpredictable, Paradoxical, Tangled. **
Rapid: The changes we experience come at us quickly. They overlap with each other like waves emerging from different sources crashing in mid-ocean.
Unpredictable: Even as leaders and managers analyze, strategize, and predict the future, but then something totally unexpected emerges (rapidly), challenging assumptions and causing what have been put together to re-frame the existing mind-view.
Paradoxical: Leaders may be easily lured into believing complex challenges are problems with one right solution, rather than seeing them as polarities that must be leveraged if teams and organizations are to be effective in both the short and long term.
Tangled: Everything is connected to everything else, like “the global village” living in multiple ecosystems having their own internal and external connections. It might be easy to overlook this connectedness yet still their own organization in the attempts to strategize and implement strategy effectively.
Between VUCA and RUPT, the former deals with the environment squarely; RUPT brings one to a new reality immediately. The former belabors the current situation; the latter, through common and shared meaning, moves organizations to understand the array of possibilities and choices available to manage the environment. RUPT bursts well-thought out actions closer to real time.
When understanding Organizational Change from its conceptual-phraseology, one is drowned by a DNA that is both dizzying and interesting. Too many features and factors to weigh in; but also there is a plethora of options, courses of actions that present themselves for “try outs,” for review or integration. Organizational change is necessary for companies to succeed and grow. Organizational change is the transformation or adjustment to the way an organization functions. Organizational change is deeply embedded in the elements of an organization, like, its reason for being (vision), nature, systems, culture, leadership & behaviours, structures, etcetera. When undertaking a project or initiative in the organization, the leader provides a structure to the effort of designing the future state and developing interventions for the transition state. Organizations adjust to small changes all the time, possibly looking to improve productivity, responding to a new regulation, hiring a new employee, or something similar. But on top of these little adjustments we make at work all the time, there are larger pressures that loom over us, like competition, technology, or customer demands. Those larger pressures sometimes require larger responses. These changes can affect four elements within an organization: Technology, Product or service, Administration and management, People or human resources.
Unfortunately, organizational change isn’t always easy to adapt to and can be intimidating for all team members who find themselves affected by it. Organizational change of any kind occurs one person at a time because an organization-wide change only occurs when Jose, Pedro, Maria and Veronica do their jobs differently. It is easy to think about change only from an organizational perspective. When considering a change in strategy, one might focus on the organization’s vison, mission, resources, and the trends, demands and challenges of the larger environment. But organizational change involves letting go of the old ways in which work is done and adjusting to new ways. Wherefore, fundamentally, it is a process that involves effective people management.
References
Hayden, John, et al. (1985). Organizational Change that Works. Pennsylvania, USA: DDI Press, c/o DDI International, World Headquarters.
Creasey, Tim. Change vs. Change Management (An Article published by Prosci Inc)
Lumen Solutions, Inc Transforming 21st Century Organizations.
Nanwani, Suresh (2022). Organization and Education Development. New York, USA: Routledge
Peshawaria, Rajeev (2015). Be the Change. Singapore: McGraw-Hill EducationThe Prosci ADKAR Model. People. Change. ResultsTabrizi, Behnam (2007). Rapid Transformation. USA: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.Zhexembayeva, Nadya (2020). How to Thrive in Chaos. Canada: Ideapress Publishing.