LEADING ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE: Learning Log and Reflective Analysis

Leading Organisational Change: Learning Log and Reflective Analysis

Date: 08-11- 08.

LEADING ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE.

Brief Note;

Over the last three days, 03/11/08 to 05/11/08, I have attended an American Management Association’s workshop entitled ‘Leading Organization Changed’ at UEM Leadership Centre that facilitated by an experienced speaker, Mr. Cliff Chalon. He is an international HR Consulting and trainer based in Perth, Western Australia. He works extensively with multinational organizations, with global heads and teams in the region providing a range of solutions in leadership development, strategic and HR planning, change and team development.

Our CHANGE journey was well crafted by Mr. Cliff with his candor and sense of humor.

My brief reflection on the experiential ‘change’ learning process is summarized as per below course overview:

At the end of this course, we shall be able to:

* Define change management and differentiate five types of organizations change.
* Recognize and deal with strategic pressure points in a proactive way.
* Build executive sponsorship and understand the role of top management in determining the success of change management.
* Assess and identify major issues involved in organizational readiness.
* Implement practical strategies for dealing with intellectual and emotional challenges.
* Create a macro change-management strategy and execute a six-step change-management plan.
* Demonstrate grater mastery of key change-management skills
* Identify the most effective methods of communication and communication plans.
* Ensure human resource systems support rather than undermine change
* Help the organization recover, rebound, and learn from change.

When I think about dealing with change, the one word that the best describes my feeling is:

‘IMPROVEMENT’

It could be a small incremental or enormous improvement in any life activities and its performance. We shall harness our management skill in adopting changes that happens around us as part of our positive life cycle which will benefit of our human development process and on any ongoing initiatives.


Workshop Overviews.

The workshop or course overviews consist of following modules and summary of key learning points:

Module 1: Introduction to Change Management.

Learning objective:-

* Define change management and differentiate between five types of organizational change
* Diagnose the type of Change in my organization has experienced
* Describe the role of Change leader
* Describe how line managers and human resources partner in sharing the change management role.

Summary of key learning points:-

* The Change management is comprehensive strategies that encompasses content, process and people, and ensure change the desired results.
* Organizations experience 5 types of change:

- Evolutionary adaptation: Incremental and slow.
- Developmental change: An improvement on current ways of doing things.
- Transitional change: The creation or implementation of something completely new.
- Drastic action: Change that is forced on organization
- Transformational change: Change that requires the organization to completely change how it does business.

* Line managers and HR need to partner in planning and leading organizational change activities
* Line managers play critical role in designing the direction and the scope of change. They ensure the change initiatives will address the competitive forces driving change.
* Human resource managers help manage the cultural, behavioral and infrastructure issues that are important to successful change.

Module 2: Understanding the need of change.

Learning objectives:-

* Recognize and deal with strategic pressure points in a proactive ways
* Diagnose the impact of change on the entire organization.
* Assess and identify major issues involved in organizational readiness
* Implement techniques that will help manage the speed and scope of change.

Summary of key learning points:-

* A strategic pressure points means your organization needs to change it ways of doing business.
* Strategic pressure points ( SPP ) impact two or more aspects of your organization’s characteristic:

- Business strategy
- Organizational structure
- Organizational capabilities
- Coordinating systems
- Culture.

* Understanding your organization’s level of change readiness provide insight into what it takes to plan and manage change successfully.
* Effective change leaders understand that individual assimilate change at different rates and help the organization make the changes needed with minimum dysfunction.

Module 3: Dealing with Resistance to Change.

Learning objectives:-

* Conduct a shareholder analysis and diagnose the level of support for change
* Identify proactive ways to build shareholder support for change and minimize resistance
* Understand the intellectual and emotional responses to change.
* Implement communication strategies that help you build support for change
* Identify the most common types of resistance and implement techniques to overcome them.

Summary of key learning points:-

* Change Leaders understand how stakeholder groups will likely respond to change. A stakeholder analysis helps you diagnose stakeholder issues and concern and proactively create a plan to build support.
* Individuals typically work through 4 stages in their intellectual response to change:

- Listen
- Explore and Evaluate
- Make a Decision
- Take Action.

* Change leaders use communication to build understanding and commitment to change by:

- Share the Change Vision
- Building Understanding
- Clarifying Personal Meanings
- Building commitment

* Change leaders use several strategies to work through active and passive resistance to change.

11-11- 08

Module 4: Leading Change Initiatives.

Learning objectives:-

* Describe the attitudes and behaviors that underlie critical change management skills.
* Demonstrate greater mastery of change management skills.

Summary of key learning points:-

* Change leaders help organizations plan and implement change by exhibiting attitudes and behaviors that build confidence and model skills that support the change.
* There are numerous skills that are important for change leaders, but a few are critical :
Ø Adaptability
Ø Strategic Focus
Ø Results Focus
Ø Fosters a Collaborative Approach
Ø Facilitates Openness and Understanding
Ø Encourages Learning.

* Change leaders help stakeholders work through resistance by demonstrating skill in facilitating openness and understanding. They do this by communicating in a way that positions them as:

Ø Being prepared for the Discussion and Maintaining focus
Ø Hearing it all.
Ø Clarify the message
Ø Confirming the message
Ø Deciding how to move forwad


Module 5: Creating A Change Management Plan.

Learning objectives:-

* Create a strategy and execute a six-step change management process
* Overcome the pitfalls of programmatic change.
* Understand how human resource systems and practices need to support the change plan.

Summary of key learning points:-

* Your change management plan is the road map that guides change planning and implementation activities.
* The change management plan is dynamic, and, as you execute it, you learn and make adjustment.
* The change management strategy is part of six-step plan. It is derived from the assessment of how change will impact the organization and helps you identify change initiatives.
* There are six steps in creating a change strategy and plan

Step 1 – Prepare to Change

Step 2 – Create Vision and Build Commitment

Step 3 – Create the Macro Change Strategy

Step 4 – Design the Change Management Plan.

Step 5 – Implement the Change Plan

Step 6 – Learn and Adjust.

* Change leader avoid programmatic change by analyzing the impact of change and ensure change initiatives are derived from a comprehensive change management strategy.
* Change leaders monitor the implementation of their change plan and regularly monitor the status of the plan.
* Human resource managers align systems and practices with change management plan.


Module 6: Learning from Change.

Learning objectives:-

* Describe what it means to be a learning organization and how this relates to change management.
* Use various techniques to gather feedback about change initiatives.
* Diagnose breakdowns in the change process and use lessons learned to prevent future breakdowns.
* Help the organization recover, rebound and learn from change.

Summary of key learning points:-

* Successful change leaders understand the relationship between change and learning.
* A learning organization is an organization that is continuously expanding its capacity to create its future.
* Change leaders adopt the perspective of a learning organization by taking the information and feedback gathered in Step 5 and putting it into practice.
* Change leaders gather feedback in various ways to evaluate whether the change results are being achieved.
* Change leaders must understand when a change effort is off-track and know when to intervene and get things back on-track.