Putting the I into Change

By John Fisher

This book is about change. Personal change and organisational change, and, more importantly, how, we as individuals, can go about understanding, managing, coping and living with and, just possibly, loving the change we’re in.

My focus is on the person rather than the organisation and how we see change, our options and what we can do about it to come to terms with, and accept, it (and how to make our journey more of a success and less painful).

In my experience, most books on change look at the meaning and implication of changing for the organisation as a whole and hence how to manage that organisational change from a systems perspective. I find one of the problems with most change models is that they tell what needs to change rather than how you need to implement that change! Another problem, for me, is that the individual, their needs, drivers and values are almost totally ignored. Change happens around them and not with them as a contributor to that change.

However, again in my opinion, it’s always people who change!, and it’s only once enough people within that organisations’ culture sphere have changed that an organisations can, and will, change.

According to one of the leading thinkers on change management – John Kotter, in his book Leading Change, “The central issue [of leadership] is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behaviour of people.” George Kelly is reported to say that you can change anything, but you must first change yourself. Also J P Garnier, when head of GlaxoSmithKline, reputedly said that “getting people to change – one by – one is the only way to change organisations. After all every change is personal.”

The main focus of this book, therefore, is on the individual and how they see, act, react and adapt to change. In many ways this book is about “What’s In It For Me” or “WIIFM”. In my mind this is one of the strongest, if not strongest change drivers (or should that be change blockers!).

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Fisher
• Release date: Jul 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005602239

John Fisher

John Fisher worked with dogs professionally for more than 20 years. He was a regular contributor to What Dog? and Pet Dog magazines and is the author of Think Dog and Dogwise: The Natural Way to Train Your Dog.

Book preview

Putting the I into Change

John M Fisher

This e-book is the work of John M Fisher, however I will be eternally grateful for the inspiration and friendship of Harry Procter (a giant in PCT) who was, unknowingly, one of the first to introduce me to PCT in my Open University days.

ISBN 9781005602239C2D

4 Marilyn Avenue

Lostock Hall

Preston

PR5 5BL

[phone]

john @c2d.co.uk

© J M Fisher

I’ve made every effort to identify ownership of all the models contained within this e-book that are not my own and offer my sincerest apologies for any omissions.

Please contact me if you believe anything, or one, has been missed.

Also, fairly obviously, any use of the materials is at the user’s discretion and any results are due to the change agent’s skill and competence not mine.

Unless otherwise stated, copyright for original work in this document belong to the author. The author also asserts the right to be identified as such.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The perception process of change

Constructs – the currency of perception

Working with constructs

Constructs in use

The organisation’s place in the change environment

Organisational Change

The Individual and Change

Individual Change Management

Resistance to Change

Change Resistance Factors

Trust

The Change Agent

The Change Journey

The Change Timeline

The Process of Transition

Some more theories on Change

Managing Transitions

Lewin - Schein Theory of Change

John Kotter - Eight Steps to Transforming your Organisation

Tools and Techniques

ABC Technique

I positions (Dialogical Self)

The Perceiver - Elements Grid (PEG)

The Time Element Grid (TEG)

Appendix

Appendix 1: Dialogical Self I positions

References

Introduction

This book is about change. Personal change and organisational change, and, more importantly, how, we as individuals, can go about understanding, managing, coping and living with and, just possibly, loving the change we’re in.

My focus is on the person rather than the organisation and how we see change, our options and what we can do about it to come to terms with, and accept, it (and how to make our journey more of a success and less painful).

It’s truism that nowadays the only constant is change. The world is changing at a faster rate than ever. Andy Warhol (a key figure in 1960’s popular culture) has been quoted as saying that everyone gets 15 minutes of fame. Nowadays, this has become more like the 15 second sound bite!

Things constantly change, and we have to change with them. In fact Heraclites in the 5th century BCE said that "Change alone is unchanging and Nothing endures but change"!

Heraclites is also reputed to have said that we can’t put our foot in the same river twice as the river has flowed on and changed as we have changed. I would argue that this is because we have now changed due to internalising the experience of putting our foot in the water the first time round.

So, if we have been exposed to change in many forms throughout history why does it appear that we react so negatively to change?

I believe, in part, the answer to this question is to found in our experience of change and our ability to put the implications of change into some form of context and/or relevance. Another part of the problem may be that we are relatively lazy and once we have found something that works we tend to repeat that pattern of behaviour – feeling safe and secure in our comfort zone.

For me, one of the major impacts on our sense of security and hence ability to make sense of what we need to do to cope may be that the world has changed beyond all recognition in recent years. Also, the speed of change is, arguably, increasing exponentially. This has an impact on how we can use our past experience to influence our future behaviour. It means that we no longer have a sense of how to anticipate the new future and embed our actions into our existing world view.

The implications of this are that what worked for us in the old world is no longer applicable in the digital, socially networking, media driven modern world. Therefore we cannot rely on the past to help inform the present and guide our future behaviour in the same way.

But this leaves unanswered the fundamental questions of how do we cope with change? and what can we do to help ourselves change?

This book will, hopefully, guide you on that journey of discovery and give you a greater understanding of yourself and your choices and provide you with some tools to help you along the way.

The late Sir John Harvey Jones, when head of ICI, reputedly said that the most difficult skill for a manager to learn wasn’t how to finance a business, nor was it how to run the business efficiently, neither was it how to manage people. Rather, he believed that the most difficult skill for any manager/leader was to be able to foresee, prepare, and respond to change.

In this I believe he was really just reinforcing Charles Darwin’s theory that those organisms’ (organisations) most likely to survive were those who were the most adaptable (fittest) to change.

Possibly an implicit belief in Jones’ statement is that organisational change must be driven from the top down. Whilst this can have some impact, (and support from on high is fundamental according to Rosabeth Moss Cantor), there can be a danger that engagement with, and involvement at, the individual level is ignored; thus impeding the effectiveness of the change programme from being embedded.

Ryan et. al. (2008) suggests that relying on the top down method inhibits the communication flow through the organization and prevents the effective engagement with employees necessary for commitment (as opposed to compliance at best and sabotage at worst).

They go on to suggest a more middle out approach – by this I take them to mean focusing on supporting the middle management taking direct ownership and driving the understanding of the need for change and supporting their teams in agreeing the goals and actions needed to deliver that change at a more local level. This is in line with research done by Bradford City council who found that the CEO directly affects 9% of the organization whilst the Supervisor/Middle Manager impacts the other 91%.

Machiavelli, that master of subterfuge and manipulation, has something to say about change and the instigators of change (innovators as he calls them) :-

"There is nothing more difficult to arrange, more dubious of success and more dangerous to carry through than initiating change. The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support from those who would prosper under the new."

This is because, in the face of uncertainty, most people focus on doing what they know best – what they are comfortable with and what worked in the past; regardless of whether that will work in the present!

If change is thrust upon us then there is also a tendency to blame the change agent. For right or wrong they are seen as forcing us out of our comfort zone into a new and scary world. We may feel like Amazonian explorers but without the map or machete!

The success or failure of most corporate change initiatives will be determined by the organisational culture prevalent at that time. However, this culture is, arguably, created by the interactions of individuals and a shared agreement on how we do things round here - more of which later.

In my experience, most books on change look at the meaning and implication of changing for the organisation as a whole and hence how to manage that organisational change from a systems perspective. I find one of the problems with most change models is that they tell what needs to change rather than how you need to implement that change! Another problem, for me, is that the individual, their needs, drivers and values are almost totally ignored. Change happens around them and not with them as a contributor to that change.

According to Sabjanyi (2006) any organisational change, no matter how small, has the potential to have a major impact on an individual, their self-view and subsequent performance. He also said that "organisational change can only happen if employees shift their behaviour and mind-set … so it is important to bring our attention to the level of the individual when attempting culture change. He goes on to say that organisational interventions can only be successful if they can influence individual realities in the direction of the intended outcome" – a point I fully agree with (no surprise there eh!).

However, again in my opinion, it’s always people who change!, and it’s only once enough people within that organisations’ culture sphere have changed that an organisations can, and will, change.

According to one of the leading thinkers on change management – John Kotter, in his book Leading Change (1996), The central issue [of leadership] is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behaviour of people.

It is also fair to say that whilst we all must change as individuals we tend to do that within social groups and here the key differentiator between success and failure is how effectively we understand, and interact with, other people and where they are coming from. In many ways we co-create, and co-construct the implications and impact of what we are trying to achieve.

The main focus of this book, therefore, is on the individual and how they see, act, react and adapt to change. In many ways this book is about What’s In It For Me or WIIFM. In my mind this is one of the strongest, if not strongest change drivers (or should that be change blockers!).

We have to address WIIFM, failure to do so will result in failure to change in an effective way.