How Managers Can Thrive in Waves of Change

By Dutch Holland and Deborah Salvo

Thriving in Times of Increasing Change

Never before have organizations faced an environment as turbulent and as difficult as this one. Businesses must change the way they are doing business now to a new way that will work for them in the future. While major organizational change was once the exception, it is now the rule . . . and organizations will have to be very good at organizational change to thrive in the new business environment.

Profound changes are on the way

Todays businesses are bracing for change. Waves of regulatory requirements are coming in increasing amounts and intensity. Competition is more intense and coming from every direction. Customers no longer will settle for yesterdays products, services, or levels of quality.

Things are challenging out there, and businesses can no longer simply hunker down and weather the storm. Many predict that todays storm is tomorrows business environment, an environment in which we must be able to thrive . . . or die. Adding to the assault, many business leaders are shocked at how much change is likely to be required in such a short period of time.

No longer is it a question of if or when huge waves of change will hit, its a matter of how well organizations are positioned to effectively navigate and even flourish in the changes. Waves of change are already hitting the beach, and their strength is almost certain to build. Its too late for a bunker mentality.

Out of the bunkers and into . . . what?

Companies cannot stay in their bunkers forever. Sooner or later they must come out and face the music. That means they must come out and change the way they do business in order to fit into the turbulent world. Change is no longer an option but change the way they do business to what? Companies coming out have two options; options that are as different as night and day.

Surviving: The intuitively-obvious way

The focus of doing business just to survive is logical and intuitively obvious. It has companies adopting and/or adapting survival tactics as the core of their new way. They limit the changes they make to just get over the survival threshold. Process changes are most likely very conservative: patches, glue-ons, work-arounds, tweaks, fix and repair rather than replace, emergency repairs rather than preventive maintenance, etc. all pursued in an atmosphere of severe cost cutting and staffing layoffs. While risk management may be a goal, survival-oriented companies try to dodge every risk regardless of the risk-rewards, taking away almost all of their undeveloped opportunities that might be sources of new life for the company. Unfortunately, the slogan of this new way of doing business might be out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Thriving: The straight and narrow way

The focus of this new way of doing business will be positioning the organization so that it will thrive . . . even in a nasty business environment. The first step in moving toward a thriving business will be to set a vision that is designed to separate the company from the middle-of-the-road pack of competitors. This way of doing business will require the company to improve all work processes that could translate into a competitive edge. Processes must be advanced beyond best practices to an industry leading position.

This way of doing business calls for investment in the best available technology that enables the companys core processes, in equipment upgrades where possible, expansion of employee responsibilities, provision of aggressive training on key skills that support core work processes, and more. All of these actions will require energy and resources as the straight and narrow way calls for an investment and opportunity mindset. However, the largest investment will need to be in innovation not innovation you pay for but innovation from

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477118320

Dutch Holland

Dutch Holland, PhD & Jim Crompton, MS ENG are highly regarded as “thought leaders” and as consultants who will tell it like it is. The authors’ collaboration combines management consulting experience in upstream with oil & gas domain expertise into important insights about creation of business value from digital technology. Jim and Dutch are both convinced that the Digital Engineer concept must be made a reality or the Big Crew Change will likely result in both “outdated roles” and replacements that may “fit the roles but not the digital future of the upstream business.”

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Copyright © 2012 by Dutch Holland, PhD & Deborah Salvo, MHRM, EdD..

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Graphics: Larry Skidmore

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Contents

NOTE TO THE READER

PREFACE

Thriving in Times of Increasing Change

CHAPTER ONE

Reader’s Digest Version of the Book

CHAPTER TWO

The Problems with Organizational Change

CHAPTER THREE

The Conceptual Framework for Complete Change

CHAPTER FOUR

The Executive Change Model™: Direction and Balance

CHAPTER FIVE

The Senior Management Change Model™: Organizational Capabilities

CHAPTER SIX

Middle Management Change Model™: Validation and Authorization

CHAPTER 7

Supervisor-Employee Change Model

(The Standard Model of Change™): Explain, Sustain, Train

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Surprise Ending

Dedication by Dutch Holland

This book is dedicated to the kids in my life: the little kids, Hope and Win, and the big kids, Eric and Wendy. May they continue to flourish -- and God Bless!

Dedication by Deborah Salvo

This book is dedicated to my 87-year old Uncle Alfonso Michael Salvo, the last in a long line of Salvo entrepreneurs. Buddy has beautifully acclimated to, and mastered, profound waves of change during his lifetime. May he live long and prosper.

Also to my perpetually sunny sister, Leslie Byers, my clever charming son, Alex Salvo Shook, and my beautiful intelligent daughter, Constance Salvo Shook.

NOTE TO THE READER

Option one: Just the meat, please

If you only have time to read a couple of chapters, read chapter one twice. We wrote that chapter to be a short digest of the four critical change models that are at the heart of this book. The models are simple and practical and can be easily applied to the complex world of business today. Think of these models as rudders to provide the needed direction for you to thrive and flourish in the coming waves of change.

Option two: Focus on one or more levels of management

If you seek relief from the waves of change for your level of the organization, then go straight to the chapter that applies: chapter four for the executive level, chapter five for senior management, chapter six for middle management, or chapter seven for the first-line supervisor . . . or you can always read the chapter that applies to your boss in order to stay one step ahead.

Option three: I want everything, big picture down to details

If that is your goal, just keep reading straight through and take in all the logical steps for what to do, what not to do, and how to specifically approach, survive, and thrive in the waves of change for your level of the organization. However, even if you read all the way through, do plan to re-read chapter one at least twice.

PREFACE

Thriving in Times of Increasing Change

Profound changes are on the way

TODAY’S BUSINESSES ARE bracing for change. Waves of regulatory requirements are coming in increasing amounts and intensity. Competition is more intense and coming from every direction. Customers no longer will settle for yesterday’s products, services, or levels of quality.

Things are challenging out there, and businesses can no longer simply hunker down and weather the storm. Many predict that today’s storm is tomorrow’s business environment, an environment in which we must be able to thrive . . . or die. Adding to the assault, many business leaders are shocked at how much change is likely to be required in such a short period of time.

No longer is it a question of if or when huge waves of change will hit, it’s a matter of how well organizations are positioned to effectively navigate and even flourish in the changes. Waves of change are already hitting the beach, and their strength is almost certain to build. It’s too late for a bunker mentality.

Out of the bunkers and into . . . what?

Companies cannot stay in their bunkers forever. Sooner or later they must come out and face the music. That means they must come out and change the way they do business in order to fit into the turbulent world. Change is no longer an option – but change the way they do business to what? Companies coming out have two options; options that are as different as night and day.

Surviving: The intuitively-obvious way

The focus of doing business just to survive is logical and intuitively obvious. It has companies adopting and/or adapting survival tactics as the core of their new way. They limit the changes they make to just get over the survival threshold. Process changes are most likely very conservative – patches, glue-ons, work-arounds, tweaks, fix and repair rather than replace, emergency repairs rather than preventive maintenance, etc. – all pursued in an atmosphere of severe cost cutting and staffing layoffs. While risk management may be a goal, survival-oriented companies try to dodge every risk regardless of the risk-rewards, taking away almost all of their undeveloped opportunities that might be sources of new life for the company. Unfortunately, the slogan of this new way of doing business might be out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Thriving: The straight and narrow way

The focus of this new way of doing business will be positioning the organization so that it will thrive . . . even in a nasty business environment. The first step in moving toward a thriving business will be to set a vision that is designed to separate the company from the middle-of-the-road pack of competitors. This way of doing business will require the company to improve all work processes that could translate into a competitive edge. Processes must be advanced beyond best practices to industry leading positions.

This way of doing business calls for investment in the best available technology that enables the company’s core processes and provides equipment upgrades where possible, expands employee responsibilities, approves of aggressive training on key skills that support core work processes, and more. All of these actions will require energy and resources as the straight and narrow way calls for an investment and opportunity mindset. However, the largest investment will need to be in innovation, not innovation you pay for, but innovation from the people already inside who have likely never been challenged to think and create. The validity of a company’s new way of doing business can be first tested when the company puts its business plan in front of a bank’s loan committee.

Businesses can no longer treat change as an option. Regardless of the content of the waves of change, the impact on today’s organizations will be the same – massive changes will need to be implemented at revolutionary speeds. To succeed, these changes will all need to be made in a dual mode; that is, organizations will need to run-the-business at the same time they change-the-business.

What will happen if organizations are not able to make the needed changes? Everything from loss of customers to loss of income . . . and yes, even the organization’s survival depends on how readily the challenges of change are met.

Examples of needed changes

The nature of the needed changes will directly impact the way today’s companies do business. There is no shortage of examples of changes that will be required. A few examples of organizational changes are outlined below. The point in each example is not only to focus on the new way of doing business, but to envision the amount of change that will be needed as well . . . changes to the current way of doing business. They will require changes to the business model of almost every organization.

Thematic visioning. Once the idea was to put a vision of the future into place and not change it lest it confuse people. What may have been a good idea in times of infrequent changes in the world is no longer suitable when change becomes the rule, not the exception. Visioning can no longer be static but must become dynamic. Visioning will need to move toward conveying a theme or general direction that may last some years. The vision then should be complemented annually with a rich and detailed mini-vision that may last only a few months before the next wave of change.

Constraint-driven innovation. The once-popular idea of unrestricted and unconstrained innovation is being replaced with target-based innovation. The idea of innovating away from regulative constraints to seek open space is being replaced with innovating toward the constraint to take advantage of regulative compliance, a concept that has long been practiced in many parts of the financial community.

Continuous redesign of processes. Many of us may have thought that we had seen the end of reengineering, but as new technical capabilities are invented, clean sheet of paper redesigning of processes to take advantage of those capabilities will be continuous. Rethinking how work processes will be staffed, or resourced, will become commonplace, including integration of the customer into key roles, (similar to how a hospital counts on family members by the bedside to perform some care services).

Rapid exploitation of technology. The phrase technology keeps advancing and we see no end in sight suggests that somebody somewhere is wasting time looking for an end when there is no end. As far as technology development goes, we haven’t seen anything yet; and in what many think is a surprising turn, the revolutionary technologies may not come out of the giant labs but from small technology companies that were only specks on the horizon a few short years ago. The challenge for companies is to create a technology monitoring capability along with internal processes that can guide companies to rapid assessment, development, and deployment of new technical solutions. Companies must change the way they manage new technology implementation. The new way of handling new technology will be to drive its deployment rather than pray for its adoption.

Managing a revolution in staffing. The employee concept, long live the employee, may very well be dead. Companies are finding that their conventional definition and ways of dealing with employees no longer work because for many companies in today’s economy, costs are too high, moving people around (or out) for the good of the organization has become next to impossible, career education is not affordable, employee demands and an atmosphere of entitlement can no longer be afforded or tolerated. Companies are moving to use more contractors and vendors, organizing for work to be done by virtual teams that can be modified or dismantled after a work bundle has been completed.

Shifting to program and project management. These disciplines must become core organizational processes. Both are essential to planned organizational change. Rather than being disciplines, program and project management will become core processes, centers of excellence, and the functions in which ambitious organization members desire to work in order to further their management careers.

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks, let’s call it a duck. Regardless of the direction or nature of needed changes, companies seeing new ways of doing business