Change Management: the New Way: Easy to Understand; Powerful to Use

By Deborah Salvo and Dutch Holland

With 70% of change projects not meeting management expectations, can we conclude that the current way of doing change management works well (or even works at all)? Do we need a New Way to make organizational change happen? Yes, it is time. This book identifies ten new ways that can be used to make change management more effectively and efficiently. One of the ten ways is the use of the theater metaphor.

If you want to change a play, you must start by selecting and communicating a new script to your theater company. If you want to change an organization, you must start by communicating to organization members a new vision of where the organization needs to be at some future time. If you want to change the play, you must put actors under contract for the new play and rehearse them until they can perform their roles perfectly. If you want to change an organization, workers must be under agreement to perform to new job descriptions and goals and be trained in new work processes and new technology. And so it goes

Using your life-long familiarity with the idea of a "play, you will be able to make organizational change happen flawlessly. This book will show you how to excel at leading change, from either a management position or from an assignment as a change professional. This book is designed to put managers and change professionals "on the same page for leading change, using simple practical ideas and metaphors, backed by proven bodies of knowledge from management, the behavioral sciences and the theater.

"You dont have to be afraid of change any longer! Dutchs work offers entertaining and simple solutions that will help you move swiftly and efficiently through the growing pains of organizational change.

Ken Blanchard, author of The Secret and The One Minute Manager.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479749249

Deborah Salvo

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convinced that the Digital Engineer concept must be made a reality or the Big Crew Change will likely result in both “outdated roles” and replacements that may “fit the roles but not the digital future of the upstream business.”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, EdD .

Editor: Michelle Thibodaux

Graphics: Lars Skidmore

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Note To The Reader

Foreword

Change Management: The New Way

1. A new metaphor

2. New sources of information

3. A new assumption

4. A new imperative

5. A new goal

6. A new context

7. A new Focus

8. A new standard

9. A new approach

10. A new method

Preface

Successful Organizational Change

• The management imperative to lead change

• Understanding organization change as a transition project

• Understanding organizations as a collection of moving parts

• Identifying the change projects that will drive the organizational change

• Identifying the change projects within the change projects

• This book and how it might be used

Chapter One

Introduction To Organizational Change Management

• The leader’s job is to guide organizational change

• A universal metaphor for understanding organizational change

• Understanding change projects as changing the play

• Using the theater metaphor to guide organizational change

• You know where you are

• Introduction to engineering organizational change

Chapter Two

Communicate The Vision

a. Construct the vision for the organization’s next future

b. Construct the case for change

c. Ensure management understanding and expectations

d. Communicate the vision the right way to the entire organization

e. Ensure employee translation of the vision

Chapter Three

Alter Work Processes And Procedures

a. Identify process alterations needed for a transition

b. Alter and test processes critical for a transition

c. Alter process measures, goals, and objectives to match the vision

d. Alter and test work procedures for altered processes

e. Eliminate old measures, goals, objectives and procedures

Chapter Four

Alter Facilities, Equipment, And Technology (Fet)

a. Identify the FET alterations needed for each transition

b. Alter and test all the FET needed in each transition

c. Alter and test each and every FET control

d. Alter or create written guidelines for all involved FET

e. Eliminate old FET and operating guidelines

Chapter Five

Alter Performance Management

a. Identify and alter individual roles and goals needed for transition

b. Complete one-on-one contracting for every person in the change

c. Train all employees in the roles they will play after the transition

d. Identify and alter the system for monitoring performance

e. Alter and communicate compensation payoffs for all workers

Chapter Six

Manage Change as a Project

a. Develop project charter

b. Set and communicate the master schedule

c. Use week-at-a-time implementation scheduling

d. Regularly check change progress

e. Confirm , celebrate the completed change, and prepare for the next change

Chapter Seven

And in Conclusion . . .

• The management imperative to lead change

• The requirement to successfully lead change projects

• The message to today’s managers

Chapter Eight

Organization Development Meets Engineering Organizational Change

• A formal definition of organization development

• Our practical understanding of organization development

• The focus of this book: organization components (moving parts)

• The very limited scope of this book

• A formal definition of engineering

• Use of behavioral science and management knowledge

• A universal metaphor for understanding organizational change

References and Readings

Appendix A

Task List for Successful Organizational Change

Appendix B

Detailed Steps and Scripts for Selected Chapters

Dedication by Dutch Holland

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

Dedication by Deborah Salvo

This book is dedicated to my clever charming son, Alex Salvo Shook, and my beautiful intelligent daughter, Constance Salvo Shook; without the understanding, patience and support of my loving children, this book would not have been written.

Thanks

Thanks to Kelly Nwosu and Nick Anderson, authors of Focusing Change to Win: Global Survey Findings of Business Leaders and Consultants; copyright 2012 New Catalyst LLC.

A NOTE TO THE READER

Each of us wants content served up in the way that best works for us. Deep down many of us wish to get the answers in a few clever and memorable sound bites (If the glove doesn’t fit, then you must acquit . . .! or If they just don’t get it, keep yelling until they regret it!). Sorry, but the explanation of the weighty and important concepts of successful organizational change take more than sound bites. We have, however, written the book to be as accommodating as possible with three options for gaining value from our content. Good luck!

Option One: I just want the meat, please!

If you are looking for a proven, easy-to-understand, easy-to-use model for successful organizational change, this is the right book. Just read the Foreword to get the idea that successful organizational change is all about breaking change into projects and then completing those projects . . . on target on time, and on budget. Then read the Preface and Chapter One to get the key idea that changing an organization is like a theatre company stopping an old play and transitioning to a new one . . . on target, on time, and on budget. And that’s the meat? Yep, that’s all there is to it . . . except for a few million details we will cover in the following chapters. (Not really, we will only cover a couple of dozen important action steps.)

Option Two: I just want to know about the people-side of change, please!

That seems to be a reasonable request and we will try to help you out, although we will do so with some reluctance. As you read in Option One above, you should read the Foreword to get the change projects ideas, read Chapter One to get the theater company transitioning to a new play idea, if after reading those two chapters, you still want to restrict your learning to the people side of change, if you just want to know how to transition actors to a new play without worrying about all the trivial and irrelevant stuff like the script, the roles, the sets, props, and the contracts (since none of the aforementioned items need not in any way affect the actors in a play or workers in an organization), read Chapter Five: Transitioning the performance management system. (If you want to read one more relevant chapter, even though such a chapter will cover stuff that’s a little beyond the people side of change, read Chapter Six which is all about using project management for transition (e.g., people, projects.)

Option Three: I want everything, big picture down to the details.

If that is your goal, just read the book straight through. Take in all the logical steps for what to do, what not to do, and how to do each step for successful organizational change. Readers will get all the goodies they need to be able to nail the many change projects that must be completed for successful organizational change.

Special Bonus Option: I just want to read three pages, no more, and no less!!

We understand your pain . . . so we wrote the table of contents as the checklist for successful projects! (Start from Chapter Two in the Table of Contents)

FOREWORD

Change Management: The New Way

I REMEMBER IT like it was yesterday. There I was in front of an audience of 200 or so senior managers in Atlanta, giving them my best stuff about change management. Not the regular stuff but what I thought was new.

My thought was that we could use the idea of a play (like in the theater) to be a metaphor for an organization … you know, with a script, like an organization’s vision, with roles, like an organization’s work processes, with sets and costumes like an organization’s tools, and so on. You can finish it from here because we all know about plays, since we were in our first one in kindergarten.

So then I went beyond the description of a play to the idea that no play lasts forever which every theater pro knows is the absolute truth. They know that when the audience for your play slows down, you start looking for a new play, right? And once you pick the new play, you, if you are the director, have the task of transitioning your theater company of actors to the new play.

Say the company has been doing Romeo and Juliet, but you feel you have worn out your welcome with the available audience. You and the producer, who represents the investors, decide to do a contemporary version of, say, Lion King. Oops, that might be a stretch. What about we do Oklahoma? Yeah, that’s right … Oklahoma … you know, where the dust blows in the wind or something like that.

Anyway, I was on a roll at the front of the room, and the audience seemed to be eating it up. Then I notice this big beefy guy at one of the back tables starting to get restless. Looking around at others, rolling his eyes, and finally his hand goes up and stays up. Stiffly up. Yes Sir, I say … you have a question?

Not really a question, he says, more like a comment. I have been sitting here listening to this stuff and wondering when you are going to get to some point I can use. You know, I paid good money to get in this show, and I could use a little value. Whoa.

Do you have a specific question? I ask, thinking, Oh boy, here it comes. So Mr. Beefy stands up and says, I am having a problem with my best employee; he has been a high performer for years, even though he gets a little grumpy sometimes. We just moved to a new procedure manual last month after a couple of months of planning and training. My problem is how to get my guy to make the change-over to the new procedure, he has been holding out on …

Wait, I say. Sir, let me understand this. You are asking me as the Director of this theater company, what I should do because one of my best actors who played Romeo in the last production is still wearing his pink tights and coming on the stage in the middle of the first act of Oklahoma where he looks up into a tree and begins to sing his love song to Juliet? Is that the question, sir?

Here is where I stop the story and let the reader draw his own conclusions. What do you think?

Change Management: The Old Way

But I have seen business situations that are just like that, and what is the manager to do? Come on … you know! We would think through all the change classes we have had over the last five years and begin to develop a game plan to deal with our employee who won’t come along with the change. (Maybe it would be easier to think about the actor in the pink tights with me as the director.)

Let’s see, Mister Pink is obviously upset about the closing of Romeo and Juliet – he just loved his solo in the first act; he is probably still coming out of the disbelief phase now and going into the anger phase, so I will need to be a bit careful here. I sure don’t want to raise his anxiety level, because that will lead to stress … and everybody knows that stress is baaaad!

"Maybe I should ask him to lunch. How would I play it at lunch? I invite him to go tomorrow; not to a burger joint, you know, a nice place. I get a reservation so that everything will be smooth. I will do some friendly chatter while we are being seated. Oh, I forgot. We’ll go in my car; maybe I can trade with the wife for one day, because her car is always clean. Back at the table; no business talk so we can relax and enjoy the food. I can see him relaxing now. I am a bit surprised that he ordered a glass of Merlot, though.

Ok, the food and drink went well; it’s time to talk business. Clearing my throat, Harold, I say, how are things going for you here in the theater company? Oh, you’re feeling pretty good about being here? That’s great! You know you really are a great actor; the producer and I have been very pleased to have you on board. Yes indeed, very pleased. So things are going good for you here too, right? Good!

I continue. Oh, and I do want to ask you about my management style … sometimes I worry about my style not fitting your ‘development level.’ Sorry to use the term development level, I assure you I didn’t mean to indicate that there is anything wrong with your development. You see, I just don’t want to be out of sync with your needs. (I’ll use my active listening skills here to make sure I hear his true meaning.) "I am in sync, you say? I am meeting your needs? Wonderful!

"Harold, I do need to talk to you a bit about the play. I was watching from the wings last night as you did your work, and I had a real epiphany. It dawned on me that I had really missed a couple of key issues when I signed you for Oklahoma. I guess I just didn’t do my homework in enough detail to realize how important those pink tights are to you … and I guess I also underestimated the passion you have for the love song to Juliet! My bad.

I know how tough change can be for some of us. But I want you to know, I’m an understanding guy, and I love to make things right. So beginning tonight, I have asked the wardrobe dude to modify the shirt and chaps you are supposed to be wearing with your cowboy boots. I told him to fix it up so that you can also wear your pink tights and maybe fit in a little better. And, of course, I have the conductor busy this afternoon, making room for Juliet’s love song in the first act. But I really don’t know if the backstage guys are going to be able to finish the balcony that we are putting up in the tree, but I know they are giving it the old college try.

Change Management: The Details of the New Way

There is a new way of doing change management. I can’t tell you here exactly how it is new because it will take the whole book to do that. It is a very short book, however.

Is there really a new way of managing change? We believe there is, and this book will be our attempt to explain our position. The New Way of Change used in our book is new in several respects:

1. A New Metaphor: An organization is like a theater company that changes the play

We will be using a new metaphor, the theater company. After searching for a decade or so, the theater metaphor popped out, and it was just the ticket to explain change management to executives and workers alike. The theater has proven to be a reliable metaphor that fits both organizations and change management. It both explains and guides, and maybe best of all, the theater idea is familiar to everyone on the planet! Every culture uses theater as a part of educating kids for a future where playing different roles at different times will be needed for survival. … and that is familiar globally.

The theater company is a powerful metaphor to help people understand the mechanics of change in an organization. In the theater business, everyone knows that no play lasts forever. Sooner or later the company must transition to a new play. Theater directors facing that transition from a currently-running play to a new play are well schooled in the need for required action steps, executed on time and on budget, to get a new, near-perfect performance ready for the planned opening night. They execute those transition steps with the social graces needed to get the cast and crew on board and ready for the opening curtain, to face ticket holders and critics alike.

The theater metaphor works to both explain and guide organizational change.

To continue our metaphor, we see an organization as an ongoing play where organization members are cast and crew in a satisfying performance for customers. Four primary structural elements can be seen in a play and in an organization:

• the organization’s vision (storyline and script),

• its work processes (roles in the play),

• its facility/equipment/technology (stage, costumes and sets) and

• its performance agreements (actors’ contracts).

To change the organization (or put on the new play), all four mechanical attributes must change–in concert–or there will be no organization change (and no new play!).

What would happen if the director of a play made major changes in the script of the current play but did not alter roles, sets or costumes, or the contracts with the actors? This unthinkable act would likely be terminally confusing to workers/actors and produce disastrous consequences for the play, costing the director his job (or even his career).

2. New Sources of Information: proven bodies of knowledge offer change management solutions

Proven bodies of knowledge exist in the fields of organizational behavior and management that provide explanations of change and solutions for change management. There is no need to continue to survey today’s managers (who say they don’t know how to do change management well) about how they do change management.

Proven bodies of knowledge provide explanations and solutions for change management.

The organizational science literature tells us that organizations have components (we sometimes call them moving parts) that must be altered if the organization is to change the way it does business today to do business more effectively tomorrow. The literature tells us about principles of management that have been used successfully for more than a century to guide managers who are leading change. Later in the book, you will see verbatim what some founders of organizational science and management have to say about organizations and organizational change.

3. A New Assumption: organizational change is to help an organization thrive, not just survive

Rather than being a mechanism to help an organization respond to competitive pressure, change management is an on-going process of helping an organization as it continues to grow and develop. Our assumption will be that organizations would work better if they had a Thrive mindset rather than a Survive mentality -- if they used their company’s platform to launch business initiatives rather than be something to escape because it is crumbling.

Organizations are meant to thrive, not just SURVIVE!

Figure F.1: Definitions of Thrive and Survive

4. A New Imperative: to Run-the-Business for profit today and Change-the-Business for profit tomorrow

Managers must run-the-business for profit today, and simultaneously change-the-business to be able to be profitable in the future. Executives know that their boards of directors expect more than day-to-day performance; those board members expect the executives they support to make the changes needed to ensure a profitable, long-term future for the organization. In short, today’s leaders must both run the business well all the time and change the business well every time.

FigureP.1RTB.jpg

Figure F.2: Run-the-Business and Change-the-Business

Changing the way an organization works is no longer an occasional exercise; change is no longer the exception, it is now the rule. Changing the way an organization operates is central to organizational improvement and to the enhancement of business or organizational results. In today’s world, change management is the most important role of organizational leadership.

Organizational change must happen while the organization is operating at full speed.

Organizational change does not occur in a vacuum. It happens while the organization is producing the goods and services its clients count on. Change management that does not take the running of the business into account will confront obstacles 24/7. In today’s world, change management is the most important role of organizational leadership.

5. A New Goal: to gain competitive advantage

Why change an organization? Surely there is some rational explanation for making changes. Would we want to bring about an organizational change to gain competitive advantage, to increase business results, to improve organizational health, to satisfy the three stakeholders: customers, employee, and owners? What about an organizational change to enable the organization to thrive, not just survive?

An organization should only change to gain or pursue competitive advantage.

The answer to the question can be found in what can be called 401K reasoning. If you have deployed your 401K dollars in a company’s stock, why would you want to see that company make changes? Our guess is that it would be for all of the reasons above. Picking just one goal for organizational change might suggest that we make organizational changes to gain competitive advantage. If that advantage is gained, then business results, organizational health and stakeholder satisfaction will follow as the organization goes beyond just surviving to thriving!

6. A New Context: this organizational change is only one in a series of organizational changes

An organization change is almost always the center of attention for a workforce. It is easy to think that it is THE change, the mother of all changes, when in fact this change is just another in a long series of changes the organization has made over the years. An organization that has been a going concern in a competitive industry for any length of time, has, by definition, made a number of successful organizational changes. The changes may not have been pretty or fast or fun … but they must have moved the ball to get where the company is today.

Leaders should take advantage of that fact and announce (not hint) that the company is ready to make yet another change to grow into the future. We have made this kind of change before, and we will make today’s change too, on target, on time, and on budget.

Today’s organizational change is one of many changes an organization has made and will make.

Figure F.3 shows the procession of changes this successful company completed over the last seventy years.

FigureF.3PROGRESSION.jpg

Figure F.3: One Company’s Progression of Organizational Change over Seven Decades

7. A New Perspective: moving the organization from one way of doing business to another

A common and sometimes useful way of thinking about introducing a new way of doing business in an organization is shown in Figure F.4. While the figure clearly communicates that implementing a change is the goal, the diagram itself tends to focus thinking on the definition and explanation of the contents of the change as a means of improving organizational performance. Implementers who have that view tend to construct their implementation road maps almost exclusively of intense communication and training … which turn out to be needed but inadequate steps for the full integration of a change into an ongoing organization.

FigureF.4FOCUSINGATTENTIONpdf.jpg

Figure F.4: Focusing Attention on the Contents of the Change

Organizations that change move from one way of doing business to another way.

The central idea in change is to take an organization that is operating in one