Page 113 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Chapter 6 ■ Theories of change: strategic management models
attractive forever. The firm lucky enough to be in one will be imitated by
aggressive competitors, and, perhaps more important, supplanted by even
more aggressive competitors, those which develop new positions in the market.
By position he means clarity about which customers are served with what prod-
ucts and services through what delivery system (including channels, product
configurations, service offerings, etc.). But the important words are unique and
aggressive. What this implies is the impulse to be different as a means of securing
advantage. This requires tough choices. Thus it is that success demands ambition.
Indeed companies which become successful do so not by trying to beat the dom-
inant players at their own game, but by changing the rules of the game, by cre-
ating innovative approaches. Thus Canon in photocopiers, Dell in computers,
CNN in broadcasting, easyJet in airlines, First Direct in banking, Direct Line in
insurance, Komatsu in earth-moving equipment and Starbucks in coffee have
achieved prominence in their business.
But daring to be different is to take risk because it requires you to pose and then
answer new questions. You must both improve your ability to offer your current
proposition (not least via re-engineering, restructuring and so on) as well as iden-
tify new or unexploited segments, needs and delivery methods. Interestingly
enough Markides (2000) is clear about how you identify a distinctive strategic
position – it is about breaking out of the existing mental model, about creating a
questioning culture, organizing diverse inputs in the strategic planning process,
and it requires experimentation and learning. It is also about working on the
‘blocks to innovation’ in the organization. Being successful requires implement-
ing with sufficient flexibility to adapt if things go wrong. Implicitly this suggests
that the new strategic position is either too little or too great in the level of ambi-
tion. So how do we judge this level of ambition?
Clearly this is partly a matter of risk. But it is also partly a question of how
ready the organization is as a platform for change. We deal with this in a struc-
tured way in the readiness for change checklist and also via the idea of an imple-
mentation index comprising four components:
1 Is there a critical mass of support from key stakeholders?

2 Is there a sufficient problem orientation within the change process?
3 Is there sufficiently robust programme management?
4 Is there sufficient focus on clear goals?
In effect we propose that our ability to conceive of and deliver ambitious change
programmes is about the ability of the change architecture we deploy to deliver
various forms of infrastructure quickly enough. Is the stress experienced within
radical change programmes largely a reaction to the fact of change (i.e. resistance
to change) or at least partly a consequence of inadequate change architectures?
These may not be delivering needed infrastructure quickly enough given the rate
of change, which may be largely externally imposed (via competitive pressure or
government action in the public sector). There we seek not to take this issue as a
given.
Moss Kanter (2001) provides some clues in discussing ‘inspiring visions’. In her
opinion, inspiring visions include a dream of what our world will look like when

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