Page 180 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Changing perceptions of organization
successful organization is the one which changes the rules of the game. Hamel
and Prahalad (1994) conclude:
Market research and segmentation analyses are unlikely to reveal such oppor-
tunities. Deep insight into the needs, lifestyles and aspirations of today’s and
tomorrow’s customers will.
As far as major change is concerned, this paradigm shift has moved our thinking
about how to achieve change. Where once the concern was with ‘top-down’ or
‘bottom-up’ change with most of our discussion being about why change pro-
grammes fail and how to use involvement programmes as a means of buy-in and
success, we now seek the following, often via cascade communication pro-
grammes, change workshops, performance management programmes and the
use of market mechanisms:

■ Providing people with a new frame of reference about the company, its per-
formance, its markets, etc.
■ Uncovering hidden or ‘tacit’ knowledge (see below).
■ Learning by scoping perceptions.
■ Circumventing destructive politics.
■ Seeking rapid change via differentiation.

In summary then, achieving mind-set shift is first and foremost a cognitive task
undertaken within a social context. While communication, involvement and
empowerment will form a part of the process, unless we are prepared to engage with
the cognitive challenge we are unlikely to succeed. In turn this implies or requires cer-
tain skills to be deployed and particular organization characteristics to be in place.
Another interesting theme emerging in the strategic change literature is the
focus on ‘conversations’. In essence the argument runs as follows. Change is
introduced, managed and experienced by people. This is given its most obvious
expression by conversation. Central here in research terms would be conversa-
tions which are undertaken as part of a change effort, whether organized for-
mally to do so or not. Researchers seek to understand how these ‘conversations’
both lead to and develop commitment to change being made. For example,

Beckhard and Pritchard (1992) describe a ‘vision-driven change effort’ at Statoil
in Norway. A key stage of the process developed as follows:

The top managers have set up a series of meetings to develop and review jointly
the corporate values and principles for managing and acting. The meetings
include the top management team and other senior managers as participants.
The top leaders believe that, as with the vision, it is crucial for these values and
principles to be ‘owned’ by the entire senior management. They hope the out-
come of these meetings will be the commitment by the organization’s leaders
to use these principles and values as the guide to their behaviour.

Clearly then conversation serves various purposes.
Ellinore and Gerrard (1998) show how the use of dialogue can help people talk
through issues in ways conducive to achieving change. They define two forms of
dialogue:

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