Page 202 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Exercises
the scale is ideal, well-planned, sensitively handled, carefully timed, sufficiently
resourced change; at the other end of the scale is ‘bolt on, rah rah management’.
Here the idea is that the new system, procedure or structure, or whatever, can be
‘bolted on’ to the existing system from a technical and logistic point of view.
Once that is arranged we need to sell the new system, and this is what ‘rah rah’
management is all about: ‘You’ll like this system’; ‘It’ll solve all your problems’;
‘Don’t worry, you won’t lose out’ are some of the things managers may say. The
idea is to ‘fire up’ the enthusiasm of staff and to press on, regardless of problems:
‘It’s a great success’ and ‘It’ll be all right on the night’. Selling is a part of change
management, yet to be effective it must be sensitive to problems and to people’s
needs. Only then can the real problems, uncertainties and anxieties of change
not merely be handled but, rather, be harnessed in support of the change itself.
This book attempts to demonstrate how this can be done but we start from a prag-
matic position. The ‘ideal’ state will not be achieved. Our view is that through
better understanding we can do a little better, no more. To return to our opening
quote, by being a little more careful about how we handle change, doing it a lit-
tle more effectively, we can ensure earlier and more effective implementation,
creating the capacity to manage change more effectively in future.

EXERCISES

1 What do you think are the key features of ABF’s change strategy?
2 How important is benchmarking as a component of change strategy?

3 What management styles might promote more effective change in the case of
ABF Ltd?

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