Page 242 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Managerial skills for effective organizational change
2 Change is disruptive and disturbing. How do people experience change and
how may they be helped to cope with the pressure of major changes?
Managers in all organizations deploy these managerial and coping skills to lesser
or greater extents. Our purpose is to identify these two sets of skills so that man-
agers can more effectively identify strengths and weaknesses and, thereby, further
develop their capacities to achieve effective organizational change.
In SmithKline Beecham (page 184) it is clear that ‘the simply better way’
approach is carefully thought through and relevant. Part of the early learning from
the programme has been the role of leadership in energizing a sufficient critical
mass of change and commitment to further change that prevents a reversion to
past ways of doing things, which contributes to a change in the ‘mind-set’. In com-
mon with other major corporates, SmithKline Beecham has developed a leadership
behavioural role model as a means of defining how it wishes leadership to be dis-
played and as a development tool and process for the managers involved.

Managerial skills for effective organizational change

To manage change effectively involves the ability to create a new synthesis of
people, resources, ideas, opportunities and demands. The manager needs skills
rather like those of an orchestral conductor. Vision is essential and creativity
paramount. Yet the capacity to create systematic plans to provide for the logistics
of resources, support, training and people is central to any change programme.
People must be influenced, departmental boundaries crossed or even ‘swallowed
up’, new ideas accepted, new ways of working embraced and new standards of
performance and quality achieved. The politics of the organization are crucial.
Support must be mobilized, coalitions built and supported, opposition identified
and considered. People need help to cope with the stress, anxiety and uncertain-
ties of change. Continuity and tradition must be overturned, in part, as the old
is replaced by the new. Yet continuity and tradition provide people with stability,
support and meaning and should not needlessly be destroyed. The effective man-
agement of organizational change demands attention to all these somewhat con-

flicting issues and challenges. So in a period of change, synthesis is the key. In
this section we shall deal with three skill areas:
1 Managing transitions.
2 Dealing with organizational cultures.
3 The politics of organizational change.

Managing transitions
Company A manufactures a range of engines. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of a
US-based multinational corporation. It supplies engines to a small number of end-
user companies, each of which incorporates them into its own products. By the
1980s the company was experiencing severe external and internal pressures (see
Table 13.1). This is a familiar enough pattern: a cycle of decline creating major
challenge for management to find ways of achieving a transition to effectiveness.

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