Page 291 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Chapter 14 ■ Change architecture
■ communication and involvement;
■ help and feedback;
■ respect and recognition;
■ alignment and commitment;
■ objectives and performance;
■ vision and strategy;
■ working practices and procedures;
■ planning and monitoring;
■ roles and responsibilities.
Let us recall that at the start of Chapter 1 we rejected the simplistic notion that
changes fail because managers devote too little attention to the so-called soft
issues, the people issues and so on. These data support that view. If you look at
the data the following relative weaknesses emerge:
1 Workload issues – the balance across teams, waste, lack of resource, unneces-
sary work.
2 Coaching.
3 Time set aside to review and plan for improvement.
4 Conflict is openly explored and addressed.
5 Underperformance is confronted.
6 People have the information they need.
7 Working methods are documented and accessible.
8 Systems are simple and helpful.
9 Problems are quickly spotted and corrected.
10 Regular, effective planning meetings.

I am reminded of something Dwight D. Eisenhower (Commander of the Allied
Expeditionary Force, D-Day and beyond) is famous for saying:

Before a battle planning is everything: as soon as battle is joined, plans are
worthless.

The most compelling point relates to performance management. To the extent
that performance management involves handling conflict, challenging under-
performance, reviewing performance and planning improvements, these execu-
tives report weakness in their own organizations. But even more telling they
report weakness in systems, documentation, methods and so on. If this is true
how can we achieve consistency in anything? And if we cannot achieve consis-
tency how can we possibly align systems, processes and so on? In practice what
we align is behaviour. How can behaviour possibly align in the circumstances
suggested by that data? Interestingly enough I have used that data on 30 or 40
strategic change workshops since mid-2000. Senior executives in the major cor-
porates with which I have worked all too readily recognize how closely those data
match their own company.

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