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Chapter 16 ■ Learning from change
I don’t like it.’ The changes included movement towards giving residents influ-
ence over their own care, including the right of access to their own files. Unless
handled sensitively such changes can create anxiety and uncertainty. This is partly
a direct consequence of the ‘fear of freedom’.
Thus leadership, sensitivity and empathy, along with involvement, openness
and the rest, are the order of the day in a period of change. We need to recognize
that people do need time to go through stages in the experience of change iden-
tified in the ‘coping cycle’ (see page 240), that people go through change at dif-
ferent rates. The coping cycle then becomes a reasonable basis against which to
monitor change. Where are people on the ‘coping cycle’? Does this explain their
attitudes and behaviour?
The resident quoted above may well have been somewhere in the second or
third stages of the coping cycle. That would make the resident’s assessment
entirely predictable. Once people are coming through the coping cycle then we
can seek evidence of improvement, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
How can we decide that people are coming through the experience of change?
We look for two main things: first, we look for motivated and enthusiastic
attempts to make the changes work well; second, we look for people who no
longer talk only about the past. If people talk about changes in terms of the
future and how they (and the organization) can benefit then it is a reasonable
guess that they are through the ‘discarding’ process that we described in Chapter
13. Now we can monitor improvements and feedback, feedback, feedback to build
self-esteem, to build success through improved self-esteem. Effectively managed
change turns out to be more a matter of ongoing process, of building the capac-
ity to improve into the organization.
Developing the facilitative management style as part of manager development is
important in this process. We can identify a typical ‘role model’ of the manager,
using this style, drawing again on Argyris (1982) and Argyris and Shon (1974,
1978). The manager concerned to facilitate the process of change adopts the fol-
lowing methods:

■ Seeks ‘clients’ with problems, demonstrating the intention of helping people
to resolve the problems that they recognize as such.

■ Views problems broadly and seeks both organizational and technical means of
dealing with them.
■ Adopts changing, broad-based criteria for success.
■ Develops solutions drawing on information, knowledge, experience and views
from the people involved in the system, department or organization under
consideration.
■ Recognizes that some technically sound solutions may well have to be rejected
on interpersonal or organizational grounds.
■ Recognizes that the application of professional technique can remove control
from people. This can often impede commitment to change and lead to poor
solutions. Joint control between the specialists, line managers and others
involved (e.g. unions and professional associations, group managers in a
multi-divisional organization) will build a greater willingness to collaborate.

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