Page 344 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Introduction
basis for designing and managing big changes. Each of them is important. They are
necessary conditions for successful change but in themselves they are not suffi-
cient. This is why practitioners and researchers in the change management field are
showing increased interest in project and programme management techniques and
disciplines as a means of achieving higher levels of professionalism in change man-
agement in practice.
Finally, we need a model which helps us to identify what is planned and how
those plans are intended to be achieved but also enables us to ask how effectively
those implementation arrangements are being handled. Take a simple example.
During an interview with a senior executive in a large organization engaged in a
major reconfiguration of service delivery it became clear that governance of the
planned changes was being handled by a newly constituted change board. But
when I explored the powers of that board I found that it could only refer an issue
of difficulty to the executive board and that several members of the executive
board claimed not to understand the principles behind the proposed reconfigu-
ration. Whatever the real explanation (and that is likely to be complex) the
immediate point here is that governance is unclear. We cannot possibly under-
stand that through merely observing that a governance process is in place. That
must be followed by looking at how clear and how effective those processes are
in practice.
The imperatives of professionalism, specialization, scale, geography and deliv-
ery to customers require those managing corporate organizations to divide them
up. Thereby directorates, divisions, groups, units, ‘strategic business units’ and
‘spin-offs’ are created. In practice this is further complicated by the many ‘part-
nerships’, joint ventures, out-sourcing relationships, etc. so characteristic of mod-
ern conditions. Thus the management of change requires the ‘management of
boundaries’ both internal and external. Vital to this is an established process of
reporting, accountability and decision which is positioned such that governance
of changes can be effective in terms of the ability to influence and call to account
all those engaged in the change process. In practice, therefore, we seek to estab-
lish whether change is structured effectively. All stakeholders need to be engaged,
made aware of their contribution to the changes, aware of the processes of report-

ing, have access to that process and be capable of being called to account within
that process. This is partly a question of the structuring of the change imple-
mentation process but partly to do with how that change implementation
process is handled within the context of the organization itself, looking at the
capability of the organization to handle change, focusing on issues such as cul-
ture and leadership among others.
To that end the model comprises three stages. First, we ask how ambitious the
change plan is. Next, we seek to identify whether a number of key components
of change architecture are in place. Finally, we look at how effectively those com-
ponents operate through looking at structure, positioning and at various behav-
ioural and/or cognitive aspects. The core of the approach is an aspiration to
achieve a better balance between the decision–action sequences which are the
core of change plans and the behavioural dimensions.
The model is shown in outline in Figure 18.1. It comprises the linked ideas of
ambition and change architecture, in effect proposing that an ambitious change

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