Page 64 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Transforming the organization
(through overwork, the challenge of leading change in an uncertain world, the
pressure of dealing with other, often anxious, people, the inherent uncertainties
all are subject to in some degree and so on) and for those who are either indif-
ferent, opposed or fearful of change.
Organizational learning is a vital component of effective change. Following
the work of Quinn (see in particular Quinn, 1992) organizational restructuring
and strategic change should be based on effective diagnosis and benchmarking,
information and incentive systems. A key point, however, in achieving strategic
change amidst organizational circumstances looking less and less like traditional
hierarchical structures is that ‘managed incrementalism’ is a strategy for change
implementation explicitly designed to manage risk. However, this does not need
to imply that change is slow, random or gradual.
All of this assumes that change implementation requires the following:
■ that we build an awareness of the need for change;
■ that the case for change is made convincingly and credibly;
■ that the process of change is a learning process – you don’t get everything right
initially;
■ that dramatic change can feel chaotic and uncertain as people seek to come to
terms with new skills etc.;
■ that attention must be given to broadening and mobilizing support for
change, whether through task forces and project teams, through the use of
incentive systems and training, through pilot schemes and so on;
■ crystallizing the vision and focus for the organization but not necessarily at
the outset – indeed initially, the vision may be very broad, and much has to be
learned before an emerging strategic vision can be articulated;
■ that the focus is on people and on the process of change.
Alexander (1988) provides a review of the implementation literature. He supports
the idea of Pressman and Wildavsky (1973) that ‘policies are continuously trans-
formed by implementation actions that simultaneously alter resources and objec-
tives’. Thus strategy (or policy) and implementation interact and emerge. Alexander

also notes that implementors are, or should be, concerned both with preventing fail-
ure (by avoiding the common implementation problems) and promoting success.
There are three learning modes which are of relevance to managers concerned
by change:

1 Learning by doing: this is an internal process. We learn by experimentation, by
trial and error, by pilot trials and so on.
2 Learning by use: this is essentially learning from the external world. We learn
about how to improve our own products/services by gaining feedback from
customers and by competitive benchmarking. Thus we gain from the cus-
tomer’s experience of using our products/services and through comparing our-
selves with competitor organizations.
3 Learning from failure: which speaks for itself but which, to be available to us,
demands that we accept that failure will happen from time to time.

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