How to drive change

By ANGELA McCARTHY

Change management? Employee resistance is one of the biggest obstacles to business change. So how can change be managed to ensure employees buy into it?

Change is a part of life for businesses - but badly planned or poorly managed change can cause chaos and turbulence, says Kevin Gaunt, chief executive of New Zealand Institute of Management (NZIM) Auckland.

"Organisations need to effectively manage the change process if they want improved productivity and increased employee morale."

Change management consultant Ruth Sligo says to be successful in bringing about change, an organisation needs a clear vision of where it wants to go and an equally clear belief that maintaining the status quo isn't an option.

It also needs that vision to be successfully communicated, and requires appropriate people appointed to implement it, including people senior enough to have an impact and get buy-in across the organisation.

Tapping the hearts and minds of staff was essential to Westpac project manager Jackie Reid when she was given the task of changing a bank process to improve customer service. Her brief was to see if there was a way to speed up customer turnaround time without changing the IT component.

Howard Duff, the managing director of the Wellington-based strategic and performance improvement consultancy firm Aitch, was brought in to help.

"We felt we could make changes by looking at things in a new way, so Howard's role was to help us think differently about what we were doing," said Reid.

Duff ran workshops on goal-setting and process simulation, first with key staff and then with others who would be involved. Those workshops were invaluable, says Reid, because they opened everyone's minds to the possibilities of change.

"Once staff saw change was possible, they looked at how they could add value to the process and came up with a number of ideas for a new system and process."

This was particularly effective because the people who had to use the new process were the ones who worked on improving it. "After all, they know what will work and what won't."

Keeping everyone informed is another important aspect of managing the change, says Reid, who had the staff involved in making the improvements regularly updating their peers so everyone knew what was going on and who was involved. This also helped buy-in.

Reid has been impressed by the personal growth of the team, including herself.

"I've learned a lot about different ways of thinking that will help me manage other change in the future."

Duff's approach is based on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) exercises that offer ways for individuals and groups to change patterns or core beliefs that have become automatic or habitual but may no longer be of value for achieving goals.

The workshops with Westpac gave participants real experience of developing a "lean" process - one that only has value-adding activities, explains Duff. "This experience gives the team an idea of where they're heading and what it will feel like and look like when they achieve their goal."

Duff calls NLP the magic ingredient he adds to his technical and business experience when consulting.

"It is a waste of time if change only touches on structure, you also have to change people's beliefs about what can be done. That is what changes behaviour."

You must also be respectful of the past, Duff adds. "This is a big factor I've learned over the years. People's skills may be outdated, but they were appropriate at one point and should be respected for that. Often people introduce the idea of change by saying, 'Oh, this is crap - it needs to change', which is an adversarial approach and doesn't help anyone."

From senior management to the people on the shop floor, there must be passionate belief that the change is right for the well-being of the organisation, says Duff. "I liken it to a (good) virus that has to sweep through the organisation."

It is not a good move to try to keep potential change confidential, says Gaunt, yet many managers do.

"It has always been my experience that it is better to deliberately leak the details of the change as early as possible. What happens is that the grapevine in the organisation picks it up and and then it becomes common knowledge and less of a major issue when it is formally announced. This helps build acceptance."

Once people understand the rationale behind change, staff will be more positive, says Janet Lumsden, director of business efficiency consultancy Prospective.

"So, for example, if you are told that competitors have a certain system and we need it or we'll lose market share, then employees are more willing to learn new skills, take night courses, etcetera."

Managing the emotions of people facing change is important, she says. If people have been content with the status quo, they may feel they're losing control. There is fear - of loss of power and status, of moving to a new supervisor rumoured to be a bully, of change. This aspect of change requires respectful two-way communications, says Lumsden.

To Alan Schofield, director of Whakatane-based consultancy Teams in Business, trust is the essential ingredient. "Change won't go through successfully if management do not have the trust of staff."

Trust is won by managers setting goals and allowing staff the freedom - and trust - to find solutions and follow them through, says Schofield. "Organisations are full of good people who are capable. The key is bringing them in. You can't be prescriptive or unrelenting."

He says it does take guts at first to step back as manager and ask your staff to solve a problem when you're used to taking that control. And sometimes you know the solution won't work because of your experience, but you must always weigh up different ideas that come through.

"Usually they do come up with a better solution because there are 10 to 20 heads being creative, not just one, and it is more likely to succeed because people feel it is important and they're motivated."

Another cause of failure is that people are not informed, says Schofield. "There is a real challenge in doing things differently and moving away from management presenting a plan that has employees thinking, 'Whoa, what was wrong with what we were doing in the first place?'. Yet if management communicated the prospect of change differently by saying, 'This is what we have to do, how shall we do it?', there would be better buy-in."

CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS

Kevin Gaunt, chief executive of New Zealand Institute of Management (NZIM) Auckland, has 15 years change management experience.

He says to make change, the chief executive needs to be totally committed to a personal vision of that change and build that vision within the management team.

"Get the team in project-mode. For example, go away from the workplace and work through the change issues in depth, until everyone has a powerful vision of what is to be achieved and can define the 'future state' - how things will work after the change has happened."

This is then communicated thoroughly throughout the organisation. Communication doesn't have to be an expensive or laborious exercise, says Gaunt. The trick, though, is to ensure time and care is taken to make sure the management team is aligned and fully supportive. Then change will happen more readily, because the rest of the organisation takes their cue from the management team members, by observing their behaviour.

Then a clear change plan should be drawn up showing the stages of the change project and expected outcomes. This should be as simple and clear as possible and should be readily available to anyone in the organisation.

Finally the plan must include some early 'hits' - successful deliveries of change. This is very important, as people need to quickly feel the plan is worth following and this gives confidence when early success is seen.