Success Factor: Change Management

Change communication and change marketing as key success factors

Reiner Czichos

• Publisher: Haufe
• Year: 2015
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9783648079003
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

That companies are able to manage a lasting change, they have to bring their employees in change projects. This book focuses on the most important aspects of the change management: What are critical success factors in the implementation of change processes? And how can employees be inspired for change with the help of change marketing?About the book: - How to simplify the change process for your staff.- Why change needs conflicts.- Change marketing and innovation management.- Change project management, organizational and process design.- LIFO ®-charts and change-lexicon.

1 In private life: change-professional! In business life: change-amateur

Is fear of change innate? Looking at change-processes in companies one could find quite some evidence for this. From managers and professionals one can hear 1,001 reasons why this or that change is not good, why it never would work out, and why it must be stopped. People often fight change with tooth and nail. But don’t all of us have a competent teacher for change: our private life?

1.1 The whole of life is change

[10]

Our whole life from conception to death is change. One change follows another. Look at some of the major changes in your life: kindergarten, primary school, high school, „the first time“, university, the first car, exams, entry into professional life, change of jobs, wedding, birth of the first child, relocation from one place to another, getting divorced, your fiftieth birthday, severe sickness of your spouse, death of a parent, etc. These are only 17 changes, there are so many more.

Stress-research shows that such changes cause even higher psychological and physical burdens than hectic 12-hour workdays as well as changes like new processes and structures in a company, which people often complain about, because they cause so much stress.

We have learned in our private life to cope with change, even to welcome it. So, one could conclude that all of us should be change masters. And we actually are. We have proved that dozens of times in our private life.

1.1.1 Learn from your private life

Bear in mind that you can apply your change experiences in private life to your professional life. If you have mastered those private changes you do not need to fear changes in companies.

So what and how can you learn from private changes?

There are numerous helpers available to support us.

• Family and friends. We can call upon them anytime.
• There are professionals who can help us through the changes.
• In these moderns days we have hundreds of books with advice for all these changes. And there are other helpers like coaches and priests.[11]

Rituals

• There are rules for private change processes and everyone plays a certain role. Look, for example, at the process of getting married. Depending on the culture people live in, these processes involve more or less well-defined rules and roles, which we learn by observing the changes of others in our environment. They give us security that things proceed as they should.
• Friends and family come together at our transitions. We dine, we celebrate, and we party. These events give us and others clear signals and messages, that we take steps from one phase of our life into another.

Symbols

• There are symbols which we use to remind us and others that we have changed: e.g. the school cone, the graduation cap or the wedding ring.

Models

• We see how friends and family are going through these changes. They are models for us, models we often admire.

Stories

• Some people write about these events in their diaries.
• … and when we meet our friends and family over the years, we tell stories about these events, lots of stories, and often the same story each time: „Do you remember, when I …?“ We scan through our collection of photos and films
• These days we even share our stories with „the world“ on Facebook or YouTube.

All this and more helps us prepare for and go through change, even if there are negative changes such as the unforeseen death of a partner or friend in an accident.

1.1.2 Become a change-professional

It’s a pity that most managers – if one can trust the findings of researchers and the experience of coaches – do not really take enough time for their private life. As shown above, one can learn a lot from private life.[12]

Take a few minutes (or more) and look back into your private life to review all the changes you have gone through.

• How did you manage them?
• Were you despondent or anxious?
• Were you full of energy and motivated?
• Who were your helpers?
• How did they help you?
• What were the ceremonies and rules?
• How did you make others aware of the change?
• …

I claim that you can learn a lot about the changes in your company and what you, as the manager, could do to help your people accept and go through the changes.

There is a lot of talk and writing on the work-life-balance these days. The need for harmony and balance between one’s private life and one’s work life is growing. One way of balancing these two „lives“ is by learning from private life to benefit work life. For then you would change the work life in such a way that you will have more time and energy again for your private life. Both belong together: there is only one life.

1.2 Why do changes in work life bother people?

As a manager at the top of a company or of a department or of a team it is easy for you to make decisions to change processes, structures, jobs, methods, rules, etc. You – maybe with the expensive support of some business consultants – have made a good analysis of the current situation, clearly defined the problems to be solved, clearly designed the future state, and have a plan to implement the change. Simple. You announce the change and order people to implement the change. There are many good reasons for the change, so you cannot imagine that there may be someone who does not understand and does not accept and implement the change. It is obvious. It is rational. At last: It is a minor detail, isn’t it?[13]

But, hold on. Think for a minute. Here is a „minor“ change case:

A case

In your open space office each member of your team has a printer next to his desk. In some cases two people are sharing one printer, but they do not even have to stand up to take the printouts. You have decided to end this now. There will be a central printer with the newest high-tech printers and all the features one could wish. The best of the best. Of course, you think that everybody will be happy because they can use all these great technical features. Just you and your assistant have your own new printer, of course – in your office in a closed corner of the open space.

Doesn’t a thought strike you – the thought that this change is not just a technical change, a minor change that doesn’t bother anyone?

I claim that this could be felt as a major change for some people. Why?

They have to change their habits, their working routines. They cannot just print out a document to check if it is okay anymore. They would have to stand up and walk 15 meters to the printer centre. Will they want to print and then go and take each single printout? No, they will have to plan what and when to print.[14]

I think I do not have to expand further on this example.

This case shows clearly the key problem of potentially any change of processes, structures, rules and roles, tools, etc.: People will have to change behaviour! They will have to change their behaviour patterns!

Fig. 1.2: Genetic Programming

This graphic shows that we are „programmed“, by our genes and by education and experience.

The outer circle symbolizes the genetic inheritance. In a way we are already programmed by birth, but not yet programmed once for all.

Within the frame of our genetic inheritance we develop our behaviour patterns by education and experience. The more often we behave in a certain way, the deeper this behaviour is programmed and comes automatically in certain situation. The deeper programmed, the more difficult it is and the more effort and time do we need to invest to change to a new behaviour pattern.

A case

Do you still remember how you learned to drive a car? I confess that I caused an accident during one of my driving lessons. It was the time when mini-skirts came into fashion. My driving instructor was a woman. She wore a mini-skirt. I was distracted. So it happened. The car hit a fence on the right side of the street. Not a real big accident, fortunately. I was not able to do a few things at the same time: Watching the street and the traffic, steering, and …

After some decades of driving cars I can do all these things at the same time, and even more: I see all the traffic signs, I see an interesting building, I see interesting people, I feel reminded of distant memories, etc., and at the same time I am still driving my car. Driving a car is deeply programmed.[15]

Interesting anecdote: For about 20 years I have had a car with automatic transmission. When I fly into other cities and rent a car, sometimes they give me a car with manual gear change. Then I discover that my hand goes automatically to the gear stick. My hand still is programmed to use the stick. I have learned and practiced it that way. And when I arrive back in my car with automatic transition my hand goes automatically to the gear stick …

You can observe the same „stories“ every day in your company, in the offices and/or in the production hall. People have and stick to their long-term habits. E.g.: They have stored all documents electronically, but they still print out many of the documents and store them in some files … „you never know!“

The examples I mentioned are, at first sight, quite simple changes indeed. They seem easy to implement. Now look at changes like these: You ask one member of your team to participate more actively in discussions during a meeting. Or you ask one of your team to improve her style in writing mails. Or you ask someone to take the role of the one on the hotline for customers.

Table of contents

• Table of content
• Copyright Notices
• Imprint
• Foreword (Success Factor: Change Management)
• Preface
• 1   In private life: change-professional! In business life: change-amateur
• 2   Change management and innovation
• 3   Organisation design is a core-mission for executives
• 4   People in change
• 5   The LIFO® Method and Typology in Change Management
• 6   Change Project Management
• 7   Change Marketing
• List of Literature
• Acknowledgements