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Managing Change and Innovation, “ The only thing constant is change” My…
Managing Change
and Innovation
Brief Introduction of Change
Change is a constant for organizations and managers.
Since change can not be eliminated, managers must learn how to manage it successfully.
If managers fail to deal with change properly, then they will be eliminated.
What is change and how do managers deal with it?
If it weren’t for change, a manager’s job would be relatively easy. The manager would be free from uncertainty and there would be no reason to adapt. Decision making would be simplified, because the outcome of each alternative could be predicted with extreme accuracy.
1.
Definition:
Change is an organizational reality. At some point during a manager’s job, changes in the workplace will have to be made.
2.
These changes are organizational changes. There are
three categories:
Structure
Technology
People
Areas covered in organizational
structure changes:
Authority relationships
Coordinating mechanisms
Job designs
Spans of control
Areas covered in organizational
technology changes:
Work processes
Work methods
Equipment
Areas covered in organizational
people changes:
Attitudes
Expectations
Perceptions
Behavior
Why do organizations need to change?
Although internal and external forces can constrain managers’ actions, they also can create pressure to force managers to implement changes.
These are changes that are necessary in order for the organization to survive and the manager to keep his or her job (at least).
Sources of external pressure
that might force an organization and managers to implement changes:
Marketplace
Government law and regulations
Technology
Labor markets
Economic circumstances
Sources of internal pressure
that might force an organization and managers to implement changes:
Organizational strategy
Organization’s workforce composition
Employee attitudes
Who initiates organizational change?
Organizational changes need a catalyst. People who act as catalysts and assume the responsibility for managing the change process are called
“change agents”
.
Any
manager can be a change agent.
When we talk about organizational change, we usually assume that it is initiated and carried out by a manager within the organization.
However, the change agent also can be a non-manager. Examples include: internal staff specialists or outside consultants whose expertise is in change implementation.
For major system-wide changes, large organizations often will hire outside consultants to provide advice and assistance.
Since these consultants come from outside the organization, they can offer an objective perspective that insiders usually lack. However, they may not completely understand the organization. They also are prone to initiating more drastic changes than insiders, because they do not have to live with the changes’ consequences. The latter can be either an advantage or a disadvantage.
Internal managers who act as change agents may be more thoughtful and possibly more cautious in implementing the changes, because they must live with the consequences of their actions.
These managers usually have a better understanding of their organization’s history, culture, people, and operating procedures.
How does organizational change happen?
Two metaphors
often are used to clarify the change process:
Calm-waters
– envisions the organization as a large ship crossing a calm sea,
White-water rapids
– envisions the organization as a small boat navigating a raging river with uninterrupted white-water rapids.
The two metaphors present distinctly different approaches to understanding and responding to change.
The
Calm-waters
metaphor was dominate in the minds of managers for a long time.
Using this metaphor, the prevailing model to handle changes was
the three step change process
. The steps were:
Unfreeze the status quo
Change to the new state of things
Freeze the new change to make it permanent
Unfreezing the status quo
could be done in
three ways:
Increase the use of driving forces to direct behavior away from the status quo,
Decrease the use of restraining forces which hinder movement from the status quo,
Use a combination of the two.
The metaphor and its suggested methodology became less popular starting in the late 1970s.
The
“white-water rapids”
metaphor started to become popular in the 1970s.
It describes a world where change is happening all the time and all around us.
In addition, if an organization and its managers are not prepared to respond to changing conditions, then survival becomes questionable.
Stability and predictability do not always exist.
“ The only thing constant is change”
My old boss Ray