Lecture 5

Definition of power: the capacity to influence others to accept one’s ideas or plans

1. Assess the current situation

2. Have a good idea of what the aimed-for situation looks like

3. Work out the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of moving the organization, or part of it, away from its current culture to what is perceived to be a more desirable one

4. Intervene to bring about cultural change

5. Monitor outcomes and adjust as needed

1. Observe the artifacts How do people dress? How are offices arranged? How do members of the organization interact and relate to one another? What is the pay and reward differential for people at the top of the firm and those at the bottom? Etc.

2. Read documents and talk to people to learn espoused beliefs and values What does the organization say about itself on its website and social media platforms? Ask five to ten people: What does this organization value and believe in? Etc

3. Observe and ask people about underlying assumptions What is the basic orientation to time in terms of past, present, and future? What time units are most relevant for the conduct of the organization’s business? Etc.

Sense-giving • Training • Pressure • Practice adaptation

The power to do things in organizations is critical to achieving change. Power is a crucial resource used by change agents to influence the actions and reactions of others.

While organizations confer specific authority and power on particular positions, change agents also need to be perceived as influential.

There are both internal psychological and external, reality-based roadblocks to exercising power. Clearly, power can be real—one can influence people with knowledge, persuade them by strength of personality and integrity, or use rewards and punishments to direct people’s behaviors. But the perception of power is just as important, if not more important, than the actual resources that a manager holds. If others do not believe that a person is influential, then the facts will have little impact until those perceptions are changed.

Departments within an organization may have different levels of power. This power is dependent on the centrality of the work the department does, the availability of people to accomplish important organizational tasks, and the ability of the department to handle the organization’s environment.

Yea-saying means that a person can make it happen. For example, he or she could decide who would be hired. Nay-saying power means that a person could prevent something from happening. Thus, nay-saying power would mean that someone could prevent a particular person from being hired but could not decide who would be hired.

Ability to cope with environmental uncertainty: Departments gain power if they are seen to make the environment appear certain. Thus, marketing and sales departments gain power by bringing in future orders, diminishing the impact of competitors’ actions, and providing greater certainty about the organization’s future vitality in the marketplace. During times of economic turbulence, finance departments gain power through their ability to help the firm navigate its way. Likewise, other departments and functions either enhance or diminish their power based upon their ability to absorb uncertainty and make the world more predictable and manageable for the organization

Low substitutability: Whenever a function is essential and no one else can do it, the department has power. Think, for example, of the power of human resources departments when no one else can authorize hiring of new personnel or the power of technology departments that often gets to decide what kind of hard- and software a firm will buy and use.

Centrality: Power flows to those departments whose activities are central to the survival and strategy of the organization or when other departments depend on the department for the completion of work. In most large white-collar organizations, systems people have power because of our dependence on the computer and the information derived from it. Close the management information systems and you shut down the organization. Highly regarded and well-developed information systems anchor the success of firms such as Federal Express, Walmart, and Statistics Canada

Observe the artifacts

Read documents and talk to people to gain an understanding of an organization’s espoused beliefs and values

Observe and ask people about underlying assumptions

If individual consequences are positive, it will be intermediate of positive support for change.

The consequences for the organization have less to do with that

In flip-flop changes, forces are weak and change events are not very important, and the situation could change only to reverse itself easily. Flip-flop changes tend to occur when participants have shifting preferences or are ambivalent concerning matters that are of only modest importance to them.

With breakpoint change, pressures are significant and the resistance will be strong. Under these circumstances, resistance will prevent change until the driving forces strengthen to the point that the system snaps to a new configuration.

Stakeholder analysis is the identification of those who can affect the change or who are affected by the change. Included in this is the analysis of the positions, the motives, and the power of all key stakeholders. Stakeholder management is the explicit influencing of critical participants in the change process. It is the identification of the “entanglements” in the organization, the formal and informal connections between people, structures, and systems.

The purpose of stakeholder analysis is to develop a clear understanding of the key individuals who can influence the outcome of a change and thus be in a better position to appreciate their positions and recognize how best to manage them and the context. A useful starting point is to think carefully about who will be affected and who has to change their behavior in order for the change to be successful. An obvious but often overlooked point is exactly that—someone or some people will be affected and some will have to change their behavior!∗ Once the key person or persons are identified, change leaders must focus on who influences those people and who has the resources and/or power to make the change happen or to prevent it from happening.

Members of the same groups can be encircled; different thickness of lines can be used to signify the strength of the relationship; different colors can be used to signify different things (e.g., level of support or resistance); or arrows can be used to point to influence patterns, with their thickness often used to characterize the strength of the relationship. The only constraint on the construction of a stakeholder map is one’s ability to translate data into a meaningful visual depiction of the key stakeholders and their interrelationships

One can think about moving each stakeholder on a change continuum from an awareness of the issues to interest to a desire for action to taking action or supporting action on the change.

He described sedentary activation as what happens when you sit and yell at the TV or social media feeds but don’t take concrete action. Feelings of powerlessness are not good for your health!

How employees perceive change will depend upon their assessment of the situation. If they see themselves and the organization benefiting from the change, they are more likely to embrace the change. If they see themselves as involved and participating in the initiative, they are more likely to be supportive

When ambivalence is prevalent, change leaders should create conditions that will increase the likelihood that people will voice concerns. They need to create an environment that welcomes feedback. People are more likely to speak up when the ambivalence stems from conflicting beliefs. When conflicting emotions are involved, though, she notes that individuals often have more difficulty giving voice to negative emotional responses. Ambivalence generates discomfort for people, causing them to seek resolution of the feeling. Once this resolution occurs and people come to feel more certain about their position, subsequent changes to attitudes become more difficult.

• focusing on helping people make sense of the proposed changes;

• listening for information that may be helpful in achieving the change;

• reconciling constructively people’s ambivalence

• sorting out what actions are now needed

• Injecting elements of uncertainty can prove helpful to change agents when dealing with ambivalence and also resistance

Alignment also needs to exist between what is communicated and the systems and structures of the organization. When the change leader asks you to do “A,” but other systems and structures tell you that “B” is what you should do, one should expect ambivalence and/or resistance until issues of alignment are addressed

The psychological contract represents the sum of the implicit and explicit agreements we believe we have with our organization. It defines our perceptions of the terms of our employment relationship and includes our expectations for ourselves and for the organization, including organizational norms, rights, rewards, and obligations. As such, they both influence and are influenced by the culture of the organization. Much of the psychological contract is implicit.

Its elements highlighted the importance of: creating awareness of the need for change; developing desire to participate in and support the change; developing knowledge of how to change and a clear sense of the vision for the change; developing people’s ability to implement the change and put it to use; and reinforcement to ensure the change stays in place

The survivor syndrome is a term that refers to the reaction of those who survive a poorly handled, traumatic change such as a downsizing. Survivor syndrome effects include lower levels of job satisfaction, motivation, and organizational loyalty; greater stress; greater ambiguity; vulnerability about one’s future position; a sense of entrapment in a negative situation; and guilt about being retained while others have been let go.64 To avoid some of the traps related to the survivor syndrome, individuals remaining with the organization need to understand the reasons for the decisions, feel people have been fairly dealt with, and that there are solid reasons for hope in the future of the organization and its positive implications for them.

The tendency to rely on competencies and strategies that have worked in the past is referred to as a competency or a complacency trap. 75 Faced with the need for change, they rely on those approaches that have served them well in the past, even though conditions have changed and the old strategies are no longer well aligned with their environment. Breaking out of these traps is not easy.

Our tendency to embrace information that supports our beliefs and reject contradictory information and a related tendency to think we know much more than we do about those things we have strong beliefs about. The more imbedded these are, the more work change agents have on their hands to help individuals (including themselves) break free of these traps so that they are more able to see, understand and adapt

if people have experienced long periods of minimal change, they will likely perceive higher risks with the proposed change. The perceived risk of the proposed change declines if there has been a moderate rate of change within the organization and a general normalization and level of comfort associated with past changes. As the normal rate of change increases in intensity and/or becomes drawn out, the perception of risk associated with the new change begins to rise again. When the rate and level of intensity of change reach a certain point, those involved will be ready to grasp at anything with the potential of offering a way out

• Engagement

  • Trust is increased and rumors are reduced when leaders share story after story about the problems that are driving the need for change, what is known and not known, process, action plans, and timelines.108 When coupled with the personal involvement of engaged leaders and executives and a meaningful degree of employee involvement in decisions that affect them (at minimum, the ability to ask questions, voice concerns, and receive answers that reduce uncertainty), individual adaptation and acceptance are advanced.

• Timeliness

• Employees often want to vent their concerns and frustrations, and, at times, grieve what has been lost. If this is to be handled constructively, they need to hear in a timely fashion and be given time to constructively process what they have heard. Employees often want to vent their concerns and frustrations, and, at times, grieve what has been lost. If this is to be handled constructively, they need to hear in a timely fashion and be given time to constructively process what they have heard.

• Two-Way Communication

• Change communication needs to be two-way, as change leaders need to be open to learning as much from exchanges as followers. A variety of communication channels are available to change leaders, and multiple channels are best. Redundancy is clearly preferable to gaps. Exposure to employees’ feedback and reactions allows change leaders to adapt strategies and approaches in an informed and sensitive manner.

Accepting Feelings as Natural

Managing Stress

Exercising Responsibility

Rethinking Resistance

Giving First Aid

Creating Capability for Change

four categories of goals and measurement data need to be highlighted in a balanced scorecard: financial, a company’s relationship with its customers, its internal business process, and its learning and growth. In doing so, management can achieve a balanced, integrated, and aligned perspective concerning what needs to be done to produce the desired strategic outcomes