It’s like you are on the expressway trying to change a flat tire while your car is moving! This is the change driven world we live in today. No time to stop! And the current economic crisis has “put the pedal to the metal!”

Organizations are remapping business plans to stay in business, let alone maintaining market position, profits, and shareholder value. This remapping results in a number of severe and quick changes impacting people, operations, production, structure, headcount, customer relations, and shareholder value. Some changes are actually implemented well, with project plans, timelines, and deliverables rigorously managed by expert project managers in real time.

On the other hand, poorly implemented change is costly in many ways: lower production, cost over runs, implementation delays, customer complaints, employee stress, absenteeism, and turnover.

One opportunity to mitigate the costly impact of changes is to do a better job at managing people through change. But organizations oft en overlook this opportunity.

So, why don’t some change initiatives “take” successfully?
The critical element often left out of a change plan is a detailed transition plan, which maps how to get the people through the changes successfully, cost effectively, and in alignment with the required outcomes.

But isn’t change the same as transition?
No.
Change is focused on date, task, event, and result. It’s relatively quick. It’s the “go live” date for the new system, structure, policy, program, product roll-out or CEO. Transition is the employees’ psychological and behavioral responses to change. It’s oft en messy, slow, and can produce organizational and employee stress and costly disconnects with the change implementation plan.

Because it takes longer, transition creates service delivery and cost disconnects with the implementation plan deliverables. Oft en, there are company performance and productivity slippages due to a wide range of employee behavioral responses ranging from acceptance, though passive  or active resistance to sabotage.

We need a deep dive into change and transition management principles.
Corporate management training programs usually provide basic guidance on managing change. But this training often does not deliver practical skills on how to manage employee behavior and performance.

For example: How do people respond to change?
How many of your team leaders and managers know the three principles of how people will respond to change, whether it is at work or in their personal world?

• Don’t like change to their status quo, their “comfort zone.” So they resist.
• Resist in different ways based on their individual psychological make up, their economic and social needs, experience, education, and attitude about the change.
• Adjust to change at different speeds and some not at all. So this makes the manager’s job very challenging because they are the implementers trying to satisfy their superiors while trying to support their unit through the change.

According to highly regarded management consultant William Bridges, successfully leading people through their journey through one change involves three key phases which must be accomplished in sequence:

1. Endings - Letting go of the past
2. Neutral Zone - An in-between period of psychological adjustment and transformation which leads to the…
3. New Beginning - Embracing the new way of doing things and getting on with the job.

Each phase transition requires different coaching, communication, and people management skills.

LETTING GO OF THE PAST is the key step to moving forward. Unless there is 100% buy-in, the potential for a successful change is weakened. Managers need to create boundary events which engrave a “there is no going back” paradigm shift in employees’ minds while celebrating the past, then agreeing goals and actions to move forward.

THE IN-BETWEEN “NEUTRAL ZONE” is a difficult adjustment period or both employees and organization, because the transformation is occurring with the same pressure to maintain performance. Employee responses in the neutral zone are oft en compared to phases of the Kubler-Ross grieving process - denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance. The good news is that this time, an excellent opportunity to encourage and engage employees in innovating and trying new solutions which moves the organization forward.

COMPLEX, COSTLY AND UNPRODUCTIVE TRANSITION
This happens when:

1. The Management does not have a high level dashboard of all current and planned changes in order to plan them effectively.
The result is changes are often initiated by management levels without coordination. Changes flow like a waterfall over employees. Even high performing employees break down. It’s the expert juggler dropping all objects because he was given too many to juggle. Mental and physical energy drains! Stress buckets overflow! The problem is that employees have little or no time to recover between changes. This is transition deficit.

Transition deficit impacts employees and company performance negatively.

One solution to getting a high level view of the change landscape is to create a continuing cross-functional transition monitoring team (TMT) to map all changes: to assess the change-transition dynamics in play in the company; to prepare communications, recommendations, and advise senior management.

2. Management does not recognize the “marathon effect” during change planning and implementation.
Ever run a marathon? All runners are stacked up by the hundreds with the elite runners at the front. As the race proceeds, runners string out with the elite runners way out in front of the average participant – this is “the marathon effect.”

Senior business leaders and change planners are like elite marathon runners - well ahead of the people who must make the change successful. They expect all employees “on board” and ready on the “Go Live” date. But the reality is that employees lag all over the change continuum and may not even be ready at the sound of the starting gun.

Louis Riel, who led a human rights rebellion in Canada in the late 1800s and executed for his change initiative, was quoted as saying: “Don’t get so far in front of your troops as they may see you as the enemy.”

3. Managers are unable to diagnose or treat “Survivor Syndrome.”
A very important group of employees remains in an organization when retrenchment and reduction in force (RIF) occur. These “survivors” go through their own transition challenge. Their world has changed too; the organization is leaner and different; job duties have changed and workload increased; their site is closed, relocation is resisted; team mates with old friendships are gone; promotion paths are fewer; job security is now perceived as tenuous; and ability to provide for family is threatened. But no one pays attention to their struggle through the change.

4. Management does not have an effective change communication plan. Do change announcements come on short notice and with “turn on a peso” directive? This really gets people frustrated, particularly if the change took a long time in planning but only a few people knew about it.
Each transition phase requires different communication planning, strategies, and tactics. So leaders need to update the change storyboard frequently and consistently across all units through a well crafted multi channel communication plan. Managers need to communicate, communicate, then communicate which includes a lot of listening. A transition savvy manager knows how to listen, prepare, and deliver communications.

5. Organizations don’t consider how cross-cultural differences impact change management and implementation.
There are significant differences between Filipino, Western, and other Asian countries’ history, cultural values and mix, and social norms which impact change implementation and ultimately business performance, particularly if a western business approach is forced. Just put a decision team together from Japan, India, the Philippines, USA, and Australia and watch the dynamics. So, change implementers would do well to understand each other’s basic history, socioeconomics, local values and norms, business practices and ethics to improve decision making and communication, and ultimately the success of the organization. 

So companies should audit and improve their practices which make change and transition less complex and costly.

* The above article is published with permission from Management System Asia Magazine. It was published in their magazine in November 2009 Volume 1, Issue 5. Click here to know more about Management System Asia Magazine.

About the Author
Bob Flecknell is a Canadian Human Resource Management practitioner and senior consultant with TeleDevelopment Services Inc. (Philippines), which supports the contact center and BPO industry.