From resistance to acceptance: Mastering organizational change management
Tempo Team
“Change or die.” This dramatic maxim is often repeated in industry to illustrate how long-term success depends on the evolution of business practices and products. Technology, market forces, and consumer demands constantly shift, and companies must adapt.
Despite its necessity, change is often a pain point for organizations. In fact, 70% of business transformations fail. Organizational change management (OCM) helps companies remain competitive in a shifting business environment by evolving processes and adopting strategies to take advantage of the changing marketplace.
What is organizational change management (OCM)?
Organizational change occurs when a company transforms a central operational element, such as:
Culture
Underlying technologies
Infrastructure
Internal processes
OCM guides the company’s transition to a successful conclusion. The process helps businesses change while minimizing negative consequences to the company and its employees.
What can cause organizational change?
Many influences can prompt significant changes within an organization, including:
Whether it originates internally or externally, organizational change manifests in one of two ways:
Adaptive change addresses evolving needs through incremental adjustments
Transformative change occurs on a large scale and significantly shifts how the company operates
Change management models and frameworks
Fostering acceptance and adoption of new processes among employees is often challenging. Over time, leaders have developed various methodologies to manage organizational change. The top four models are:
1. Lewin’s Change Management Model
Social scientist and physicist Kurt Lewin developed this framework in the 1940s to manage change. Since its inception, it has become the industry’s most popular and effective model.
Lewin described effective transitional change using three steps:
Unfreezing: This preparatory phase helps those affected by the transition leave the status quo behind.
Change: During this stage, communication is critical to keep staff apprised of status and progress. Upper management empowers employees to act by sharing information and offering support.
Refreeze: Once the organization has implemented new strategies, anchor them permanently through continued support and communication. Otherwise, employees may fall back into old habits.
(Source: SlideGrand)
2. Kotter’s 8-Step Process
The change model developed by Harvard professor Dr. John Kotter is a top-down model focused on the people involved rather than the change itself. The change process begins with creating a state of urgency and ends with the institution of change.
(Source: Lucidity)
3. The McKinsey 7S Model
Leaders should leverage the McKinsey model if they know the organization must change but aren’t sure how. Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. first proposed this change management process, which breaks the transition down into seven core elements:
Shared values
Skills
Staff
Style
Strategy
Structure
Systems
Companies then evaluate each element to identify where change and realignment are necessary or whether they require reinforcement to maintain organizational quality.
(Source: Visual Paradigm Online)
4. ADKAR Model
Jeff Hiatt and his team studied more than 900 organizations undergoing transitional change to develop the basis for the ADKAR model. The model emphasizes that leaders must accomplish five outcomes with each employee to ensure change takes hold.
(Source: CrowJack)
Your preferred change management plan depends on your company’s goals, the scope of the evolution, and the number of areas affected. No matter the model, a business’s primary concern should be communicating with and supporting its employees during the transition period. The process is easier when staff embrace change.
Strategies to manage change: How to manage organizational change properly
For organizational adaptation to take hold, you need more than just a suitable change model. Bosses must become change leaders, relying on soft skills to help their team navigate the process. If leaders fail to engage with those around them, morale will suffer, and staff may resist the transition.
Start with a compelling vision
Fear of the unknown makes people reluctant to embrace change. As a leader, convert fear into enthusiasm by offering an engaging vision of the future state. Show employees how change will translate into success and improve customer outcomes.
This information helps secure employee buy-in and provides a sense of purpose.
Culture: Stay focused on people as change occurs
Change can’t only be systemic. It needs to be cultural. Before any significant organizational change, you must alter how people think, communicate, and behave.
Cultural transformation begins when staff members embrace the principles driving change. This transformation relies on leadership to do the following:
Define the issue: The need for transformation isn’t always obvious. Managers must communicate the reasons behind the change to ensure employees are aligned.
Provide support: For staff to adapt, bosses must help them face uncertainty. Provide training, conduct collaborative meetings, and allow each team member to facilitate brainstorming sessions so employees fully integrate the transition’s outcomes into each process.
Reinforce change: Conduct performance evaluations based on updated systems and processes to ensure a sustained change. Identify where adoption has taken hold and whether staff needs further support.
Humility: Leadership through change requires good relationships
If you’re in charge of organizational change, recognize you don’t have all the answers. A flexible, democratic management style is an effective way to lead change. Encourage staff to share their insights using:
One-on-one meetings to provide a safe space for employees to discuss their concerns
Anonymous online surveys to generate candid feedback on the effectiveness of the changes
Informal gatherings to seek input and strengthen relationships among team members
Accountability: Be a trustworthy leader
Earning and maintaining employees’ trust streamlines change, especially in times of crisis. The best way to retain their faith is to remain accountable and take ownership of your actions.
Demonstrate reliability by:
Reviewing decisions with a third party, establishing that leaders are subject to the same performance evaluations as other team members
Owning up to mistakes and acknowledging the need for improvement
Modeling transparency via regular progress updates throughout the transformation
Show confidence in your team
Leaders must guide employees decisively and courageously through a transition. That can be challenging, especially if you’re apprehensive about the changes yourself.
Reset your perspective by identifying the transformation’s benefits, including aspects you enjoy. Share those insights with your team so everyone can look forward to new opportunities rather than dread the challenges.
Things may be difficult in the short term, but there will also be triumphs and silver linings. Use them to renew motivation and drive bold decision-making.
Goal-orientation: Be clear and aim together
Your team will be more motivated to pursue change-related strategic objectives when they feel their opinion is heard and valued. Work together to set transitional goals and identify the best approach, giving members ownership over the changes. Identify common goals by asking:
What’s most important to the team in the short term?
What success metrics or KPIs should the group use to measure success?
Regularly consult your staff about plans to achieve these objectives, encouraging them to become advocates. Invested team members will smooth the process for more reluctant colleagues.
Empathy: Never forget you’re leading people through change
Business transformations might benefit the company, but staff members are typically more invested in their own future. Will they retain their job? Do they need additional training? How will the transition affect their work-life balance? Leaders must reassure and support staff throughout the process.
Adjust as needed
If one-on-ones and surveys show your plan isn’t producing the desired effect, remain open to alternative tactics. Change management is a learning process, so consider the insights provided by your teammates and adjust when necessary while staying focused on big-picture goals.
Challenges of organizational change
Resistance to change is often rooted in one or more of the following issues:
Motivation
Personal changes (e.g., eating healthier or starting a meditation routine) are often motivated from within. Intrinsic motivation drives people to successfully alter their lives.
Professional changes are often extrinsic, imposed on staff by leadership without offering the reason, purpose, or benefits so employees can process what’s happening. This frequently results in resistance.
J-Curve
The J-Curve change model, proposed by Virginia Satir, describes what happens to performance when management alters the status quo. At first, performance drops as team members adjust to the new normal. As they gain confidence, performance begins to improve. Over time, teams experience performance levels higher than the pre-transition state.
The lowest point of the J is the trickiest to manage. Staff may need help with new processes or responsibilities during this period, leaving them feeling ineffective and clumsy. Losing a sense of expertise is unpleasant and can lead to more resistance.
Scale
Companies tend to roll out new methodologies, processes, and organizational changes all at once. That’s a lot for teams to take in. Consider the impact of such a large-scale change in terms of the J-Curve. The time staff spends at the bottom of the J is proportional to the size of the change, meaning the bigger the adjustment, the bigger the impact on employee performance.
If you don’t lay the groundwork for a protracted transition, you increase the likelihood that staff will feel discouraged and impatient with the new process. They may abandon it altogether.
Track record
Every time a company fails to introduce a change, the staff becomes less likely to accept another. This reluctance is risk aversion. It can lead team members to dismiss new ideas or changes because they’ve seen countless initiatives come and go.
Uncertainty
Humans prefer a resolution – even a bad one. Given a choice between being wrong or remaining uncertain, most people would rather know outright they’re incorrect.
When change is filled with uncertainty, it impacts people’s desire to comply. There’s no guarantee your staff will be able to climb out of the bottom curve of the J-Curve or stick with the change long enough to see improvements. This uncertainty may lead them to resist.
Rather than imposing changes, engage employees by showing them the benefits. You’ll create a dialogue that reaffirms their role in the transition while making them feel valued and motivated.
Organizational change and project management
Business transformations are less intimidating when you treat them like any other project. Divide the transition into steps, make a plan, and set a timeline.
It may not be easy, but organizational transparency can smooth the transition. Create a change roadmap using Tempo Strategic Roadmaps to outline the entire process. Roadmapping lets you plot all required tasks, helping teams estimate resources, manage priorities, and track progress. It also enables you to provide accurate status reports so teams can see how far they’ve come.
