Final assignment CM Thijs van der Velden s1645676
1

Introduction This paper consists of four different parts. The first two parts are two topics that were discussed during the guest lectures, which I think are very important in change management. The first topic is about communication, and how you can improve your communication to stimulate a fluent change. The second topic is about perception and mindset, which I think are also very important, because of all the different people with their corresponding views that are involved in a change. When you understand their perception and mindset, it gives you an opportunity to act on this and change them accordingly during the change. The last two parts are about changes in the reality, which I personally have encountered or that I think I will encounter. The first topic is about outsourcing, a topic of which I think is something a lot of organisations think about or need to think about. The second topic about leadership, something I am very interested in because I may come across a position where I need to lead people, and I would like to understand how to make suitable changes and guide these changes as a leader.

Table of contents Introduction Table of contents Communication Perception Outsourcing Leadership Conclusion

2

Communication An important subject that has been brought up a lot during the course Change Management is communication. To manage a change, communication within the organisation is key to make everyone involved more acceptive towards the change. As told in the guest lecture by Tom Swaak, listening is one of the starting points of good communication. He explained that through listening on a high level, people will feel understood, heard, and respected. To achieve this, you must first understand the different levels of listening: Figure 1: Levels of Listening by Otto Scharmer, ‘Theory U’1 Figure 1 illustrates the four levels of listening. The first level, Downloading , consists of asking simple questions without follow up questions. These questions are used to reconfirm opinions and judgements without any explanation. The second level, Factual listening is used to explore beyond your opinions and , judgements, and to get another opinion besides your own. The third level, Empathic listening to try to involve an emotional side in the conversation. , is This can be done through asking about the other person his or her feelings, and try to see their view on things. The fourth level, Generative listening final level, allows both persons to understand, , the feel, and respect each other. When this is accomplished collective creativity can be achieved.
1

http://transpiral.blogspot.nl/2010/09/diversity­crafting­questions.html

3

Through using these levels of listening, and trying to get to the highest level, a change manager is able to communicate in such a way that there is a much higher chance for progress and a successful change, as when there is no communication or bad communication. But of course, with only listening a change cannot be managed. There was a discussion in class whether a change could be managed at all, or that there was never any full control of a change. My opinion on this is that due to the high amount of different factors in a change, that it is extremely hard to manage them all. But through focusing on certain factors, depending on a different situation, a change can be managed accordingly. On of these factors is communication, and listening is a part of this. But using communication correctly and telling the people involved what they need to do and how they can do this, is another step in managing the change.Some important things2 that are important to communicate: ­ Communicate (2­way) clear objectives/timelines ­ Explain both reasons AND implications ­ Acknowledge/reward peoples’ new behaviors Another interesting point Tom Swaak made was that if you not only focus on your own communication, but also stimulate communication within the organisation (for example between departments), this leads to a smoother transition and helps people to understand the aspects involved with the change.

2

Taken from ‘Ten tips for managing change & resistance’ (Orig. J. Kotter/Mod. S. Foster)

4

Perception Another guest lecturer, Geert Heling, talked about leadership, change and mindset. He talked about the psychological aspects that come with change. Something very interesting about this is perception or a mindset. He describes a mindset as: ‘The way you are programmed to think, to give meaning, and therefore also to act’. He describes perception as ‘We act based on what we think is reality, we think reality is what we perceive’. The relationship between those two is described as ‘Continuous selective perception shapes a mindset, mindset is the programming of the mind’. The different mindsets and perceptions can be illustrated by an optical illusion. A famous example of such an illusion is this one: Figure 2: Optical illusion of dolphins and a couple (Geert Heling) In figure 2, some people see multiple dolphins, and some people see a man and a woman. Often only after telling that there are two possible views, they see the other view as well. This is very important in understanding and dealing with people in organisations. When you know that there are multiple perceptions and mindsets, you can explain the different views to the people involved. 5

An example that Geert Heling gave was that of the different perceptions the hierarchy in an organisation had on change: Figure 3: Responses to change (Geert Heling)

In figure 3 is shown that when a change is introduced, the view on the change is different for every level in the organisation. The top level feels that the change is isolating them, as if they are in their ivory tower giving orders, without real communication and connection between lower levels. The middle level feels squeezed, because both the upper level and lower level are pressuring them. The top level is giving orders, where the lower level is showing resistance to the orders the middle level is passing them on. The lower level feels resistant because they have no way in communicating their feelings to the upper levels. To counter this problem, you can focus on changing the perception and mindset of the middle management. This can be done by stimulating proper communication between all the levels and delegating more responsibilities to the lower level. Another model Geert Heling introduced was the ‘Integrated model for analysis of problems in organisations’, as shown in figure 4.

6

Figure 4: ‘Integrated model for analysis of problems in organisations’ (Geert Heling)

In figure 4 are the different viewpoints along with their corresponding policies, internal organisation, and staff/personnel shown. An example to show how the model works, is to look at the cultural viewpoint. You can see that the cultural viewpoint of a company consists of a policy of an internal organisational climate, where the internal organisation looks at co­operation and competition. The staff displays a certain attitude and commitment. Through understanding these different viewpoints you can look at which parts can be improved, and making these improvements as efficient as possible because the area that is lacking is clear. This introduces fast factors of improvement, as shown in figure 4 as 1,2 and 3. The slow factors are 5,6,8 and 9. The fast factors can be improved more easily, but are not always efficient to improve when making an organisational change. The slow factors have a large impact on the organisation, but take a lot more effort to change.

7

Outsourcing Something that was talked about a lot during the course, is outsourcing. A lot of companies try to cut costs through outsourcing different business processes. When outsourcing is executed, it introduces a large change for the organisation. In my further career, I would like to be able to identify where it is a good idea to outsource, and how to manage the corresponding change. To illustrate the process of change management during an outsourcing initiative, I found an interesting article that describes this.3 In the article is described how there are four principles which result in good change management. These four principles are: ­ Visionary leadership ­ Differentiated stakeholder analysis ­ Continuous and open communication ­ Detailed planning and tracking Visionary leadership Within visionary leadership they tell that to have visionary leadership, there needs to be clarity about the vision of the outsourcing initiative and its rationale. Everyone involved needs to know how the project was initiated, who stands behind it and what the goals are. Another point they make is that there is a need for visibility, such as as many face­to­face meetings as possible. Differentiated stakeholder analysis The most important part of this principle is to know the critical success partners. If you get the support of the critical stakeholders and help them to develop a personal relationship with the approach, they will feel as if they are an important part of the project. Some examples to accomplish this are compensation and bonus packages. Continuous and open communication I already discussed a lot about communication, and a lot of that comes back in the article, but something interesting the article addresses that I have not discussed is that you should address fear. If you define and communicate the “make or break factors” of the deal, this raises awareness of critical success factors. This is something we also discussed during a guest lecture. The conclusion of that discussion was that it can be important to show people the consequences of, for example, not cooperating to get their support. Detailed planning and tracking Something also discussed in this course is that for successful change management you should provide a clear timeline of the process. To guide this, the article states that not only

3

http://www.trestlegroup.com/wp­content/uploads/2010/07/TG_Change_Management_For_Outsourcing.pdf

8

does a timeline need to clear, the current progress of the process should be communicated to make sure everyone involved knows how successful the initiative is.

Leadership An important part of expressing good leadership is how a leader deals with changes. I would like to be, if i become a manager of some sort, to know how to be this kind of leader. While Geert Heling talked about leadership, I think Marcel de Lijster also made a lot of strong points which I can use during my future career. He talked about the skills a leader should have, which are: ­ Coaching/counseling skills ­ Celebrating differences ­ Speed of trust ­ Don’t think in wrong or right ­ Know when to be on stage and when backstage About coaching/counseling skills he described ‘differentiated leadership’. Differentiated leadership is a theory developed by Edwin Friedman4 in which is described that leaders should take a stand which is not influenced by other people, such as the anxiety of others. This does not mean a differentiated leader should not connect with other people, but that you need to identify where people have anxiety and diffuse those situations. This is well explained in a YouTube video and I recommend people who are interested in learning about leadership to watch it.5 Celebrating differences is about making sure that everyone knows where their strengths and weaknesses are, and to take advantage of those. It also helps unite people in an organization. 6 Speed of trust means realising that trust is an important factor within an organisation, and to sustain and develop trust. This means dealing with mistakes in a way that does not harm the trust of the people who made the mistake. Not thinking in wrong or right is very hard for me personally. I often think that one choice is the best one, without properly evaluating the other choices. Marcel de Lijster told that you should not think in wrong or right but only think about the different choices. This is something that makes a lot of impact on the whole process of change management.
4 5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Friedman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgdcljNV­Ew 6 http://celebration.appstate.edu/about/why­celebrate

9

And finally needing to know when to be on stage and when to be backstage, means that you need to let people make their own decisions, but still making sure that you support them and guiding them in their decisions. You still need to be a leader, but give people their freedom.

10

Conclusion The most important part of this paper for me is to understand the steps you have to make when managing a change. Although communication is one of the most important, but often overlooked things when managing a change, I do think that the main points are very clear: ­ Not only communicate properly, but also listen carefully ­ Communicate to everyone involved, and involve everyone ­ Stimulate communication within the organisation In my opinion, when you follow these points it is a great baseline for good communication. Perception is something that I found hard to understand in change management, but still very important. Always take in account the different perceptions when dealing with a change, and try to find the area where the problem lies, and influence the perception. To guide an outsourcing initiative in a proper structure, you need to take the following four principles in account: ­ Visionary leadership ­ Differentiated stakeholder analysis ­ Continuous and open communication ­ Detailed planning and tracking Finally, to be a good leader during a change, a good standpoint is being a differentiated leader.

11