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2012 ARC Conference2012 “Lightening the Admin Burden”

Development Session on“Change Management”

2Irene Roele

Irene’s approach

© copyright R Hurlmeier: “Zebrastreifen”

3Irene Roele

Some issues in [Change] Management – plus the jargon

• Does change management work?• Types of change• Towards a knowledge-based view of the organisation,

implications for Registry/Student Experience services• Strategic Insight (sense making) and Strategic Execution

– “Awareness is only the beginning, of course. ........... But you shouldn’t expect immediate results” (Bloom, Sadun and Van Reenen, 2012)

– The first question a data-driven organization asks itself is not “What do we think?” but “what do we know”? ... It requires organisations to break a habit : pretending to be more data-driven than they actually are. (McAfee & Brynjolffsen, 2012)

• Leadership implications: developing a ”second operating system” (Kotter, 2012)• Communities of practice and the art of strategic conversation: driving strategy

into action– Dynamic capabilities at IBM (Harreld et al, 2007)

• ‘It’s big data and analytics stupid’

4Irene Roele

What the experts are saying

• “We can’t keep up with the pace of change, let alone get ahead of it.” (Kotter, HBR, November 2012)

• “Change is not only dynamic, emergent and non-linear, but also frustrating and daunting” (Balogun, 2006)

• “Poor management is rampant and most leaders of poorly managed institutions are unaware of the deficiencies”. (Bloom, Sadun and Van Reenen, 2012)

• Failure rates of up to 70% on change initiatives in organisations (Kotter, 2012, Balogun, 2006; Beer and Nohria, 2000)

5Irene Roele

Types of change

Evolutiontransformational changeimplemented gradually throughdifferent stages and inter-related initiativesSpeed of

Change

Extent of Change

Incremental

Re-alignmentTransformation

Big Bang

Adaptationless fundamental changeimplemented slowly through staged initiatives

Re-Constructionchange undertaken to re-alignthe way the organizationoperates, but in a more dramatic manner thanre-alignment. Often forced andre-active

Revolutiontransformational change that occurs via simultaneousinitiatives on many fronts, andoften in a relatively short space of time

(Adapted from Hope Hailey and Balogun, 2002)

6Irene Roele

Why do change management initiatives so often fail?

• There remains an assumption that carefully developed plans will deliver the expected results – and that the solution to unanticipated outcomes is more and better planning. – “This study is significant because it shows change to be an interpretive process.

Unanticipated outcomes cannot be accounted for purely in terms of in sufficient planning and project management, as they arise from the way individuals “make sense” of change interventions. Similarly, anticipated outcomes occur when individuals make sense of interventions in a way that is consistent with those who designed them. Senior managers therefore cease to be in direct control of the outcomes of change. Some level of compliance can be forced through new structures, systems and roles, but recipients still edit senior manager plans through their interpretations and their resulting actions. Indeed, many sensemaking processes that shape individuals’ interpretations occur out of the presence and control of senior managers. While change results from the interaction between vertical (from senior managers to recipients) and lateral (inter-recipient) sensemaking and sensegiving processes, most sense is made between recipients through lateral and largely informal everyday conversational and social practices, such as the behaviour of others, and storytelling and gossip” (Balogun, 2006)

7Irene Roele

Exploring ‘long-term dilemmas’

PRIORITIES

STRATEGIC TIMEWASTERS

SHORT-TERMDILEMMAS

Importance High Low

Urgency

High

Low

(Adapted from Nigel Piercy, 1994, 2009)

8Irene Roele

Typology of problems, power and authority

Wicked

Tame

Critical

Increasing uncertaintyabout solution to problem

Increasing requirement for

collaborative compliance

CoercionPhysical

CalculativeRational

NormativeEmotional

COMMANDProvide Answer

MANAGEMENTOrganise Process

LEADERSHIPAsk Questions

(Adapted from Grint, 2005)

9Irene Roele

The Full Thinking/Learning Board Model

(Adapted from Garrat 2003 & 2005)

• Positioning in thechanging markets

• Setting corporatedirection

• Reviewing & decide key resources

• Deciding implementation

process

Accountability• to the company• to owners• to regulators & legislators• to other stakeholders• ensuring directoral audits

Policy Formulation and Foresight• starting purpose

• creating vision & values• Developing corporate

climate & culture• Monitoring the external

environments

• Overseeing Mgt. Performance• Monitoring budgetary control• Reviewing key business results

BusinessBrain

Strategic ThinkingSupervising Management

StrategyReview Cycle

GovernanceReviewCycle

Exte

rnal

Inte

rnal

Policy Review Cycle

Operations Review Cycle

10Irene Roele

So what’s the fuss about ‘Big Data’ ?

• “The big data of this revolution is far more powerful than the analytics that were used in the past” ... What we’re seeing is not just flashy examples but a more fundamental transformation of the economy. We’ve become convinced that almost no sphere of business activity will remain untouched by this movement.” (McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 2012)

• “If your organization stores multiple petabytes of data, if the information most critical to your business resides in forms other than rows and columns of numbers, or if answering your biggest question would involve a “mashup” of several analytical efforts, you’ve got a big data opportunity.” (Davenport and Patil, 2012)

11Irene Roele

So what’s fuss about ‘Big Data’ ?

• What’s different this time?– Volume– Velocity– Variety

• “The structured databases that stored most corporate information until recently are ill suited to storing processing big data. At the same time, the steadily declining costs of all the elements of computing – storage, memory, processing, bandwidth and so on – mean that previously expensive data-intensive approaches are quickly becoming economical.”

(McAfee and Brynjolfsson, 2012)

12Irene Roele

Big data: the managerial challenges

• Organisational structure and culture implications – “starting with the role of the senior executive team.”– ‘muting the HiPPOS’ (highest-paid person’s opinion relying too much on experience and

intuition and not enough on data). Knowing what questions to ask becomes even more critical

– “What do the data say?”– “Where did that data come from?”

• Leadership• Talent Management

– ‘Data Scientists: The Sexieist Job of the 21st Century’– ‘Knowledge Orchestrators’ – a key source of competitive advantage

• Technology• Decision making• Company culture

(adapted from McAfee and Brynjolfsson, 2012; Davenport and Patil, 2012, Mc Gee, 2003 and 2007)

13Irene Roele

Two comments on change by ‘the guru’s guru’

1. Do not wait for others in the business to start changing things. Go and do it yourself.

2. Never forget that everyone in the business is interconnected, that they are all operating as part of a system, that tinkering with one part of the company is never really enough, and

may even make things worse. You need to see the business as a whole, as a complete system, if you want to make lasting improvements to it

(Russ Ackoff 2006)

14Irene Roele

Recommended reading

• Ackoff R, Addison H and Bibb S (2006), Management f-Laws• Balogun J, 2006, Managing Change: Steering a Course between Intended Strategies and

Unanticipated Outcomes, Long Range Planning• Bloom N, Sadun R and Van Reenen J, 2012, Does Management Really Work?, Harvard Business

Review• Brynjolfsson E and McAfee A (2011), Race against the machine – How the Digital Revolution is

Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy

• Brynjolfsson E and McAfee A, 2012, Winning the Race With Ever-Smarter Machines, Sloan Management Review

• Davenport T H and Patil D J, 2012, Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century, Harvard Business Review

• Grint K, 2010, The cuckoo clock syndrome: addicted to command, allergic to leadership, European Management Journal

• Harreld J B, O’Reilly C A and Tushman M L, 2007, Dynamic Capabilities at IBM: Driving Strategy into Action, California Management Review

• Kotter J, 2012, Accelerate: How the Most Innovative Companies Capitalize on Today’s Rapid-Fire Strategic Challenges – And Still Make Their Numbers, Harvard Business Review

• McAfee A and Brynjolfsson E, 2012, Big Data: The Management Revolution, Harvard Business Review• Mintzberg H (2009), Managing, FT Prentice Hall• Rumelt R, 2011, “Good Strategy/Bad Strategy – and Why it Matters”, Profile Books