Organizational Change

Mohamed Samah

Organizational change occurs when a company makes a transition from its current state to some desired future state (Inc.com, 2015).

What is Organizational Change?

Reason for change

• Change in business condition• Change in managerial personnel• Deficiency in existing organizational pattern• Technological and psychological reasons• Government policies• Scope of the Organization

Managing organizational change

Lewin’s Three Step Change Model

Most theories of organizational change originated from the landmark work of social psychologist Kurt Lewin. Lewin developed a three stage model of ‑planned change which explained how to initiate, manage, and stabilize the change process. The three stages are unfreezing, changing, and refreezing.

Unfreezing

The focus of this stage is to create the motivation to change. In so doing, individuals are encouraged to replace old behaviors and attitudes with those desired by management. Managers can begin the unfreezing process by disconfirming the usefulness or appropriateness of employees' present behaviors or attitudes.

Changing

Because change involves learning, this stage entails providing employees with new information, new behavioral models, or new ways of looking at things. The purpose is to help employees learn new concepts or points of view. Role models, mentors, experts, benchmarking the company against world class organizations, ‑and training are useful mechanisms to facilitate change

Refreezing

Change is stabilized during refreezing by helping employees integrate the changed behavior or attitude into their normal way of doing things. This is accomplished by first giving employees the chance to exhibit the new behaviors or attitudes. Once exhibited, positive reinforcement is used to reinforce the desired. Additional coaching and modeling also are used at this point to reinforce the stability of the change.

Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model

The core set of change management activities that need to be done to effect change and make it stick in the long term.

Step 1: Create Urgency

Inspire people to move, make objectives real and relevant.

Open an honest and convincing dialogue about what's happening in the marketplace and with your competition.

Step 2: Form a Powerful Coalition

Convince people that change is necessary.

Find effective change leaders throughout your organization.

Step 3: Create a Vision for Change

Get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy, focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency.

Step 4: Communicate the Vision

Involve as many people as possible, communicate the essentials, simply, and to appeal and respond to people's needs. De-clutter communications - make technology work for you rather than against.

“WALK THE TALK”

Step 5: Remove Obstacles

Removing obstacles can empower the people you need to execute your vision, and it can help the change move forward.

Step 6: Create Short-Term Wins

Nothing motivates more than success.

Create short-term targets – not just one long-term goal.

Step 7: Build on the Change

• Foster and encourage determination and persistence - ongoing change

• Encourage ongoing progress reporting

• Highlight achieved and future milestones

Step 8: Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture

• Reinforce the value of successful change via recruitment, promotion, new change leaders. Weave change into culture.

• Make continuous efforts to ensure that the change is seen in every aspect of your organization.

Conclusion

“One of the things I learnt when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself I could not change others” – (Nelson Mandela 1918 – 2013)

ReferencesInc.com, (2015). Managing Organizational Change. [online] Available at: http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/managing-organizational-change.html [Accessed 17 Jun. 2015].

Mindtools.com, (2015). Change Management: Making Organization Change Happen Effectively. [online] Available at: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_87.htm [Accessed 18 Jun. 2015].

Mindtools.com, (2015). Lewin's Change Management Model: Understanding the Three Stages of Change. [online] Available at: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_94.htm [Accessed 18 Jun. 2015].

Kotter’s Change Model. (2015). [image] Available at: http://blogs.ubc.ca/etec530leadingchange/learning-topics/kotters-model/ [Accessed 18 Jun. 2015].

B.V., (2015). Famous Quotes on Change and Organizations. [online] 12manage.com. Available at: http://www.12manage.com/quotes_co.html [Accessed 19 Jun. 2015].