Organizational Change

1. Organizational Change Marilu Goodyear EDUCAUSE and University of Kansas

2. Facilitative Change Discussing small and large scale changes; not short-term crisis

3. Goals of Change • Two Ways to Meet the Challenge of Change • Analysis that shifts thinking • Essential for higher level support and resources • Demonstrating a truth that influences feelings • Seeing  Feeling Changing • Essential for those supporting change and implementing change

4. See Feel  Change Help People See Seeing Something New Hits the Emotions Emotionally Charged Ideas Change Behavior or Reinforce Changed Behavior Analysis  Think  Change Give People Analysis Data and Analysis Influence How We think New Thoughts Change Behavior or reinforce Changed Behavior Achieving Change in Behavior

5. Do you feel your way into acting? or Do you act your way into feeling?

6. Increase Urgency • DO: Show others the need for change with a compelling object that they can see, touch, and feel. • DO: Validate change with dramatic evidence from outside the organization • DON’T: Depend only on the rational case

7. Building a Guiding Team • Relevant knowledge about what is happening outside the enterprise or group • Essential for creating vision • Credibility, connections, and stature within the organization • Essential in communicating the vision • Valid information about the internal workings of the enterprise • Essential for removing the barriers that disempower people from acting on the vision • Formal authority and the managerial skills associated with planning, organizing, and control • Needed to create a short-term wins • The leadership skills associated with vision, communication, and motivation • Required for ensuring change sticks.

8. Get the Vision Right • Vision is an end state where all the plans and strategies will eventually take you. • Vision must speak to all stakeholders • Vision should be short: told in one minute or on one page • A good story is always helpful • “Sell” vision to the top management and clients • Same See  Feel  Change applies

9. Communicate for Buy-In • Announcing changes: • Urgency • Vision • Strategy: how to achieve vision • Plan: step by step how to implement vision • Most Important: Speak to anxieties; Prepare answers to anticipated questions • Communicate, communicate, communicate • Everyway and Everyday

10. Empower Action • Removing barriers • People • Ignore them • Change them (new experiences and perspectives) • Remove or transfer • Systems • Align as many as possible • Pay versus Attention and Recognition • Information feedback • Change burnout • Focus on 2-3 things at once • Maintaining the current system is one

11. Characteristics of Good Short-Term Wins • Visible • Unambiguous (so fewer people argue about whether it REALLY is a success) • Meaningful • Speaks to employee issues, concerns, and values • Focus on powerful person or group whose help you need.

12. Purposes of Short-Term Wins • Wins provide feedback to change leaders about the validity of their visions and strategies. • Wins give those working hard to achieve a vision a pat on the back, an emotional uplift. • Wins build faith in the effort, attracting those who are not yet actively helping. • Wins take power away from cynics.

13. Provide Resources • Failure to provide adequate resources leads to • Feeble efforts to implement change • Higher levels of stress • Neglect of core organizational activities and functions • Need to allocate three types of resources: • Diagnostic • Implementation • Institutionalization

14. Overcoming Resistance to Change • If urgency is high; resistance is less • Participation in change process, including employee feedback on process (most frequently cited approach) • Create as much psychological ownership as possible • Allowing employees to openly voice their ambivalence. • Offer employees instrumental and emotional support • “Every change needs a funeral” • Create pride in the organization’s history

15. Two Important Roles for Overcoming Resistance to Change • Toxic Handler • Shoulders the sadness, frustrations, bitterness and anger • Listens to employees while they are in “the pit” • Sages • Focus on reducing uncertainty • Enhance and transmit knowledge, especially meaning behind actions • Speaks up and asks the questions that others fear to ask

16. Making It Stick • Recognize that “day to day” takes energy and time • Aggressively rid the organization of work that is no longer relevant • Does this add value? • Our biggest mistake: we add on but we don’t subtract • Look for ways to keep urgency up • Alignment is important: • Does this fit with our vision? • Does it pull in the right direction?

17. Ethical Issues During Change • Three types of justice: • Distributive justice (fair allocation of resources) • Procedural justice (a voice in the matter) • Interactional justice (process and communication) • Important values: • Integrity: The manager remains dedicated to their responsibilities (whom and why) • Honesty: To employees and stakeholders • Commitment: To what’s important, what needs to be accomplished, values • Stewardship: Maintaining, promoting and improving the vital interests of the organization and the larger society.

18. Increase urgency Build a guiding team Get the vision right Communicate for buy-in People start telling each other “Let’s Go” A group is formed and works together well The guiding team develops the right vision and strategy People begin to buy into the change; their behavior begins to change Eight Step Process

19. Empower action Create short-term wins Don’t let up Make change stick People feel able to act, and do act on the vision Momentum builds as people try to fulfill the vision, fewer resist change People make wave after wave of changes until vision is fulfilled New behavior changes continue despite pulls otherwise Eight Step Process

20. The IT Silo and Change • Alignment between IT and the institution requires individual and organizational boundary spanning • Achievement of cross-functional integration between the IT organization and the institution is a key factor in IT success. • Integration can also improve the speed of response to change

21. Integration Maturity Model • Effective Partnerships • Seamless interaction • Sophisticated systems • Transparent communication • Data and Needs Resolutions • Proactive collaboration • Shared understanding • Basic Understanding • Trust • Appreciation • Priority discussions • Medium and frequency of communication important • Dis-Integration • Open hostility • Lack of understanding • No interaction

22. Resources • The Heart of Change: Real-life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations. John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen (Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, 2002) • Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change. William Bridges. 2nd edition. (Cambridge, Mass: Da Capo Press, 2003) • Breaking Out of the IT Silo: The Integration Maturity Model. Mark R. Nelson. (Boulder, Colorado: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, March 15, 2005). • Cultivating Careers: Professional Development for Campus IT. Cynthia Golden. (Boulder, Colorado: EDUCAUSE, 2006).