Organizational Change Part 3

1
Organizational ChangePart 3

• Steven E. Phelan
• July 2005

2
Plan

• Merger Plan Simulation
• Communication strategies/skills
• Broadway Brokers
• Recap

3
The Merger Plan Simulation

• Task
• Develop a formal integration plan (with decisions
  on branch closures, systems conversion, product
  alignment, layoffs, and communication strategy)
  that will maximize shareholder value while
  keeping as much support as possible from the
  stakeholders at the two banks and external
  organizations.
• 5 minutes 1 news cycle 1 day

4
Roles

• Integration manager
• 2 HR directors
• 2 CEOs
• 2 Heads of retail banking
• Rest to choose from
• Largest customer, newspaper editor, funds
  manager, regulator, banking union, CIOs, CFOs,
  branch managers

5
Communication Strategies
6
Communication Strategies

• The way change is communicated is important to
  the success of the change program
• What the change manager thinks is possible in
  communicating change (e.g. ability to control
  rather than shape information about it) will
  depend on their image of managing change
• There are many problems can disturb the process
  of communication
• message overload
• message distortion and
• message ambiguity (see Nelson Coxhead, 1997)
• Use of language, power, gender and emotion also
  impact on how information about a change will be
  received.

7
Approaches to Communicating

• It is possible to overload employees with too
  much information on change especially where the
  communication is one way and does not allow input
  by the recipient.
• Communication strategies will vary depending on
  whether the focus on getting the word out
  versus getting buy-in
• A communication strategy continuum includes five
  approaches
• Spray and pray
• Tell and sell
• Underscore and explore
• Identify and reply
• Withhold and uphold (Clampitt et al., 2000)
• These approaches vary in effectiveness of
  communication and the amount of information
  transmitted

8
Contingency Approaches

• Contingency approaches to communicating strategy
  vary depending
• on the type of change e.g.
• Developmental or incremental
• Task-focused
• Charismatic
• Turnaround (Stace Dunphy, 2001)
• on the stage of change e.g.
• Planning
• Enabling
• Launching
• Catalyzing
• Maintaining (Reardon Reardon, 1999)

9
Communication media

• Varies in richness depending on how personal is
  its ability to communicate change
• For example, an email or memo is less personal
  (and less rich) than a face to face meeting

10
Communication processes

• How change gets communicated needs to take into
  account issues such as
• Message
• Timing
• Channel
• The communication of change in large
  organizations will vary and draw upon a range of
  processes
• Tag teams, supervisor briefings, value
  propositions, checklists (10.6)

11
Communication Skills
12
Communication Skills

• These skills are aimed at involving people and
  encouraging commitment to the change process
• It may not be possible to overcome some change
  issues through communication at times the
  differences between intended outcomes and
  internal and external pressures can be too deeply
  embedded

13
Key Communication Skills

• Four key skills for communicating include
• Listening There are four types of listening
  skills suspending judgement, identifying
  assumptions, listening for learning, and
  reflecting. (Gerard Teurfs, 1997)
• Telling stories This is an effective way of
  helping employees learn from past changes
  painting pictures of the future.
• Selling change upward Issue selling is a way of
  gaining senior management attention to changes
  initiated from below.
• Toxic handling Some people in organizations take
  on a role of handling the ill-effects of change
  processes and absorbing these as a way of
  shielding others from their negative impact.
  (Frost Robinson, 1999)

14
Change Conversations

• Different change conversations should be used at
  different stages of a change process. There are
  four types of conversations
• Initiative conversations these draw attention to
  the need for change.
• Conversation for understanding this communicates
  the type of changes needed and allows for a
  greater appreciation of why this type of change.
• Conversations for performance this focuses on
  the actual change that is intended and how
  progress will be monitored.
• Conversation for closure this signals the end of
  the change (Ford Ford, 1995)

15
Linguistic Modes Imagery

• Need for a balance of linguistic modes.
• Ideals, appeals, rules, deals
• The use of metaphors influences the images of
  change. These change images include
• Machine this is based on the fix and maintain
  view
• Developmental this is based on the build and
  develop view
• Transitional this is based on the move and
  relocate view
• Transformational this is based on the liberate
  and re-create view (Marshak, 1993)

16
Communication with external stakeholders

• Communicating with external stakeholders is an
  important (albeit often neglected) aspect of
  communicating change.
• Research on communication of change with
  stakeholders has focused on
• crisis management
• impression management
• corporate reputation

17
Some tactics

• Impression management
• Excuses, justifications, disclaimers, concealment
• Crisis management
• Competing accounts, statement of regret,
  dissociation (scapegoating)
• Mortification, corrective action, bolstering
  image, denial, shifting the blame

18
Broadway Brokers

• Fill out your evaluation of each suggestion
• Meet with your team to discuss your responses and
  reasoning
• Report back on the items you reached a consensus
  on and those that you disagreed about