Change Management

1
Change Management

• Lecture 2
• Images of Managing Change

2
Images of Managing

• Controlling
• Top-down view of management
• Fayols theory of management planning,
  organizing, commanding, coordinating and
  controlling.
• Shaping
• Participative style of management
• Improving the capabilities of people within the
  organization

3
Images of Change Outcomes

• Intended Change
• Change is a result of planned action
• Partially Intended Change
• Change may need to be re-modified after it is
  initially implemented
• Unintended Change
• Forces beyond the control of the change manager

4
Images of Change Managers
5
Images of Change Managers

• Director
• Based on an image of management as control and of
  change outcomes as being achievable.
• Supported by the n-step models and contingency
  theory.

• Coach
• Relies upon building in the right set of values,
  skills and drills that are deemed to be the
  best ones that organizational members will be
  able to draw on in order to achieve desired
  organizational outcomes.
• Related to organizational development approaches.

6
Images of Change Managers

• Navigator
• Control is still seen to be at the heart of
  management action, although a variety of factors
  external to managers mean that while they may
  achieve some intended change outcomes, others
  will occur over which they have little control.
• Supported by the contextualist and processual
  theories of change.

• Interpreter
• The manager creates meaning for other
  organizational members, helping them to make
  sense of various organizational events and
  actions.
• Supported by the sense-making theory of
  organizational change and concept of enactment

7
Images of Change Managers

• Caretaker
• The change managers ability to control is
  severely impeded by a variety of internal and
  external forces beyond the scope of the manager.
  The caretaker is seen as shepherding their
  organizations along as best they can.
• Supported by life-cycle, population-ecology and
  institutional theories.

• Nurturer
• Even small changes may have a large impact on
  organizations and managers are not able to
  control the outcome of these changes. However,
  they may nurture their organizations,
  facilitating organizational qualities that enable
  positive self-organizing to occur.
• Related to chaos and Confucian/Taoist theories.

8
Questions

• To what extent are you more comfortable with one
  or other of the six images?
• Why is this the case?
• What are the strengths and limitations of the
  images that you have identified as most relevant
  to you?
• What skills do you think are associated with each
  image?
• Are there areas of personal skill development
  that are needed for you to feel more comfortable
  in using other images?
• Have you ever been in an organization that was
  dominated by particular images?
• What barriers to alternative images existed in
  this organization? What strategies could overcome
  these barriers?

9
Key Uses of Multiple Images

• Surfacing our assumptions about change
• Images simplify illuminate but also obscure
• Assessing dominant images of change
• To what degree are some images seen as natural
  and not open to negotiation in certain
  organizations
• Using multiple images in change
• Image-in-use might depend on the type of change
• Image-in-use might depend on the context
• Image-in-use might depend on the phase of change
• Multiple change images can also co-exist
• Skilled change managers are able to swap images
  or even manage multiple images simultaneously

10
Success

• Typical questions about change
• Was it managed well?
• What went right?
• What went wrong?
• Did we get the outcome we were after?
• Do these questions assume a certain image of
  change?
• How does each image assess success?
• Which images have non-traditional success
  measures?
• Judgments of success are conditional on who is
  doing the assessment and when the judgments are
  made Is this true?

11
Group Exercise

• Take your groups stories from last session
• Which images of change did you come across?
• How did these images affect the way the various
  actors approached change?
• Do the images used vary by the type, context, or
  phase of change?
• What broad conclusions can you form?

12
Green Mountain Case

• Questions
• Which of the six change images were held by
• Gunter?
• The hospitality literature?
• The consultant?
• How did these assumptions influence prescriptions
  for dealing with the turnover problem
• What does it mean to say the problem was
  dis-solved?
• Choose another change image and apply it to the
  turnover problem What new insights arise?
• Does considering different images of change help
  us (I hesitate to add solve the problem)?