Reframing Change

1
Reframing Change

• Chapter 18

2
Thoughts on Change

• Change is mandatory
• Stress is manageable
• Misery is optional

3
Training, Realigning, Negotiating, Grieving, and
Moving On

• Organizations spend millions of dollars on change
  strategies that either produce no change or make
  things worse
• Predictable dynamics of change scuttle many plans

4
Problems Implementing Change

• Covert foot dragging
• VS. overt opposition
• Resisting change
• Vs. protecting organization

5

• It must be realized that there is nothing more
  difficult to plan, more uncertain of success, or
  more dangerous to manage than the establishment
  of a new order of things for he who introduces
  change makes enemies of all those who derived
  advantage from the old order and finds but
  lukewarm defenders among those who stand to gain
  from the new one.
• Machiavelli, The Prince

6
Change a Multi-Frame Undertaking

• Human Resource Needs and Skills
• Structural Alignment and Clarity
• Political Conflict and Arenas
• Symbolic Meaning and Symbols

7
Training for Change

• Information empowers
• Reduces anxiety
• Builds skill and confidence
• Leads to understanding

8
Change and Realignment

• When things start to shift, people start to slip
• Structure must support initiatives
• Structure provides
• clarity
• predictability
• security
• Structure eliminates ambiguity
• Structure defines authority and responsibility

9
Change and Conflict

• Change implies winners and losers
• Camps form supporters, opponents, fence-sitters
• What does the political frame suggest about
  conflict?
• Change requires coalitions, and arenas in which
  disagreements may be discussed

10
Loss, unavoidable by-product of change

• The meaning of an object or event can be far more
  powerful than the reality
• Feelings of loss accompany change
• Change triggers two conflicting responses
• Keep things as they were
• Ignore the loss and rush to the future
• Rituals important to change

11
Kotters Strategies for Change (p. 386)

• Create a sense of urgency
• Empower a guiding team
• Create a vision and strategy
• Communicate the vision
• Remove obstacles
• Produce visible signs
• Stick with process
• Nurture and shape the new culture