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is to plunge ahead without establishing a high enough sense of urgency in fellow managers and employees. This error is fatal because transformations always fail to achieve their objectives when complacency levels are high.
Yes people to attend to relax in their comfort zone and change agents should show a high sense of urgency during the change process. Otherwise people will receive a message that the organization is not serious about the change or it is not a priority
how hard it is to drive people out of their comfort zones.
people becoming defensive, morale and short-term results slipping. Or, even worse, they confuse urgency with anxiety, and by driving up the latter they push people even deeper into their foxholes and create even more resistance to change.
If employees felt that their comfort zone was attacked, they will feel offended and they will reject all the new ideas, they will be difficult to control sense of urgency can be transferred to anxiety
Too much past success, a lack of visible crises, low performance standards, insufficient feedback from external constituencies,
The highlighted are reasons of increasing complacency in organisations
Vision plays a key role in producing useful change by helping to direct, align, and inspire actions on the part of large numbers of people.
A useful rule of thumb: Whenever you cannot describe the vision driving a change initiative in five minutes or less and get a reaction that signifies both understanding and interest, you are in for trouble.
Communication comes in both words and deeds. The latter is generally the most powerful form. Nothing undermines change more than behavior by important individuals that is inconsistent with the verbal communication.
Whenever smart and well-intentioned people avoid confronting obstacles, they disempower employees and undermine change.
FIGURE 2-2 The eight-stage process of creating major change
The main model
Management versus Leadership Management is a set of processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly. The most important aspects of management include planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling, and problem solving. Leadership is a set of processes that creates organizations in the first place or adapts them to significantly changing circumstances. Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles
Transformation requires sacrifice, dedication, and creativity, none of which usually comes with coercion.
FIGURE 3-1 Sources of complacency
Building a coalition that can make change happen Find the right people • With strong position power, broad expertise, and high credibility • With leadership and management skills, especially the former Create trust • Through carefully planned off-site events • With lots of talk and joint activities Develop a common goal • Sensible to the head • Appealing to the heart
Vision refers to a picture of the future with some implicit or explicit commentary on why people should strive to create that future.
FIGURE 5-2 The relationship of vision, strategies, plans, and budgets
Characteristics of an effective vision • Imaginable: Conveys a picture of what the future will look like • Desirable: Appeals to the long-term interests of employees, customers, stockholders, and others who have a stake in the enterprise • Feasible: Comprises realistic, attainable goals • Focused: Is clear enough to provide guidance in decision making • Flexible: Is general enough to allow individual initiative and alternative responses in light of changing conditions • Communicable: Is easy to communicate; can be successfully explained within five minutes
Creating an effective vision • First draft: The process often starts with an initial statement from a single individual, reflecting both his or her dreams and real marketplace needs. • Role of the guiding coalition: The first draft is always modeled over time by the guiding coalition or an even larger group of people. • Importance of teamwork: The group process never works well without a minimum of effective teamwork. • Role of the head and the heart: Both analytical thinking and a lot of dreaming are essential throughout the activity. • Messiness of the process: Vision creation is usually a
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Key elements in the effective communication of vision • Simplicity: All jargon and technobabble must be eliminated. • Metaphor, analogy, and example: A verbal picture is worth a thousand words. • Multiple forums: Big meetings and small, memos and newspapers, formal and informal interaction—all are effective for spreading the word. • Repetition: Ideas sink in deeply only after they have been heard many times. • Leadership by example: Behavior from important people that is inconsistent with the vision overwhelms other forms of communication. • Explanation of seeming inconsistencies: Unaddressed
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FIGURE 7-1 Barriers to empowerment
structures, skills, systems, and supervisors
The vision The structure • Focus on the customer • But the organization fragments resources and responsibility for products and services • Give more responsibility to lower-level employees • But there are layers of middle-level managers who second-guess and criticize employees • Increase productivity to become the low-cost producer • But huge staff groups at corporate headquaters are expensive and constantly initiate costly procedures and programs • Speed everything up • But independent silos don’t communicate and thus slow everything down
TABLE 7-2 Empowering people to effect change • Communicate a sensible vision to employees: If employees have a shared sense of purpose, it will be easier to initiate actions to achieve that purpose. • Make structures compatible with the vision: Unaligned structures block needed action. • Provide the training employees need: Without the right skills and attitudes, people feel disempowered. • Align information and personnel systems to the vision: Unaligned systems also block needed action. • Confront supervisors who undercut needed change: Nothing disempowers people the way a bad boss can.
A good short-term win has at least these three characteristics: 1. It’s visible; large numbers of people can see for themselves whether the result is real or just hype. 2. It’s unambiguous; there can be little argument over the call. 3. It’s clearly related to the change effort.
The role of short-term wins • Provide evidence that sacrifices are worth it: Wins greatly help justify the short-term costs involved. • Reward change agents with a pat on the back: After a lot of hard work, positive feedback builds morale and motivation. • Help fine-tune vision and strategies: Short-term wins give the guiding coalition concrete data on the viability of their ideas. • Undermine cynics and self-serving resisters: Clear improvements in performance make it difficult for people to block needed change. • Keep bosses on board: Provides those higher in the hierarchy with evidence that
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What stage 7 looks like in a successful, major change effort • More change, not less: The guiding coalition uses the credibility afforded by short-term wins to tackle additional and bigger change projects. • More help: Additional people are brought in, promoted, and developed to help with all the changes. • Leadership from senior management: Senior people focus on maintaining clarity of shared purpose for the overall effort and keeping urgency levels up. • Project management and leadership from below: Lower ranks in the hierarchy both provide leadership for specific projects and manage those
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What did these managers do? Briefly: 1. They talked a great deal about the evidence showing how performance improvements were linked to their new practices. 2. They talked a great deal about where the old culture had come from, how it had served the firm well, but why it was no longer helpful. 3. They offered those over fifty-five an attractive early retirement program and then worked hard to convince anyone who embraced the new culture not to leave. 4. They made doubly sure that new hires were not being informally screened according to the old norms and values. 5. They tried hard not to
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Anchoring change in a culture • Comes last, not first: Most alterations in norms and shared values come at the end of the transformation process. • Depends on results: New approaches usually sink into a culture only after it’s very clear that they work and are superior to old methods. • Requires a lot of talk: Without verbal instruction and support, people are often reluctant to admit the validity of new practices. • May involve turnover: Sometimes the only way to change a culture is to change key people. • Makes decisions on succession crucial: If promotion processes are not changed to be
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Winning is fun. And for most of us, making a real contribution is pleasing to the soul.
TABLE 12-1 Mental habits that support lifelong learning • Risk taking: Willingness to push oneself out of comfort zones • Humble self-reflection: Honest assessment of successes and failures, especially the latter • Solicitation of opinions: Aggressive collection of information and ideas from others • Careful listening: Propensity to listen to others • Openness to new ideas: Willingness to view life with an open mind
