Session 11: Embedding e-learning and exploring change

Exploring change in an organisation

Everything flows, nothing stands still Heraclitus Your action plan is designed to bring about change in your organisation and often there is resistance to change. To make sure your change brings about the desired effect you will have to work with it carefully. These notes provide you with information on approaches for planning change and tools for working with change.

Planning Change:
When you have decided what change you want to bring about you can then consider how people will react. There is a cycle of reactions to change: people go through this cycle in varying degrees of intensity. Some experience each stage very briefly and move on to the next stage. Others can take a long time to come to terms with change. The Transition Curve The Transition Curve, as shown in this model adapted from Adams, indicates the stages that people undergo when they experience change.

Source: [/www.clevelandconsultinggroup.com/pdfs/transition-curve.pdf]

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Shock: Initial reactions to hearing news of change. Denial: Trying to avoid the inevitable. Awareness: Beginning to accept the necessity for change and their own part in it. Acceptance: That the old ways will change. Experimentation/Praxis: Testing out new ways of doing things. Search for meaning: Making sense of the new situation. Integration: New ways of working are accepted and used.

The See-Feel-Change Model John Kotter's highly regarded books Leading Change (1995) and the follow-up The Heart of Change (2002) describe a helpful model for understanding and managing change. Each stage acknowledges a key principle identified by Kotter relating to people's response and approach to change, in which people see, feel and then change: (This section is adapted from Alan Chapmans website, which contains more useful advice about working with change.) 1. Increase urgency - inspire people to move, make objectives real and relevant. 2. Build the guiding team - get the right people in place with the right emotional commitment, and the right mix of skills and levels. 3. Get the vision right - get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy, focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency. 4. Communicate for buy-in - Involve as many people as possible, communicate the essentials, simply, and to appeal and respond to people's needs. De-clutter communications - make technology work for you rather than against. 5. Empower action - Remove obstacles, enable constructive feedback and lots of support from leaders - reward and recognise progress and achievements. 6. Create short-term wins - Set aims that are easy to achieve - in bite-size chunks. Manageable numbers of initiatives. Finish current stages before starting new ones. 7. Don't let up - Foster and encourage determination and persistence - ongoing change - encourage ongoing progress reporting - highlight achieved and future milestones. 8. Make change stick - Reinforce the value of successful change via recruitment, promotion, new change leaders. Weave change into culture.

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Freeze Unfreeze Refreeze Kurt Lewin described a model in which people go through three stages in change. Initially they were frozen into their old ways of working. So to move on they had to unfreeze to undergo a transition period. They then needed to refreeze, to use the new techniques consistently in a stable and productive environment.

Techniques and tools for working with change

Management means helping people to get the best out of themselves, not organising things Lauren Appley Key factors for working with change are: Understanding the current situation Having a clear picture of what success looks like Identifying the steps for implementation Checking that the desired results have been achieved.

There are many different techniques for working with, and managing change, and you may already have a favourite. However, it can be useful to look at other ways that could work for you. If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail Abraham Maslow The Solutions Focus Mark McKergow and Paul Jackson have developed an approach to working with change which focuses on the solution, not the problem. Their approach encourages the change manager to focus on identifying whats already working well and build on that, instead of spending time on isolating and fixing a problem. Solutions-focused methods include identifying the Platform, the starting point for the change, then defining the Future Perfect, the ideal world that will exist when the change has been successfully made. Then you gather Counters, the resources, skills, etc. to enable you to work along a Scale that measures your progress towards the Future Perfect. Often the small actions that are taken prove to be remarkably successful in this type of approach. You can get more information on this approach at: www.thesolutionsfocus.com Force Field Analysis This is a tool developed by Kurt Lewin to assess the forces for and against a planned change. It can help you to make a decision about which factors will influence the implementation of a change and can show you how to bring about the change by: Increasing the drivers or Reducing the restrainers

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The driving forces are those which push towards making the change e.g. funding, new legislation. The restraining forces which can prevent a change could be such factors as apathy, hostility, poor maintenance of equipment. Force Field Analysis is a technique for analysing those forces so that you can alter them to get the desired change. For instance if you were planning to relocate your team to a different office you could go through the following stages: The Current Situation The team occupies a large office with plenty of space in the city centre. However it is expensive to maintain, has poor IT facilities, is in need of redecoration and not convenient for the clients who visit the office. The Desired Situation To move to a smaller and less expensive office which is more accessible for clients. Business Case Client complaints are increasing and funding providers are expressing concern about the limitations on access for clients. The new office would have better IT facilities so staff could work more effectively. The Force Field Analysis process 1. Write the objective at the top of a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the centre of the paper. 2. List all driving forces FOR change in the left column and all restraining forces AGAINST change in the right column. Allocate each comment a score according to impact (1= weak, 5 = strong). 3. Allocate points to identify how easy it would be to do something to influence either the driving or restraining force. This can show up areas where you can achieve quick wins and build momentum in a change programme. This can be done as an individual exercise or in a group. It can also be done individually by a dispersed group of individuals and the summary circulated, for example by fax or email, or it can be done live with a remote group, for example by video conferencing or as part of an online discussion.

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DIAGRAM OF LEWINS FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS

Example: The Office Move DRIVERS FOR CHANGE RESTRAINERS

Improved computer access (5)

Staff dislike change (4)

More accessible for clients (4)

Plan: to move the office

Increased travel time (3)

Newly decorated and furnished (2)

Less office space (4)

Total: 11

Total 11

Which forces can be changed? Staff could work flexi-time and avoid travelling in the rush-hour (-1) Improved storage systems could make up for less space (-1) This would reduce the restrainer total to 9, so the drivers for change are now stronger than the factors restraining change.

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Common Patterns Each situation is unique, but there are some common patterns that emerge in change activities when you use Force Field Analysis: There tends to be an emphasis on the driving forces at the start of a change initiative, particularly if the organisation is trying to persuade people of the benefits of change. Communication tends to be frequent at the start of a change initiative, and then decreases as people assume that everybody has understood and agreed. The restraining forces at an individual level are varied and may not be expressed openly in the early stages of a change. Different people see forces very differently, i.e. what one person sees as a huge obstacle another person sees as insignificant. When progress is not as fast as desired there may be a tendency to re-emphasise the driving forces, but looking at the restraining forces and reducing some of them can often help progress more.

Further information on how to use the Force Field Analysis tool can be found on the Mind Tools website. Other tools Other approaches include: Decision trees A decision tree is an excellent tool for making financial or number-based decisions. The decision trees technique encourages a structured approach in laying out all choices and looking at challenges, values and probabilities of outcomes. Further information can be found on the Mind Tools website. ESDToolkit This tool uses a checklist to select and prioritise actions needed to implement a plan. The inventory of support and resistance uses a matrix to show the overview and the persons involved in the plan, and then to note levels of support and resistance. Further information can be found on the ESD Toolkit website. Word storm/word showers This is one of the easiest and quickest techniques. It works well for individuals and groups, and can give some excellent results in terms of innovative ideas. How to word storm: 1. Select the area to focus on. 2. Ask someone to write down all their ideas on the focus area, however unusual they may be. 3. Choose problem/issue. While you are doing this:
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Be enthusiastic and positive. Do not evaluate ideas (or people) at this stage. Quantity is important. Do not focus on one idea for too long. Work quickly.

When you have finished: 1. Evaluate the ideas. 2. Choose the key ideas. 3. Explore possible solutions. 4. Develop an action plan to follow through your ideas. Mind mapping This technique was developed by Tony Buzan as a method for students to take notes during lectures, yet still be engaged in the lecture and also to retain the information and to generate ideas. The general idea is to use key words, colours and images to help generate ideas and to help organise ideas in a non-linear way. Steps to creating a mind map: 1. Begin with a word or image in the middle of a blank page. 2. From the focal point branch out to other thoughts. 3. Add sub-branches if you want maybe with descriptions along the lines. 4. Avoid evaluating these ideas, just get them down. 5. Use key words, images, colour and a range of different pens, crayons, etc. 6. On the branches you can begin to add words that link or build relationships between ideas. For a detailed look at how to create a mind map, visit the Innovation Network website and click on Mindmapping in 8 easy steps. There is a range of mind mapping software currently available. Such software has been used successfully with students who have dyslexia. De Bonos six thinking hats When we are thinking about something we are usually trying to do everything at once. We might be looking out for dangers and difficulties reasons why something will not work. We might be trying new ideas or looking for information. Most of us, when dealing with problems, tend to approach them from one angle only. So, some of us may have emotional responses that do not reflect a full understanding of a problem, which is not the most productive approach. Our feelings and emotions may interfere.

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This is an excellent technique, which encourages us to be aware of how we normally respond to problems/change and then to actively change that response and to consider another way of looking at something. Look at the chart below and see which colour hat you identify with most of the time: White Hat Focuses on information known or needed. Deals with facts. Black Hat Judgemental, critical; looks for why something is wrong or might not work. Green Hat Thinks creatively, considering the possibilities, alternatives and new ideas. Red Hat Responds to emotions, feelings, intuition, without explanation. Yellow Hat Optimistic, positive, looks for benefits and what is good. Blue Hat Organises the thinking process, considers all the aspects that need to be thought through.

With the six hats approach, you are asked to consider which hat you wear most of the time, and then actively take that hat off when faced with a problem and put a different coloured hat on. This forces you to look at the problem from another angle, and to adopt a hat that helps to resolve the problem. We can also use this approach in groups to great effect. The group identifies the problem and then looks at it with each person wearing the same hat. This can help move away from an adversarial approach towards one that encourages greater unity in exploring change or problems. When using the hats it is useful to apply them in sequence. Start with blue to identify the task, followed by black to ascertain the risks and cautions, then moving to green to gather fresh and innovative ideas.
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For further sequences see the St Monicas Primary School Online Project website Edward de Bonos website offers other lateral-thinking strategies.

Further information
Websites: Solutions Focus tips. Study guides and strategies. Edward de Bonos home page. Mind mapping: http://www.mindmap.com/ and www.peterussell.com/mindmaps/mindmap.html. The Innovation Network (includes information about mind mapping). Force Field Analysis. Printed publications: Managing Change at Work (1994), Cynthia D. Scott & Dennis T. Jaffe. Crisp Publications. Managing Change and Making it Stick (1987), Roger Plant. Gower Publications. The Solutions Focus: the SIMPLE way to positive change (2002), Paul Z. Jackson & Mark McKergow, Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

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