“We are living today in a constantly growing global business environment, where change has become the norm for organizations to sustain their success and existence” (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015, p.234).
Even with it being mainstream and the norm within an organizations DNA it is still suggested the success rate of change initiatives is less than 30 percent (Balogun et al., 2004; Beer et al. 2000; Grover, 1999 as cited in Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015). As suggested by Dunphy and Stace (1993) organizations, project teams, managers, consultants need to look at change as situational and need to vary change strategies to achieve “optimum fit” with the changing environment (p.235). “Change methods need to be continuously evolving to align with the environmental factors” (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015, p.235). What this has provided is further clarity and an enhanced spotlight that the interconnectedness and multifacetedness of all the moving parts and people within an organization are all intertwined to how successful the change will be. For instance, this has me thinking about a recent change that didn’t go as well as hoped in our organization and there was the lack of consideration of the changing workforce demographics over the past couple of years, to the recency of many more virtual teams and leaders, as well as many remote employees, cultures and subcultures within the organization just to name a few, which all had some role to play in the degree of successful change.
Some of the ways adoption and evolution have occurred with the changing landscape of change management are other disciplines addressing it within their own context through challenging, asking, research & study, and expert discussions, where they are looking at change within their own respective disciplines such as Psychology and Sociology, Management and Leadership and Organizational Development practices. An example of this is the evolution of Management and Leadership where it was suggested that the five main leadership practices are “modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart” (Kouzes & Posner, 1995 as cited in Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015, p.239). These are all very important characteristics of leaders to manage, support and lead change. If we can now evolve the way we see Management and Leadership we can then give the education, tools and resources to our leaders to be equipped to lead change.
My personal leadership style as it relates to Change Management would be aligned and described very closely to a Facilitative Approach where I firmly believe it is a team effort and we all succeed together. There is a co-dependency, shared ownership and responsibility and involvement by stakeholders to support change. Everyone from those on the project team, to super users, change champions, and end users are involved and contribute to the success. It would also resemble closely to Adaptive Leadership where I find myself being part of the solution and identifying barriers and opportunities for success (Khan, 2017). Finding myself constantly and consistently communicating in support of change is another key and essential attribute (Weiner, 2009). I also seem my level of resilience as a leader demonstrated as a key behavior to others. Showing persistence and the ability to absorb, embrace, adopt the change, along with my ability to support staff through it by developing engagement, excitement, empowerment and encouragement (Weller, 2013). I find my organization is not aligned with my leadership values to change, as they are in quite an immature organization, exponentially growing and have not taken the time to slow down to consider the importance of having the organization and leaders prepared to support, manage, and lead change. I am optimistic and do believe it will get there one day, however do know during the ‘growing pains’ change will not come easy and may be at the expense of others.
The role of leadership is key to change management. “Leadership is about the innovation of new ideas and new concepts that brings new desirable outcomes. The entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation embedded in leadership are very important to successfully managing change” (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015, p.239). As leaders we must help the organization move towards our vision and help those around us see how this change will get us there. Leaders help make and support the right decisions at the right time to help steer and guide with changing environments. Its leaders who motivate and empower people at work during uncertain times and times of change, when there is ambiguity and uncertainty.
As one of my own personal leadership attributes, resilience enables to move along with change at a must faster pace. Resilience helps develop, engage, educate, empower, and encourage those that demonstrate that behavior. Resilience requires adaptation and evolution to new environmental conditions, utilizing technology to change practices where it is desirable, however representing practices if they are deemed to be necessary (Weller, 2013).
References
Al Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: a model for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 234-262.
Biech, E. (2007). Models for Change. In Thriving through change: A leader’s practical guide to change mastery. Alexandria, VA: ASTD [Books24x7 database]
Khan, N. (2017). Adaptive or Transactional Leadership in Current Higher Education: A Brief Comparison. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(3), 178-183.
Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science, 4(67).
Weller, M., & Anderson, T. (2013). Digital Resilience in Higher Education. European Journal of Open Distance and E-Learning, 16(1), 53-66.