1.
Organizational change happens.
Time marches forward. People come and go, either by plan or unimagined
circumstance. Technology progresses, or perhaps regresses, depending on one's
perspective. The seasons change. Entropy encompasses all things, yet life finds
a way. The unfathomable creativity of the human mind fathoms more and more and
more and more and is determined to see it's ideas manifest. Conversely, the
mind unwilling to adapt to new information finds that drastically different
results will be attained by doing the same thing over and over as one's
environs change around them. One cannot stop change. One can only hope to
harness it. Without accepting the reigns of organizational change, inevitably
one's organization will slip, be it slowly or quickly, into the the depths of
irrelevancy or perhaps even out of existence.
“But what,” one may ask, “is
this change we're talking about? How do we define it? Why do we dedicate two
credit graduate classes to it? If change is such an integrated and inescapable
part of life, must we formalize the method and structures by which it may
naturally occur anyway?”
…
If you want a really boring
definition of what organizational change is, Inc.com has the answer. They
define organizational change as, “when a company makes a transition from its
current state to some desired state.” Pretty banal, but that just brings up the
next question, “Well, what state do we desire then?”
For public and nonprofit
organizations the decision to engage in planned and directed change must always
be in service of the essential question, “Are we accomplishing our mission in
the most meaningful way possible?” Why this question? Because the
public/nonprofit sector is set up to provide service. The goal is not to make
the most amount of money. If we find ourselves sitting on big reserves, it's a
sure sign we aren't living up to our mission! We were set up to achieve a
societal goal, and dammit, that means having a mission and spending money to
make it happen.
If the answer to the mission
question is no, which it inevitably will be at some point, the organization
must ask the following questions: “Why not? What is impeding us from being the
best organization we can be? What would make us better? Is it the way we're set
up? Is it the people who work here? Are we letting the changing world pass us
by? Are we too far ahead of the field? Is it us?” The list goes on. Practically speaking, the
only way you get answers to those questions is through extensive program
evaluation. But that is not what this paper is about and there are surely many
classes on program evaluation that require exhaustive tomes on effective
program evaluation to be written and read. Besides, we, the managerial class,
do not always get to dictate our work based on best practice. Elections, be it
Congress or the nonprofit board, bring about mandates for change whether we
like it or not. Change is gonna happen. See above.
So we shall move on.
Zeroing in on the impediments to
the organization's desired state is the beginning of change. Identify what
needs to be changed and change it. However, it would be naïve to the point of
incompetence to assume that impediments of the desired state will simply fall
away like a chrysalis as the organizational butterfly emerges. Indeed,
structures, cultures, and people are often like a tree standing by the water in
the comfort of their own closed system. Change is scary. Change means facing
the unknown. Change for the benefit of the organization as a whole, may not
benefit each of individual parts. And besides, change is risky. Things might end
up far worse than having done nothing. For these reasons and more, change will
be resisted. To barge blindly ahead, implementing changes to the organization,
relying simply on luck to see you through to the end, the agents of change will
soon find their force not to be nearly as unstoppable as the immovability of
the objects they encounter. One must plan, strategize, finesse and politic
one's way into the changing an organization to its desired state. So, for the
intrepid manager the question of need for structures and methods to bring about
change, the only correct answer is...YES!!!
2.
We, the managerial class, have
thus commenced on the journey to bring about change in our organization. Who do
we bring along, the Fellowship to our Frodo on the Quest to destroy the ring of
organizational stagnation? Why everyone, of course! Everyone who is affected by
the desired change in the organization has to have a role. Highly paid
consultants and aspiring MPNA degree holders call this “engaging stakeholders.” Again, why? Because every one of those people
has a shot at mucking it up. More eloquently: Because to affect change in
people they need to buy into the change. Either by force - “You'll lose your
job if you don't change.” - or by active engagement and solicitation of input
and feedback. The latter is certainly preferred, as those who buy into
strategic change and want to change will do so more readily and with greater
morale. Happy people work together better.
Of course, one does not bring
everyone along all at once. Engaging stakeholders is, in itself, a strategic
activity. Ultimately, the leadership of the organization – the board, governing
body, etc – has to take ownership over change before it can be affected. But by
no means does that mean change must begin at the leadership level. Who trusts
whom? Who listens to whom? Who are the true brokers of power in the
organization at any given level? The savvy manager must have a grasp of the
ways in which the organization is structured beyond the two dimensions of the
organizational chart. After figuring out what needs to change, assessing the
political dynamics of the organization is the first step in bringing change
about. Lest this seem like a Machiavellian manipulation, assessing political
dynamics can be put more bluntly: Be nice to people, ask them for their
opinion, value their input, and they will likely be amenable to what you have
to say as well. Duh...
But getting real buy-in takes
time, and for larger organizations it takes a long time. And for public and
nonprofit organizations it can take a really, really long time. That's because
the stakeholders in these organizations don't just have financial interest in
the institution. If one were a business manager, one could simply go to the
decision makers and say, “You'll make more money if you do it my way.” Such is
the goal of business and the driver of all its functions. No, we in the
nonprofit and public sector must make the case that an ideology will be better
served by change. Ideology is far more difficult to measure and often
contradictory, both within and organization and within one's own head. The
savvy manager must synthesize conflicting ideas, opinions and desires into a
coherent path forward. But it's worth it. Culture and people are the biggest
impediments to organizational change.
And of course, it the public and
nonprofit sectors, it is not simply the internal culture and people that impede
change, it is the communities we serve, and the populace at large. For blaring
example, if the change one wishes to implement is raising executive salaries to
attract qualified applicants, one better be prepared to organize for support of
that idea to taxpayers and donors with the force of a thousand suns.
Communication then is the key.
Communicate well, (Like, listen well too. That's that big part about
communication that gets overlooked a lot.) and it's off to the races. But
here’s the thing: good communication at the outset is no substitute for bad
communication once the process of change has begun. It’s part of the whole
process and the savvy manager is always feeding the communication loop at every
step of the way. And, like, that’s
pretty much a rule for every interaction in life, right?
3.
As the why and the who have been
sorted out, let us turn our attention to the how. The problem has been
identified, the stakeholders engaged. Now what? Now we identify the steps we
need to take to get where we want to go. Planning is the key here. Turning to
academia we find Fernandez and Rainey advocating for providing a plan for
change:
Convincing the members of an
organization of the need for change is obviously not enough to bring about
actual change. The new idea or vision must be transformed into a course of
action or strategy with goals and a plan for achieving it…This strategy serves
as a road map for the organization, offer direction on how to arrive at the
preferred end state, identifying obstacles, and proposing measures for
overcoming those obstacles. (p. 169)
Once the plan is in place, the
savvy manager re-engages their team and sells them on each part of the plan.
Ensuring buy-in for the plan from the policy body and management is really the
key here. They are the one’s entrusted with putting the structures in place
that institutionalize the change. If change doesn’t become a part of the daily
routine within the organization, the organization can snap back to the old way
of doing things like a rubber band in a strong wind. So the board has to create
the policies that make change possible, the managers have to create a culture
where change is valued, and then everybody from the top on down has to execute
the change together.
The other really obvious thing
that is necessary for organizational is to put resources behind that plan. That
means time and money. Training, new equipment, big shiny signs with the new
buzzwords, all that stuff requires resources. Fernandez and Rainey again:
A fairly consistent finding in
the literature is that change is not cheap or without trade-offs. Planned
organizational change involves a redeployment or redirection of scarce
organizational resources towards a host of new activities, including developing
a plan or strategy for implementing the change, communicating the need for
change, training employees, developing new processes and practices,
restructuring and reorganizing the organization, and testing and experimenting
with innovations… Failure to provide adequate resources in support of a planned
change leads to feeble implementation efforts, higher levels of interpersonal stress,
and even neglect of core organizational activities and functions. (p. 172)
Simply stated, without a plan and without the resources to
back it up, it a safe bet that change is just as likely as not to end up with
the organization worse off than before. Plan for change. Invest in change.
4.
To conclude, the final step on
this journey is, unsurprisingly, making sure that what was done is actually
working. How do we do this? Why, go back to an earlier part of the process and
make adjustments, of course. Re-engage stakeholders for input and feedback,
analyze quantifiable results, tweak elements of the plan that aren’t working as
well as one would like, communicate the changes and repeat. And repeat. And
repeat. Organizations are wheels within wheels, each wheel needing constant
attention if the machinery of the organization is to keep moving forward on the
path of change. All in service of essential question, “Are we accomplishing our
mission in the most meaningful way possible?”
The organization, guided by
savvy managers and leaders, who asks this question with utmost sincerity;
examines, evaluates and exhausts the possible answers; engages, empowers, and
envigorates stakeholders; prepares, promotes and promulgates a plan for change
and; internalizes, institutionalizes, and implements that plan, will ultimately
take the no that was given as an answer to that ultimate question and turn it
into a yes!
Sources
“Managing Organizational Change.” From Inc.com, accessed 8/25/2015 from
http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/managing-organizational-change.html
Fernandez, S. & Rainey, H.G. (2006) Managing Successful
Organizational Change in the Publc Sector,
in Public Administration Review, April 2006.
