Leading People in Change: A Practical Guide

LEADING PEOPLE IN CHANGE

LEADING

PEOPLE

IN

CHANGE

A PRACTICAL GUIDE

JENNIFER BRYAN

Hero, an imprint of

Legend Times Group Ltd, 51 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6HJ

[email protected] | www.hero-press.com

© Jennifer Bryan 2021

The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

Print ISBN: 9781800316881

Ebook ISBN: 9781800316898

Set in Times. Printing managed by Jellyfish Solutions Ltd

All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

Foreword by Jennifer Bryan and Steve Wells

Introduction

Chapter 1: Isn’t Change Management Simply Good Communication?

Chapter 2: The Role of Leadership in Change Management

Chapter 3: The ABChange Model

Chapter 4: The Future of Leadership in ABChange

Chapter 5: Dealing with Resistance

Chapter 6: How Culture Impacts Change

Conclusions

Case Studies

Workplace Change

Team Collaboration

Leadership

Culture Change

References

FOREWORD

JENNIFER BRYAN AND STEVE WELLS

The world is increasingly subject to significant change, and while the focus is often on the potential implications of exponential technology developments like artificial intelligence, robotics, adaptive manufacturing, augmented and virtual reality for example, political, economic, and social change are also happening at break-neck speed. This range of future forces – together with the current pandemic – act on life, society and business and add to our personal and organisational sense of complexity and uncertainty.

In the past, we have been confident in our predictions about how the external environment is evolving and been able to come to consensus about the way ahead. Increasingly we are far from certain about how the outside world is evolving and are less able to reach consensus about how to proceed. It’s this situation that we believe calls for a new focus to leading change in organizations, and that’s not easy. There’s a temptation to always do what we’ve always done. But then we get what we’ve always got; except the reality is that the world moves on and we risk being left behind.

Change management is about people, and this statement of the obvious too often gets lost in over-complicated methodologies and technology-focused approaches to change. Leaders get seduced by the glitter of the gizmo and forget to pay attention to the ordinary, everyday needs of the people who will make the technology sing. Typically the people side of change is an afterthought, and noticed only once things are not working as planned.

With the current environment especially, a number of questions arise concerning the nature of change and the human face of change. There needs to be a new mindset to accept and embrace exponential change, to do so with more than an eye on plausible multiple technology-centric futures, and enable a more human-centric future.

Are we building a change programme that takes us towards a single, perhaps preferred future, or to help us prepare for a number of potentially different futures? Building flexibility, agility and resilience into change programmes by exploring plausible visions and situations is crucial for the future growth of our enterprises and the wellbeing of employees.

Using the ABChange Model in the context of these different potential futures enables leaders to generate a pathway that includes the people and ensures they are taken along this journey of change.

This approach ensures an organisation’s ‘greatest asset’ is paid proper attention to, whether changes are seen as radical or incremental. It marries the person and the change task together in the different future scenarios.

Many leaders find leading people through change intimidating because there are emotions involved, sometimes difficult conversations, and it takes people out of their comfort zones. With the current environment, we have all been very much outside our comfort zones for a whole variety of reasons. So, bringing together two frameworks that enables us to plot out plausible futures and how we can lead in future, gives leaders the ability to really focus on the priorities for the business not just to survive but to generate growth.

LEADING

PEOPLE

IN

CHANGE

A PRACTICAL GUIDE

INTRODUCTION

Change management is not rocket science; it is about people. Despite this, so many organizations go to great efforts to plan the logistics and practicalities of change without considering its impact on people. This can be for a number of reasons, such as budgetary constraints, lack of process understanding or lack of experience of the impact change will have on people – the list goes on. Typically, the people side of change is an afterthought, usually realized once the change is not working. In order to manage change successfully, consideration of the way people understand and deal with change is critical. This also enables managers to understand more fully how change will affect the organization as a whole.

I have worked with over thirty different organizations in both the private and public sectors over the course of twenty years. Every change programme has been different and I have been involved with each programme at a different stage. However, I have found one constant – people are afraid of the people side of change.

Several years ago, I was coaching a number of senior leaders within an organization, and at one point, nearly all of them said to me, ‘Jennifer, I know about Kotter and some other theories on change, but what the heck do I do with this thing on my desk?’ I decided when I was embarking on my Masters dissertation that I wanted to create a practical model that managers could use to answer this question. So, I spent a year drafting and conducting research to align two popular models, one in leadership and the other in change management – thus creating the ABChange model. The name of the model is very personal to me. I have child A (Amelia) and child B (Blake) and they Changed my world, as you can imagine.

I envisage this book will be relevant to managers of all levels within organizations that need to lead people through a specific change. The book aims to be a practical guide that demonstrates good practice, so managers can follow the model and lead people through change effectively and successfully.

The ABChange model has been applied in a range of different sectors, industries and organizations. The book includes a number of case studies that show how this tool has impacted various change programmes and projects. There are examples of the positive, as well as the detrimental impacts that can occur when the ABChange model is not utilized correctly. All of these case studies have been gathered through my consulting work with different organizations. The following chapters share some of the good, the bad and the ugly examples of change management and aim to take the fear out of the people side of change.

My ethos is that there cannot be any learning without change, and no change without learning. I believe the two disciplines are inextricably linked, and hence to effect real adoption of change people need to be taken on a journey of change rather than to a destination. That is the intention of this book – to take us all on a journey.

CHAPTER 1

Isn’t Change Management Simply Good Communication?

One thing is certain… change is all around us and is always happening because the world is constantly changing (Dawson 1996; Fullen 2001; Mabey and Mayon-White 1993). The big motivator for change is to make things better in one way or another (whether this is because of a crisis, high performance, reconciliation, market fluctuations, etc.). The specific reasons vary, but the overarching aim for organizations is predominately the same – to make things better (whether this is to increase profit, market share, differentiation, etc.). The desire for us as a society at the moment to make things better is enormous – all you have to do is visit the very large self-help section of any bookshop