Change Mangement
Saint Leo University
PRM 526 Best Practices
Case Study Two: Haller Specialty Manufacturing
Overview
The Haller (Kerzner, 2006) case study is all about resisting change. Kerzner (2018)
states that organizations shy away from integrating project management into their culture because they fear the inevitable conflicts that accompany change. Project managers wear many hats; firefighter, babysitter, therapist, all due to conflicts within departments and team members, most of these based on trust. I chose this case study because the ending statement in the first two Mods’ discussion articles (Abudi, 2009; Kenny, 2003), as well as the Continental Computer Corporation case study (Kerzner, 2006), never answered the question:
How do you get organizational-wide buy-in on
restructuring a company for better efficiencies?
The driving force behind this choice was the Crabo-Ljungman (1997) statement that addressed resistance to sudden (or any) change: even though the newly implemented process “promoted better resource management; its implementation required a cultural revolution.” (Kenny, 2003). All three articles only addressed half of the issue: what needs to be accomplished, but not how to accomplish it.
Trust and Fear
I believe there are two driving forces in humans that resist change; trust and fear. Kerzner writes in section 9.2, regarding trust:
You wake up in the morning, get dressed, and climb into your car to go to work. On a typical morning, you operate the foot pedal for your brakes maybe 50 times. You have never met the people who designed, manufactured or installed the brakes, yet you still give no thought to whether the brakes will work when you need them.
Then you arrive at work and push the button for the elevator. You have never met the people who designed, manufactured, installed or inspected the elevator, but again you feel perfectly comfortable riding the elevator up to your floor.
By the time you get to your office at 8:00 a.m., you have trusted your life to countless numbers of people whom you have never met; still, you sit down in your office and refuse to trust the person in the next office to make a $50 decision (Kerzner, 2018).
Kerzner’s analogy of not trusting others is a prime example of how ridiculous a person’s thought process can be. Fear, on the other hand, goes much deeper.
Sometimes they go hand-in-hand.
Trust
Mirriam-Webster (n.d.) defines trust as a noun as:
a. assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of
someone or something
b. one in which confidence is placed
c. dependence on something future or contingent : HOPE
And as a verb:
a. to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of BELIEVE
b. to place confidence in : RELY ON
c. to commit or place in one's care or keeping : ENTRUST
d. to permit to stay or go or to do something without fear or misgiving e. to place confidence : DEPEND
f. to be confident : HOPE
Fear
Mirriam-Webster (n.d.) defines fear as a noun as:
a. an unpleasant, often strong emotion caused by anticipation or
awareness of danger
b. reason for alarm : Danger
And as a verb as:
a. to be afraid of : expect with alarm
b. to feel fear in (oneself)
c. to be afraid or apprehensive
Both Trust and Fear can be used as both a Noun and a Verb in this case, as change is an action.
Discussion
PMI defines project integration management as the ability to identify characteristics of unification, consolidation, communication, and interrelationships while balancing competing demands and examining any alternate approaches (Project Management Institute [PMBOK 6], 2017).
Kerzner (2018) defines a project manager’s role as the manager of change and a facilitator of customer relations, between the project and the rest of the organization. In poorly run businesses, it seems executives allow change to manage itself, as found in the Continental Computer Corporation case study, available upon request (Kerzner, 2006).
Kerzner (2018) gives myriad ways to create an excellent organization and to promote a productive workplace, mainly focusing on leadership qualities we’ve heard before, but never addresses how to affect that change.
Affecting change
There are two types of organizational change: evolutionary, which are small,
incremental changes that occur over time, and revolutionary, those that happen as fast as overnight (Borwick, 2013). How employees view that change falls on the CEO to alter their thinking. (Fløvik et al., 2019) found that evolutionary organizational changes had detrimental psychological effects on employees rather than revolutionary changes. This research helps explain why many organizational changes fail. (Lawson & Price, 2003).
Borwick (2013) and Kerzner (2018) both agree that the best way to affect change is to find, as Kerzner puts it, Champions; third-party agents in the organization that see the vision and potential for excellence and slowly ramp up the idea that things need to change. Lawson and Price (2003) state that employees will alter their mindsets only if they understand the point of the change and agree with it. Benjamin Spock found in his research that people model their behavior on "significant others": those they see in positions of influence. You can see this phenomenon in place on social media today as Influencers (Elsbury, 2019) (Kastenholz, 2021).
Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance in 1957 essentially said, if people believe in an organization's overall purpose, they will be happy to change their behavior to serve that purpose. If not, then people become mentally distressed (Borwick, 2013).
In the early 30s, Skinner conducted experiments on rats, having them repeatedly run through a maze. If the rat made a wrong turn, it would get shocked, if completed correctly, it would be rewarded with food. Although people refer to their work as a rat race, Skinner’s overall lesson is that proper incentives reap proper responses. When created as a loop, the response will automatically be repeated without the reward (Borwick, 2013).
The Point of Change
Perotti et al. (2012) define a successful change when the organization reaches a
competitive advantage from its initial state. Perotti et al. postulate that middle management should affect change using communication, training, field coaching, and individual support.
I would argue that ALL management, especially executives, be
trained in leading behavioral change. Those that push-back
need to step aside and rethink their career choices.
Humans are creatures of habit, and any change in a working environment is disruptive to their routine. When change is verbally introduced, employees are often selective in their perception of what will and will not change due to the fear of the unknown, and ultimately causing stress.
It’s management’s responsibility to be as transparent as possible regarding changes (Hurn, 2012).
In 1951, Lewin developed a three-stage model regarding organizational restructuring; defrost the current state, move to a new state, and freeze the changes once successful.
The psychology of change
Bovey & Hede (2001) agreed with the perception of restructuring issues and resistance
to change, so they conducted psychological research into why and how employees react to change.
Looking at adaptive and maladaptive defense mechanisms and individual resistance, they found four phases individuals pass through when confronted with significant changes
1. initial denial
2. resistance
3. gradual exploration
4. eventual commitment.
Like Skinner’s rats, humans develop reactionary habits to protect themselves from change, which becomes subconscious behavior. These defenses inhibit the person from accepting the change they are confronted with and often tap into those deeply seeded anxieties from the past.
Getting large groups of people to walk through the change process is like herding cats; some people tend to move through the process rather quickly, while others may become stuck or experience multiple transitions. As we have already established, employee resistance is the number one cause of failure in corporate restructuring.
Bovey & Hede found that management tends to focus on the nuts and bolts of organizational change and completely disregard the emotional trauma these changes have on their employees. By harnessing the energy from early adapters and empowering them to become evangelists, champions, supporters, etc., they can help affect change (2001).
The authors have found that staff would like to have their input considered and become disenfranchised when those requests have been dismissed by management.
Organizational change is a balancing act between the needs of the organization and the needs of employees. Either way, organizational change involves personal change.
Management needs to understand that success depends on the participation of people changing themselves to embrace the inevitable.
Bovey & Hades’ research focuses on psychoanalytic theory, which describes the thoughts and desires that exist below the level of conscious awareness. For their research, unconscious processes were defined as defense mechanisms that arise involuntarily in response to the perception of psychic danger and are adopted by the individual to alleviate anxiety.”
They identified five maladaptive mechanisms
1. Projection
2. Acting out
3. Isolation of affect
4. Dissociation
5. Denial
They also identified two adaptive mechanisms
1. Humor, mainly in the form of sarcasm. I, personally fall into this category.
2. Anticipation
Anxiety and Depression
At this point, it's crucial to define anxiety and depression. Simply stated, anxiety is
emotional energy bouncing back and forth between internal walls, while depression is anger turned inward. An anxiety loop can be created when there is a constant circle of anger and hurt.
As stated earlier, when employees' feedback is ignored, there are feelings of anger and feelings of hurt because of management's lack of empathy and inclusion. Some employees who feel they have valuable input and are consistently muted fall into depression, destroying self-worth and charisma, which evolves into self-sabotage and emits pugnacious behavior in the workplace (Llera & Newman, 2019). Bovey & Hede (2001) found that anxiety leads to inefficiencies in the workplace and a contributing factor to resisting change.
The two adaptive defenses that were investigated were humor and anticipation. As discussed earlier, humor in the form of sarcasm to relieve anxiety is seen as a coping mechanism in the process of accepting change. Anticipation in adaptive defense materializes by dooms-daying situations to anticipate consequences and emotional reactions in advance and consider realistic alternative responses or solutions.
Both of these processes show high emotional intelligence, as well as mental intelligence. Oddly, these are the type of people who quickly adapt to change once they have a complete comprehension of how it impacts their daily lives and can be harnessed as champions of change for the organization.
The five maladaptive defense mechanisms begin with denial, which finds the individual refusing to acknowledge the external reality that is apparent to others. Some people experience dissociation as a defense mechanism, essentially disconnecting themselves from their thoughts, feelings, and surroundings.
People who use isolation of effect as a defense mechanism separate ideas from feelings, essentially losing touch with their feelings while remaining aware of change’s cognitive elements. Think of these individuals as ambivalent about change.
Using projection as a defense mechanism finds individuals pawning their own unacceptable feelings, impulses, or thoughts to another individual. As discussed earlier, individuals who act out as a defense mechanism harbor feelings of anger and hurt because of management's lack of empathy and inclusion. From an HR perspective, management needs to be aware of how personal issues such as divorce, separation, family emergencies, and unfinished grieving from death can impact an employee's thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
Bovey & Hede (2001) found that the maladaptive defense mechanisms of denial and dissociation were so closely related that they essentially became one factor. Topping that list was projection, with acting out and isolation tied at number two. Conversely, the adaptive response of anticipation was ruled out as it seldom came into play within the study.
Practical use
Nussbaumer & Merkley (2010) tracked the operational, organizational, and cultural changes in a university library. The University Librarian (UL) position had a high churn rate over the past 40 years, averaging less than one five-year term per administration. In contrast, there was low churn with other library employees; staff are unionized, and librarians are tenured faculty. An external candidate was selected for the university UL position and immediately met with all library staff, college deans, the Vice President of Academic, and others in the community. Everyone agreed that it was clear that the library staff were stuck in a rut of ineffectiveness.
Operationally, there was an understanding that “everyone does the same thing,” which discouraged workforce differentiation. The benefit for unionized staff was a high degree of cross-training; however, the overall outcome was an organizational culture that discouraged flexibility, innovation, expertise, and risk; essentially holding no one responsible or accountable. Customer service was lacking, and power was held by a few highly influential individuals who were resistant to change. The new UL needed to lead the staff through transformational change.
The new UL wanted to set the stage for change by destabilizing the existing operational, organizational and cultural model. The UL wanted to demonstrate multiple ways to approach work by challenging the status quo and making a clear leadership statement.
The current library structure was composed of numerous committees led solely by librarians with polarized political views, leaving unionized staff feeling neglected and unheard. The new UL disbanded the committees and replaced them with two ad-hoc task groups of both staff and librarians; one to review public services and the other systems and collections. This change alone revealed operational and cultural challenges. Distrust between staff and librarians surfaced, and a group-distrust of the new UL. This singular change indicated to the staff that a complete overhaul of the organization was necessary.
The UL established the motto of Moving Forward and asked everyone, "If we built [the library program] today, what would it look like?"
That one question set a framework for implementing change and identifying best practices from their research.
Addressing public service led to the second question: “how are we adding value to our students, faculty, and staff, and if we aren't adding value to our constituents, how could we move in that direction?”
Nussbaumer & Merkley state that cultural change in an organization is one of the most important factors to consider when restructuring but one of the hardest to implement. It's difficult to change because it is intangible. You cannot see culture; you can only observe its manifestation through behavior, morale, and language. As stated earlier, change often fails when there is no shared vision. By allowing staff to realize the current system’s inadequacies and having a voice in organizational change, anxiety levels drop and are replaced with a sense of community.
The Project Manager as a leader
Heagney (2016) agrees that the human factor is the most challenging aspect of managing projects. Heagney suggests addressing your behaviors to change and the drivers that cause those behaviors. Doing so will help the PM better understand themselves, as well as others. Being malleable to situations helps de-escalate anxiety with others and allow the PM to evolve as a manager. Moving from a directive approach at the beginning of projects to a delegative approach as the project evolves and the team solidifies will also gain staff support and respect.
Occasionally the PM might need to switch leadership styles with different groups, taking personalities into account. In doing so, the PM creates champions to help facilitate change and motivate others around them. That’s another paper on another deep topic. I’ll tackle it as soon as my MBA is completed in 2022.
Conclusion
Saint Leo commits to offering “a practical, effective model for life and leadership in a challenging world; a model based on a steadfast moral consciousness that recognizes the dignity, value, and gifts of all people.” Part of that commitment as a representative of St. Leo is to become an ambassador of change, especially in the project management field.
At its core, project management facilitates change. When met with adversity, projects are destined for failure. Understanding human behavior, motivating and encouraging change, and becoming excellent communicators are key to success in this field.
References
Borwick, J. (2013, June 5). Revolutionary vs. Evolutionary organizational change – HEIT Management. http://www.heitmanagement.com/blog/2013/06/revolutionary-vs evolutionary-organizational-change/
Bovey, W. H., & Hede, A. (2001). Resistance to organisational change: The role of defence mechanisms. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 16(7), 534–548. https://doi.org/10.1108/ EUM0000000006166
Elsbury, K. (2019, October 10). Council post: Are social media influencers worth the investment? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2019/10/10/are-social-media influencers-worth-the-investment/
Fløvik, L., Knardahl, S., & Christensen, J. O. (2019). The effect of organizational changes on the psychosocial work environment: Changes in psychological and social working conditions following organizational changes. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi.org/ 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02845
Heagney, J. (2016). Fundamentals of project management (Fifth edition). American Management Association (AMACOM).
Hurn, B. J. (2012). Management of change in a multinational company. Industrial and Commercial Training, 44(1), 41–46. https://doi.org/10.1108/00197851211193417
Kastenholz, C. (2021, March 2). Council post: The importance of influencer marketing in the “new normal” digital sphere. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ forbesagencycouncil/2021/03/02/the-importance-of-influencer-marketing-in-the-new normal-digital-sphere/
Kerzner, H. (2006). Project management: Case studies (2nd ed). John Wiley.
Kerzner, H. (2018). Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence (Fourth Edition). Wiley.
Lawson, E., & Price, C. (2003, June 1). The psychology of change management | McKinsey. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the psychology-of-change-management#
Llera, S., & Newman, M. (2019, November 26). The secret reason why you can’t stop worrying. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-courage happiness/201911/the-secret-reason-why-you-can-t-stop-worrying
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Dictionary by Merriam-Webster: America’s most-trusted online dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/
Nussbaumer, A., & Merkley, W. (2010). The path of transformational change. Library Management, 31(8/9), 678–689. https://doi.org/10.1108/01435121011093441
Perotti, C., Minel, S., Roussel, B., & Renaud, J. (2012). The human side of organisational change: Improving appropriation of project evolutions. Projectics / Proyéctica / Projectique, 10(1), 41. https://doi.org/10.3917/proj.010.0041
Project Management Institute [PMBOK 6] (Ed.). (2017). A guide to the project management body of knowledge / Project Management Institute (Sixth edition). Project Management Institute.
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