Understanding and Managing Change
September 2000
Understanding the cycle of change and how
it may be facilitated to achieve individual and organizational goals is the
key to change management. This article begins a series explaining the phases
of the cycle and how to manage its challenges.
by Laura
Markos, Ph.D.
Consulting in the Process of Change
Experts and everyday people agree that the societal changes underway are
more radical than perhaps any in history. What futurist Alvin Toffler called
"the third wave" revolution—from a once agrarian society, through industrial
revolution, and now to post-industrial, global, knowledge-based, electronic,
networked, virtual, information society—has both micro- and macro-socioeconomic
implications that impact us all. In the midst of such revolution, we are challenged
to change our assumptions, our habits, and our systems. And the pace of change
is accelerating.
All but the most isolated know and experience change. In today's societal
revolution, it has been described as the only constant. Leaders and managers
in all sectors and industries face reorganization, globalization, and a faster
pace of new product and service development. As Peter Drucker put it, every
product and service is on trial for its life.
Supply chains are collapsing and interdependencies increasing with closer
business partnerships and complex webs of organizational interrelationships.
Hierarchies are imploding and command-and-control management is being replaced
by participative leadership. The Internet and the rise of the knowledge worker
have shifted the relationship between organization and employee, emphasizing
the value, and risks, of intellectual capital. These are but a few of the changes
sweeping across the organizational landscape.
In this chaotic environment, organizations in business, government and the
social sector are all challenged to adapt, to stay competitive, and to motivate
people despite, and because of, such rapid and sweeping change. Risk professionals
are challenged to cope with organizational and industry changes—to monitor and
address the resulting risk exposures—while facilitating organizational goals.
As all of these dynamics occur, several questions become increasingly urgent.
- How do we cope with change, as individuals, teams, and organizations?
- What effect does rapid change bring on individuals and workplaces? On
careers? On lives?
- What are the organizational and risk management implications of change?
- Why do some individuals, leaders, and organizations thrive on change,
while others struggle with it or fail because of it?
- How, as risk managers and organizational leaders, can change be managed,
embraced, initiated, and led?
This commentary begins a series of articles on change: its nature, how we
interact with change, its personal, organizational, and risk management implications.
By understanding change, individuals and leaders can successfully cope with
change and use it to personal and organizational advantage: facilitating change
to meet goals and improve results.
The Cycle of Change
To cope with, manage, or lead change, it is important to contextualize it.
Change occurs in a cycle—patterns of individual and organizational behavior—which
provides context for understanding and managing it. The cycle of change is constantly
underway, and various types of change involve concentric cycles, each in a different
phase. Each phase of the cycle provides insight into how we cope with change,
and thus how it may be managed more effectively.
Change begins with disruption—with new information, facts, participants,
or goals—that alters the status quo. What was once a steady state or way of
being is disrupted by new data, players, or objectives, and thus change begins.
This realization makes it easy to see why change is occurring so quickly, and
constantly, as new discoveries, new products and services, new businesses and
industries, even new countries are rapidly developing and entering the world
marketplace. The pace of communications and the influx of new information, in
real-time, also affects the pace of change and the bombardment of disruptions,
making status quo more of a concept—and less a reality—than perhaps ever before.
The next phase of change is imaging, or imagining what a new future might
look like with the new information, facts, participants, or goals. This begins
the process of coping with and adapting to change. Here it is key to remember
that change occurs on individual as well as organizational levels—and thus the
imaging might be fragmented by each individual's, team's or organization's particular
view of a situation, set of facts, new information, or new market participants.
Here we begin to see why change is difficult, and why managing it is challenging.
That imaging process involves energy—energy that can either move toward a
common, shared image of the future, or energy that resists change, fighting
against it, or combinations of both. Like a chemical reaction to the introduction
of new molecules, the reaction to change may be steady and lead to a new, balanced,
inert, or stable state. Or it may be explosive, leading instead to a volatile
state. It is at this point that many planned change efforts fail.
Failure of planned change is common because change leaders or initiators
often do not anticipate, or adequately address, the resistance to change which
is as natural and as certain as life itself. The resistance aspect of change
can make it or break it. Dealing with resistance is a crucial phase of the cycle
of change. Understanding, addressing, and embracing resistance is thus a critical
process in understanding and managing change.
Cumulative energy leads to action. If properly addressed, resistance can
be dealt with, harnessed, transformed toward positive action and the desired
image of planned change. Otherwise, resistance can lead to failure or to outcomes
other than those desired by leadership.
The action that results creates change, a new combination of organizational
elements resulting from the actions above. Successful change may be similar
to the desired future which was envisioned. Unsuccessful change may instead
result in scenarios similar to the past, but with new knowledge, firm resistance,
poor morale, or other undesired outcomes.
The resulting change in organizational elements leads to closure, a new state
of being, however temporal or transitory it may be, which completes the cycle
of change. It may be an evolutionary, recognizable, step change from previous
iterations, or it may be a revolutionary, near unrecognizable, altered state,
completely distinct from its predecessors. This new state of being becomes the
entry point for a new beginning phase, the introduction of new information,
which begins the cycle yet again.
Understanding the Cycle
Understanding the cycle of change and how it may be facilitated to achieve
individual and organizational goals is the key to change management. Each of
these phases will be the subject of future commentaries.
Thus the cycle of the change includes:
- Disruption—new data, facts, participants
or goals that alter the status quo
- Imaging—envisioning a new future encompassing
the new elements
- Energy—effort directed toward or resistant
of change
- Action—the result of positive or resistive
energies
- Change—the new combination of elements
resulting from the cycle
- Closure—the new state of being maintained
until the cycle begins again
Particularly in an era of rapid and revolutionary change, change management
is a survival skill. Managers and leaders in organizations that understand the
cycle of change, and how to work through it—rather than resisting it—are more
likely to succeed in coping with and successfully leading change, utilizing
its energy to achieve the desired results. In future commentaries, this series
will address each phase of the cycle and managing its challenges to reach organizational
goals.
Opinions expressed in Expert Commentary articles are those of the author and are
not necessarily held by the author’s employer or IRMI. This article does not purport
to provide legal, accounting, or other professional advice or opinion. If such advice
is needed, consult with your attorney, accountant, or other qualified adviser.