Managerial Communication Role in Organizational Change

PLEASE ANSWER EACH QUESTION SEPARATELY WITH IN TEXT CITATION.
Module 4 DQ 1
What role does managerial communication play in the emergence of an organization's consensus surrounding change?
Module 4 DQ 2
Suggest a communication strategy/plan for communicating a change initiative. If the change initiative involves office cutbacks and workforce reduction, how would you communicate this to the employees? What role does communication play in overcoming resistance to change?
LECTURE NOTES
Introduction
This lecture explores the leadership, supervision, systems, and structures that curtail an employee's ability to act in service to the organizational change vision.
While change initiatives may be clearly identified and well communicated, many times it is not enough. Systemic barriers may be in place to impede change. Systemic barriers are those that are built into the organization's systems and processes and act to create a deep sense of order in the system. They often go unnoticed in the change design, but appear when one investigates why change initiatives are not as effective as planned. A strong, orderly culture, for instance, and one where the system rewards stability, order, and low risk-taking, creates a systemic force that contains a change initiative to move the organization toward an innovative, free, and entrepreneurial organization.
Organizational structures with accompanying authority patterns and functional silos may make it difficult for employees to support change. Employees, who support change design initiatives to deploy new ideas, may meet less than enthusiastic responses from leaders or employees in other work units or departments. The role of the guiding coalition is to design appropriate change initiatives to remove these barriers to change.
While communications go a long way to promote understanding, subtle organization design principles or obstinate employee behavior can create conditions that slow, impede, or stop improvement. Coaching, reward structures, and assigning problematic employees to other work units are effective ways of handling these barrier issues.
Barriers
Employees operating under a broad base of authority with removed structural containment, can redesign inefficient processes, systems, and structures that get in the way of effective performance. They can identify value-added work designs, design efficient organizational structures that stimulate efficiency, and otherwise create value-added change recommendations that foster growth and vitality. If barriers exist that preclude these entrepreneurial employee-generated ideas, change efforts may be sub-optimized.
Removal of as many barriers at the beginning of the change process will assure that employees have optimum flexibility to design efficient and effective responses to the change charter. Careful investigation of possible barriers early in the design will assure considerations of these potential barriers from the beginning of the redesign activities. In addition to removing barriers to change, it is important to focus on what not to do. The classic scene from the original Sherlock Holmes movie, The Adventure of Silver Blaze, provides an example. During one of his classic cerebral reasonings, Holmes observed on the night of the murder that the dog did not bark, when in fact one would expect the opposite. From this observation, Sherlock deduced that the perpetrator was not a stranger but someone whom the victim knew. In organizational life, there are many examples of a dog-not-barking. Astute organizational change agents recognize factors that are not present or things that should not be changed, and respond accordingly.
Consequently, a broad look is necessary to examine organizational factors that should be left alone and those that may act as potential barriers to change. Often, very effective employees will look like very poor performers in a badly designed process. Likewise, an excellent process, staffed with incompetent employees, will send a signal that the process itself needs a redesign. Further, the best people and processes for controlling poor leadership may send change agents hunting in the wrong direction for improvement.
Empowered employees for broad-based action implies that the guiding coalition is staffed with the appropriate leadership, authority, expertise, skills, and knowledge to pinpoint problems, design improvements, and engage in a rapid and valuable change implementation strategy. Structure, processes, or poor leadership interventions can impede even the best of designs.
For example, a recent healthcare plan focused on removing costs from the healthcare delivery system. Nickels and dimes are still being squeezed from the cost structures of doctor's offices and hospitals where healthcare professionals deliver care. Has this helped solve the problem of rising healthcare costs? Very little improvement for consumers has occurred, while the cost of delivering service has caused some practitioners to close their doors, thus creating difficult problems of overall physician availability.
Why? The realcosts, such as malpractice and other types of required insurances, were not taken into consideration when reengineering of these healthcare plans occurred. Why is that so? Lobbyist power and the sheer political might of insurance companies created a situation where even the most courageous re-designer could avoid a battle. Tort is the legal system in the United States that allows individuals to sue one another. Various types of insurances compensate from the tort system, creating massive costs that are passed on to the consumer. The consumer can be individuals or companies who are paying for employee healthcare benefits in their premium costs. Massive social restructuring will be required to solve this difficult but important social issue. The legal system, tort, is a good example in the case of costs for healthcare delivery of a systemic driving force which until addressed as a part of the overall change goals, will impede change
Empowering People
Only with a thorough and broad-based view of the change desired and the accompanying systems and processes, will a change-remedy be implemented and the benefits of the change be felt. This example demonstrates that even the most well-intended and well-funded change effort will be ineffective unless the impediments to efficiency and effectiveness are candidates for change.
Kotter, Exhibit 3, Page 115, identifies a list of important features when empowering people to effect change:
- Communicate a sensible vision to employees − a reachable goal
- Build a common understanding of the purpose of the change that will create coordinated and common actions
- Make structures compatible with the vision − barriers impede action
- Provide training for employees to assure that the people tasked to investigate and design change have the appropriate skill set to achieve that task. To do less is to disempower the change initiative and place people in a position of possible failure.
In"The Recipients of Change," Jick (1990) explores the human dimensions related to this discussion. The role of the guiding coalition is to look out in front of the project to determine likely measures to help the change agents in the organization do their work. This implies listening to the needs of employees throughout the project to assure that it has appropriate support. While Jick's point is valid, one must also recognize the tradeoffs involved. The more that people are involved in a change effort, the more time consuming it becomes and the more impeded that change can actually be. Particularly if initial results from organizational change are negative or unanticipated (or both), people can seize upon these results and intensify resistance to change.
In "Why Change Programs Don't Produce Change," Beer, Eisenstat, and Spector (1990) articulate the tension between the systems created by individuals and the systems that create individuals. While an effective intervention into personal behavior is helpful and important, task assignments and system level processes must be addressed. If management does not address change at multiple levels, it will not achieve the anticipated results of the change project. Change within a department must be considered within the context of the organizational systems and processes in order to be effective. A task removed within one department, which is required for the work of another, will do little to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization. Systems thinking is of the utmost importance to change agents and the guiding coalition.
Conclusion
Taking time to evaluate the barriers to change can help to assure success for change initiatives. Sometimes barriers to change appear after the change plan has been implemented. Early detection of any resistance or barrier will help to assure that a remedy can be addressed before the change initiative is derailed.
References
Beer, M., Eisenstat, R. A., and Spector, B. (1990). Why change programs don't produce change. In T. D. Jick, and M. Peiperl, Managing change: Casesand concepts (pp. 229-241). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Jick, T. D. (1990).The recipients of change. In T. D. Jick, and M. Peiperl, Managing change: Casesand concepts (pp. 299-311). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.