Organizational Behavior
MOB extra credit 1
“The Inconvenient Truth About Change Management”
This article was building on to what we learned in the last session, leading change. Despite extensive and numerous research done on the subject in the last decades, there has not been much improvement in success rate of change management programs. From a survey of more than 1,000 business executives around the world, McKinsey found that most felt their change management were not successful. McKinsey performed researched to understand why change management did not result in the desire impacts. In their 2003 article, Colin Price and Emily Lawson provided a holistic perspective, The Psychology of Change Management, that suggests four basic conditions to be met before employees will change their behavior: 1) compelling story 2) Role modeling 3) Reinforcement systems 4) The skills required for change. However, the practical applications of these are not straightforward. McKinsey found several reasons below why these conditions are difficult to establish: 1) Difference in motivations – research found large variation in what motivate employees (CEO’s motivation is most likely different from employees’) 2) People prefer to write their own story – more committed to the outcome 3) the need to learn from both mistakes and successes – related to risk-averseness and preference toward options framed as “gain” rather than “loss”. 4) most people believe they are already doing the right thing – even CEOs do not see themselves as part of the problem 5) leaders are not that influential – many rely on the receptiveness of the society rather than the persuasiveness of early adopters 6) small, unexpected rewards often create long lasting impact, social norms are more effective than market norms 7) employees’ sense of the fairness of the change process and the outcome are important 8) disregarding employees’ mindset 9) capacity building not followed by practical application at work – low learning retention Source:
“The Inconvenient Truth About Change Management”
This article was building on to what we learned in the last session, leading change. Despite extensive and numerous research done on the subject in the last decades, there has not been much improvement in success rate of change management programs. From a survey of more than 1,000 business executives around the world, McKinsey found that most felt their change management were not successful. McKinsey performed researched to understand why change management did not result in the desire impacts. In their 2003 article, Colin Price and Emily Lawson provided a holistic perspective, The Psychology of Change Management, that suggests four basic conditions to be met before employees will change their behavior: 1) compelling story 2) Role modeling 3) Reinforcement systems 4) The skills required for change. However, the practical applications of these are not straightforward. McKinsey found several reasons below why these conditions are difficult to establish: 1) Difference in motivations – research found large variation in what motivate employees (CEO’s motivation is most likely different from employees’) 2) People prefer to write their own story – more committed to the outcome 3) the need to learn from both mistakes and successes – related to risk-averseness and preference toward options framed as “gain” rather than “loss”. 4) most people believe they are already doing the right thing – even CEOs do not see themselves as part of the problem 5) leaders are not that influential – many rely on the receptiveness of the society rather than the persuasiveness of early adopters 6) small, unexpected rewards often create long lasting impact, social norms are more effective than market norms 7) employees’ sense of the fairness of the change process and the outcome are important 8) disregarding employees’ mindset 9) capacity building not followed by practical application at work – low learning retention Source: