What Does It Take To Implement Change

The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science http://jab.sagepub.com/ What Does It Take to Implement Change Successfully? A Study of the Behaviors of Successful Change Leaders
Malcolm Higgs and Deborah Rowland Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 2011 47: 309 originally published online 11 April 2011 DOI: 10.1177/0021886311404556 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jab.sagepub.com/content/47/3/309

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Creating structural change: Ensuring that the change is based on depth of understanding of the issues and supported with a consistent set of tools and processes; 3. Engaging others in the whole change process and building commitment; 4. Implementing and sustaining changes: Developing effective plans and ensuing good monitoring and review practices are developed; and 5. Facilitating and developing capability: Ensuring that people are challenged to find their own answers and that they are supported in doing this. In exploring this work further, Higgs and Rowland (2005) studied leadership behaviors within some 70 change stories and their impact on change success in differing contexts. Their analysis identified three broad sets of leadership behavior, which they categorized as 1. Shaping behavior: The communication and actions of leaders related directly to the change: “making others accountable,” “thinking about change,” and “using an individual focus”; 2. Framing change: Establishing starting points for change: “designing and managing the journey” and “communicating guiding principles in the organization”; and 3. Creating capacity: Creating individual and organizational capabilities and communication and making connections. From their analyses, they demonstrated that leader-centric behaviors (i.e., Shaping) had a negative impact on change success in all the contexts examined. This finding tends to endorse the broader critique of the “heroic” and leader-centric models that
Furthermore, they tend to reinforce the negative impact on change success of leader-centric behaviors (Avolio et al., 2009; Bryman, 1992; Judge & Piccolo, 2006). However, it does appear that when such behaviors are present to an extent, but balanced by a combination of the four “Framcap” behaviors, then success in change implementation is feasible. In addition, the findings provide support for the view that effective leadership behaviors need to be more engaging and facilitating (Avolio et al., 2009; Cooper et al, 2005; Luthans & Avolio, 2003). Within a change context, there is evidence that leader behaviors need to be directed toward systemic issues (Bartunek, 1984; Bryman, 1992, Sparrowe, 2005). In particular, the behaviors identified as differentiating the leaders employing all four subcategories of “Framcap” from others provides further insight into the nature of successful change leadership. Taken together, the findings do tend to suggest positive answers to the two research questions presented above. The overall picture, which emerges from the findings in this study, appears to be one in which 1. Approaches to change that operate within a framework that posits change as a complex phenomenon (i.e., Master and Emergent) are more successful than approaches that adopt a more linear and sequential viewpoint (i.e., Directive and Self-assembly).