Organizational Change & Culture - wrap up summary

JWI 555 Organizational Change & Culture, Week10 course wrap up, 6/12/13

This is easily one of the finest classes I have ever taken in my career. From the learning I am already seeing profound impact on my thinking and behavior.

After turning around IBM from a death spiral in 1993, CEO Lou Gerstner said in his book, "culture is THE game in a company the size of IBM" (Gerstner, 2002). Understanding what culture means and learning change-leadership techniques to elevate a team's performance to highest levels, I now feel very well prepared to face major business challenges confidently.

Because change-leadership and culture are passionate subjects of mine, especially after seeing IBM struggle so badly with culture and change issues and making a miraculous come-back from death, I have diligently taken copious notes to take forward.

What have you mastered about Organizational Change and Culture?
None.
"what we know is the size of the fist, what we don't know is the size of the world", said a South Indian Saint Avvaiyaar.

I do feel comfortable with the following concepts that I have internalized them fully.

0. Why organizations should change and improve?
When orgs improve, many people win
Employees - enjoy satisfactions of success, productivity, creativity, better reputation, greater compensation
Consumers - get innovative products and services at better prices
Communities - prosper
1. It is the leader's job to look into the future with industry leading thoughts, see around corners and steer the direction of the firm to seize opportunities and avoid train wrecks.
2. Be a change agent - Change the Game
Forces driving change - Technology, Globalization, environment, financial crises
Forces resisting change - Culture, Calcification, Complexity
Explain rationale for change, Get right people on the team, get the resisters off the team, Seize every opportunity

3. Leading Change - Kotter framework
Establish sense of urgency
Create a guiding coalition
Develop a change vision
Communicate the change vision for buy-in
Empower employees for broad based action
Generate short term wins
Consolidate gains, produce more gains
Make it stick
Leadership skills & behaviors essential to driving change include
(i) Look forward to where change will be most urgently needed
(ii) create and communicate vision for change
(iii) mobilize support for change effort
(iv) make clear demands for results to be achieved, give honest performance feedback
(v) organize and direct people in ways that they can make change happen
(vi) communicate openly, honestly across org levels and boundaries
(vii) master at least one change methodology and use it widely to generate best results
(viii) overcome barriers and resistance
(ix) Continuously improve change-capability in the firm by improving your own skills as a leader and a manager.

4. Demand Better Performance & Get Better Results (Schaffer, 1991) & JWI 555 W3L2
Make the business case - Start with an urgent problem.
Select the goal and specify the minimum expectation of results.

5. Great leaders inspire action by starting with why (Simon Sinek)
Why - (what I believe) this is the emotional side
How & What are the logical side

6. I attained greater clarity about the concept of stakeholders.
I was able to rank them in the order of importance.
This gives me a valuable framework to be a more inclusive leader.
Those who focus only on shareholders and ignore key stakeholder segments could risk running the firm into troubled waters.
Stakeholder mapping technique allows a practical way to manage and drive change in the firm.

7. The discussion about Dos & Don'ts in making employees live and breathe the vision helped me see what levers to push
and what pitfalls to avoid while communicating a vision.
Setting clear goals & Avoiding jargons, communicating to broad team & not just the top leaders, modeling values with actions,
reinforcing vision with rewards & not assuming people will do what you expect, appeal to emotion also & not just logic
8. I also learned the importance of vision statement in focusing and motivating the organization.
The expanded vision matrix metrics - strategic, financial, operational, organizational - equip me with practical knobs to turn in making the vision a reality.
Strategic: product/service focus, customer/market focus, unique positioning, differentiation
Financial: guiding financial-performance indicators; success metrics; significant financial commitments or decisions
Operational: essential manufacturing/service/delivery capabilities; technology priorities; key performance indicators
Organizational HR recruitment, selection, retention, development priorities, leadership decisions, structural considerations
9. Business Process Redesign - This five step framework is already valuable in helping me drive positive change through the organizations I work with. Best practices, VSM, employee empowerment, obstacles removal, Focus on Results.
Improving an organization's capability must first begin with reviewing what already works best ie the best practices.  Second, Value Stream Mapping (VSM) can  be applied to methodically to identify waste - time delays and increased expenses, redundancy, bottlenecks, reworks and communication misses. Alternatively, fundamental redesign of processes from a clean slate can also be attempted. Third, employees need to be empowered to  generate good ideas and act on their wisdom. Fourth, dis-empowering obstacles such as obstructing  formal structures, misaligned middle-management bosses, skills deficit, thankless compensation systems need to be addressed. Finally, the change agents need to be focused on results, not activities.

10. Deliver Rapid Results through Quick Wins & Motivation Levers

- Learning the importance of quick wins helps me grow as a leader.
I understand that supporting a long vision by generating a series of quick short term wins is a key leadership technique.
This is precious to me. I am already applying this principle at work now and will deploy them in my non-profit mission quite gainfully.

- Drive Change with the Rapid Results Technique
Identify most current, high-impact problems
Generate ideas to fix them
Create a dedicated SWAT team to move quickly
Use Good project management - work plan, accountability
achieve goal - 30-90 days , energize
Expand effort to more challenging goal

- Spot resisters quickly, deal with them creatively eg. using motivation levers or let them go
Different people in a corporation are motivated by different things(Gerstner, 2002)
- money
- advancement
- recognition
- fear
- anger
- learning
- opportunity to make an impact, see efforts produce concrete results
- rouse with a threat of extinction
- inspire with a compelling vision of future
- being part of something bigger than you

11. Work-Out & Six Sigma are two of the five most important change leadership techniques that can lead to a LEANer organization.
Best practices sharing, Process Redesign, Rapid Results are the other three methods. Learning about these methods and having a conversation with Jack Welch made a very special week.

Work-out is a technique used to give everyone a voice and bring every brain in the game to eliminate unnecessary work and bureaucracy  (JWI 555, W7 L1). Planning & Teamwork, Townhall meeting, Implementation are the 3 key steps in Work-Out.

Six Sigma is a quality improvement strategy and program that aims at transforming business processes to reduce defects and drive down variation in products, services and customer experience.  It overhauls a company's internal processes so that customers get what they want, when they expect it, every time. DMAIC  (Define Measure Analyze Improve Control) are the 5 steps of six sigma

12. From Jack's WK8 video I learned the importance of communicating why change must happen, how change will be done,
what is in it for the people and repeating ad nauseum. This makes perfect sense.

13. From W8L1, I learned how to use the five tools for change leadership
- best practice sharing, process redesign, rapid results, work-out and six-sigma -
after taking into account practical considerations such as speed, cost, flexibility, range of problems they can tackle, technical rigor required and produced.
14. W8L2 highlighted the 7 elements in effective change-communication:
simplicity, metaphor, using multiple communication channels & forums, leading by example, explaining inconsistencies, talking but also listening.

15. WK8 DQ1 gave me a chance to think and act like a CEO in a turn around situation, leading change from the forefront.
The BP assignment with TeamB helped to pull all the concepts together and apply in a real life example.
Working with TeamB colleagues Alexandra, Michael & Shalonda helped me learn how to work together with trust, respect for each other's diverse constraints,
flexibility and leverage each member's unique strengths.

16. Complexity is the enemy of change (WK9L1).
Sources of complexity include dysfunctional structures, product/service proliferation, unplanned process evolution and unproductive managerial behavior.
Too many steps, meetings, stakeholders, layers, products
Takes too long to make decisions.
Simple requests don't get action.

17. Simplify using Customer-centered perspective, Five change tools, Communication Clarity, Results focused demand making, Delayering,
moving from command & control style of management to empowering direct reports to make their own decisions.

18. Delayer the organization
Layers must be prevented as they insulate from reality, slow down decision making, distort information and smother initiative.
19.  Be a change agent (Welch, podcast WK9)
- See the future no one sees; Take intrinsic Authority, Don't wait; Have the guts to bet your careerl; assemble followers to go for it;
exude excitement to lead and be a part of a change initiative; be open to change; forget yesterday's game and look at every day afresh

20. Management objective is not just to increase shareholder value but to gain trust of all stakeholders (McKinsey, 2009).
Key stakeholders should include employees, customers, suppliers, communities, the press, unions, governments, civil society.
Decision making, compensation practices, performance management must shift from shareholder-centric to multi-stakeholders centric focus.

What do you now understand but may want to learn more about?
I understand the following concepts but will need to practice them and learn more to internalize fully:
21. Manage People to lead change - Hire, Develop & Promote Talent; Fire under-performers and resisters
Hire and promote only true believers and get on with it types
Set standards of leadership behavior: Simplicity, Speed, Self-confidence; Values vs Achievement matrix

22. Put a candid appraisal system in place first, then differentiate 20/70/10, then tell people where they stand & how to improve:
Top20 - they should know you love them, take care of them,pay em, reward em, let them know they are top20
Middle70 - tell them they are the valuable middle, give them reward, show them how to get to Top20
Bottom10 - tell em they are in bottom10; 70-80% will move on to another company - will go elsewhere, find a job and grow
23. Culture & Future - Two Responsibilities of the senior-most leaders
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- identify challenges and opportunities of the future; stay several steps ahead of everyone else
- manage and change organizational culture

24. Diagnose Culture in a firm
Know where to look. Evidence shows up in many places.
****************************************************
- is structure hierarchical or flat?
- Are decisions made by a single person, few senior managers, with participation from a broad group?
- boss's office more luxurious than workspaces of frontline people ?
- how quickly are decisions made ?
- which function ultimately runs the show - R&D, Sales, Accounting?
- Do people speak up with questions and concerns or is there superficial agreement and a lot of underground complaining?
- Are people rewarded for individual entrepreneurship or team work ?
- Who gets promoted?
- Who makes the most money ?
- Where has the company invested money, imagination, time?
- Who gets invited to meetings? What is discussed? How long do they take ?
- Are employees referred to as associates, resources or FTEs?

25. Culture traits that support change
Candor (ideas, speed, cost reduction)
Differentiation (performance recognitions, resource allocation)
Voice, Dignity
Flat stucture

26. Anchor change in culture
voice, candor => invite individual's best ideas
empowerment, accountability => translate ideas into effective action
Address toward end of change process when people see results of change from new behavior

27. Great leaders are a rare kind of change agents
- they don't just navigate orgs through a major change
they identify, lead, embed change after change after change
- have vision and courage to improve things
- have skills to see their vision through
- create an innovative, flexible, forward-looking organization that learns
- comfortable in a world of continuous transformation; drive one major change initiative after another
- at home with high levels of uncertainty
- restless, curious, always looking for ways to get better
- love a good challenge.
- show up with infectious enthusiasm, passion and conviction for each new wave of change
- continuously learn and grow at a rate associated with children; in a totally different league
They stay ahead of change as old behaviors and assumptions get outdated
follow their interests and passions even if unrelated to job
master new avenues for development and use these as lens to see business challenges and opportunities in new and creative ways
- multifaceted, variety of rich experiences, depth of judgment to face world's increasing complexity

28. To become a great change agent
(i) Become ridiculously well-informed about the business, environment
(ii) See things others don't see; think things others don't think
(iii) Cultivate and be open to follow you intuition

29.  Lead change efforts as Business environment is shifting rapidly
Watch trends. Live the WSJ.
Look also at car wrecks - financial crises, bankruptcies, tragedies.
Seize every opportunity, even those wrought by adversity.
Become truly a great agent of change

What questions can you now articulate about Organizational Change and Culture based on what you have learned in this course?
The quote by Gandhi, "be the change you want to see in the world", comes alive to me now in ways I have never felt before. A lot of my questions about culture and change leadership have been answered in this class. I cannot wait to practice these skills and see what unique value I can add to my work. I do have questions about the differentiation technique when rounds of layoff has already cut out the fat from the organization. The bottom 10% is now part of solid performers.

Fantastic learning experience. Awesome class !
Dr DP