Organizational Change and Stress Management

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Contribution of Change Agents to Change Resistance

Change agents in an organization are people who advocate for transformation and redefinition of the organization. Change is important for every organization because it enables it to adapt to the ever changing and competitive environment. However, the workforce may be reluctant to change because of factors such as uncertainty in the ideas presented, personality, disruption of their routine schedule, fear of poor performance in the proposed system and whether the organization’s changes are successfully established or not. With these factors forming puzzles in the minds of the employees, it is important to persuade them effectively for them to accept the change. According to Ford & Ford (April 01, 2009), change agents in an organization can be contributors to resistance to change because of poor communication process that do not validate the value of the change. Once the important message of the change is not adequately relayed to the workforce, they will become reluctant to it and actively or passively resist its inception in the organization.

Some change agents do not justify the innovations to the employees and on the same note; they fail to outline employee benefits if they accept the change. As a result, employees are often not confident to be part of the new system. When change agents express some kind indecisiveness with the ideas they are proposing, they cannot win the hearts and minds of the workforce. If the workforce of an organization is resistant to change, it is because the change agents have not availed an avenue where both the employees can evaluate the current ideas in the system to perform a S.W.O.T analysis. Another perspective, which change agents contribute to resistance to change in the organization, is by presenting ideas and timeframes that are not feasible to the people to be affected by the proposed change. If the feasibility is not vivid, the employees will not want to be part of it. Ford & Ford (April 01, 2009) also believe that if change agents do not ensure execution of the proposed ideas, the employees will not deem them as important and hence, resistance. Lastly, the agents should not resist the employees’ resistance blindly just because they are confident in their ideas. Failing to understand the reasons behind the employees’ resistance worsens the situation and in the end, no improvements are made.

Ways of Using Resistance to Change as a Change Agent

Change agents should ground their understanding on the fact that resistance to change from the employees is a special type of feedback (Ford & Ford, April 01, 2009). Therefore, it will not be to their advantage if they patronize the people in the organization who did not bother to play a part in their new system. They should adjust themselves to know the root cause of the resistance and use it as a valuable resource to spearhead the change initiative (Anderson, 2010). Initiating blame games will only make the employees more rebellious causing a lot of friction between the management and the employees. Once there is conflict of ideas in the organization, it is doomed to be unsuccessful. Ford et al assert that for change agents to decode resistance in the organization, their first step should be to adjust the mind to accept the resistance. From there, they will be able to conduct self-evaluation and revisit their perception about the situation.

There are many ways that agents explain resistance including silence or too many questions from the employees. However, these are conclusions they derive without looking into the matter critically to stop being judgmental. The employees will only have myriads of questions because they want to be assured that the change will be convenient to them. In the case of silence, the employees must have not understood the impact of the change in their lives and thus they are not bothered to ask any question. According to Anderson (2010), after the agent has tuned his or her mindset to accommodate the interest of the employees, he or she should be in a position to spread the awareness of the change adequately among them. Here, the agent is expected to explain intensively the beneficial aspect of the proposed change. This includes how steady it will be overtime with organizational goals that should remain intact. Therefore, the “resistance” as termed by the change agents should be an instigator to lively discussions that makes the basis of change dawn on the minds of the employees. This strategy defines resistance to change as a resource to propagate the change. The feedback allows the agents to reconstruct their communication process for better understanding of the employees. After making the employees aware of what the change is about, the agents are expected to justify the incorporation of the change into the organizational system.

Common Mistakes by Managers in change initiation

Kotter (1996) developed a comprehensive model to give insight on change implementation in an organization. According to Kotter (1996), the common mistakes that, managers make when attempting to initiate change are, their inability to communicate how urgent the change is to the employees, lack an interim committee to oversee the change process, most changes articulated by managers are visionless and lack of feasibility in the change. The managers even go further to forestall the change process unknowingly by making the change an independent aspect from the organizational structure making the employees to have fear of accustoming to a very new system. If the managers do not communicate the urgency of the change adequately to the employees, chances are that they will dismiss the idea as somewhat unconventional. When proposing the change, managers tend to route the hopes of employees by speaking of an immediate success and when they are interrogated, they believe its resistance and they want to block further criticism. The lack of a vision in the initiation of change leaves the change with no direction and the employees are unable to identify themselves with the focal point. When managers make the above mistakes, the change process is negatively altered.

Required Steps to Overcome Problems in the Change Process

Kotter (1996) stipulates eight steps that will enable managers to overcome the aforementioned mistakes and experience the organizational change. The first step is to create urgency for change. He explains that this done by making the entire organization aware of the threats and opportunities by evaluating them with clarity. Discussions that entertain dialogue will give the manager the convincing power and an additional force from people with expertise in the industry would serve as a boost to prove the urgency to the employees. The second step is to form a powerful coalition. The manager’s convincing power should be supported by a team of true leaders who will give the initiation of change a good foundation. Managers need to assess the team and strengthen the members so that they can stay in charge of the change process. The third step is to create a vision for change. Here, the manager together with the change coalition, integrate all the vague ideas of the change into one comprehensible one.

When the organization realizes the definite goal people will be motivated to act towards change. The fourth step is to communicate the established vision to the entire organization. Communication in this regard should be repetitive so that the vision lingers in the minds of the employees. They should be constantly reminded amidst new information that gets into the organization on a daily basis and the managers should be exemplary in the process. The fifth step is to remove obstacles. This involves scouting for barriers that might deter the change process and eliminating them. If it involves convincing the employees further, the managers and the change coalition should act against it but in a prudent way.

The sixth step is to create short-term wins. By creating short-term targets that are achievable and rewarding those who meet the targets, the morale of the employees will be boosted to implement change. The seventh step is to build on the change. This means continuous improvement even after short-term success has been achieved. The pace of the change process will increase dramatically. The final step is to anchor the changes into the culture of the organization. The change should become part of the organization’s activities and the vision and values should be still remembered. This includes recognition of the change coalition and replacement of the members as the change is gradually incorporated into the system.

References

Anderson, D. L. (2010). Organization development: The process of leading organizational change. Los Angeles: Sage.

Ford, J. D., & Ford, L. W. (April 01, 2009). Decoding resistance to change. Harvard Business Review, 87, 4.)

Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading change. Boston, Mass: HarvardBusinessSchool Press.