cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

The underpinning theorychange process by isolating one part of the organizational machinery inorder to make necessary changes, for example developing leadershipskills in middle management, or reorganizing the sales team to give moreengine power to key sales accounts.Our viewThis approach implies that the organizational change is a technicalproblem that can be solved with a definable technical solution. We haveobserved that this approach works well with isolated issues, but worksless well when organizations are facing complex, unknowable changewhich may require those involved to discuss the current situation andpossible futures at greater length before deciding on one approach.For example we worked with one organization recently that, onreceiving a directive from the CEO to ‘go global’, immediately set upfour tightly defined projects to address the issue of becoming a globalorganization. These were labelled global communication, global values,global leadership and global balanced scorecard. While on the surface,this seems a sensible and structured approach, there was no upfrontopportunity for people to build any awareness of current issues, or totalk and think more widely about what needed to change to supportthis directive. Predictably, the projects ran aground around the ‘action’stage due to confusion about goals, and dwindling motivation withinthe project teams.Kotter, eight-steps: machine, political, organismKotter’s (1995) ‘eight steps to transforming your organization’ goes alittle further than the basic machine metaphor. Kotter’s eight-stepmodel derives from analysis of his consulting practice with 100different organizations going through change. His research highlightedeight key lessons, and he converted these into a useful eightstepmodel. The model addresses some of the power issues aroundmaking change happen, highlights the importance of a ‘felt need’ forchange in the organization, and emphasizes the need to communicatethe vision and keep communication levels extremely high throughoutthe process (see box).114