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

Cultural change• Breaking the mould is hard work! It involves planning and thinkingand role modelling, plus developing and implementing supportingprocesses and policies.• New teams provide new opportunities. Bridges (see Chapter 4)describes the neutral zone as a time of tremendous creative opportunities.Similarly we have noticed that new senior management teams suchas the one featured in this case study are more likely to be able to changean organizational culture because they themselves are changing.• Supporting individuals is not soft! The hard work involved in facingthe real issues one to one with people pays off. It builds trust andensures understanding. But it takes courage, especially when changeinvolves the communication of unwelcome and painful news. Evenwhen change appears to offer hope for a brighter and better future,some may not see it that way.Case study descriptionThe case study concerns a financial services organization that undertooka strategic review and decided that it needed to reinvigorate the brand.With the previous case study we focused on gaining internal alignment tothe organizational service. This case study takes a different perspective.The key focus of this rebranding exercise was the external marketing ofthe products and services on offer, and the way that customer-facing staffrepresented the brand. This is best illustrated by Wasmer and Bruner’sresearch (1991) which maps the relationship flows between the customer,the organization and the customer service provider (see Figure 7.2). Theysaw the major constituents of their brand as:• marketing communications;• products on offer;• speed of service;• quality of service.As a result of the strategic review the organization decided that the key toits competitive advantage was the way in which its customer-facing269