ANZ Case Study Of Change Management Analysis

Background of ANZ Bank

Question:

Discuss About The ANZ Case Study Of Change Management Analysis?

Change management is a necessary factor within organisation for creating sustainability and profitability (Young, 2009). Change management processes include a series of transformation steps that can lead employees into the changed process. The scope of the following report analysis deals with case study analysis of ANZ Bank. The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) is a leading and largest bank amongst five most successful companies in Australia and also in New Zealand. The Company had gained tremendous success post its establishment in 1835, now it has expanded to various countries globally serving multitudes of investors, customers and countries (Aiken, 2009). The Company is publicly listed with consistent performance in various countries around the world. The Company has a shared cultural value based dimension with its employees and management. The Bank had been successful in developing several employee related programs which were extremely successful but there had been a major challenge faced by the Bank in 1990s. The Bank employees had faced low employee morale and customer dissatisfaction along with other related issues, which led to appointment of McFarlane as a CEO (Klaus, 2014). He was focused on achieving transition in the Bank for achieving its success and sustainability for the future. The case study analyses challenges faced by McFarlane change management process, along with recommendations in order to overcome the same.    

ANZ Bank had been extremely successful in its various employee management processes. It has long history of customer satisfaction in its various phases of history but in 1990 it faced challenges in regards to poor performance, which led to its implementation of change management programs (Avey, 2008). McFarlane, who was bent on creating long-term strategic initiative for the Bank, envisioned the change management within the Bank. He viewed lack of banks performance in rural areas, due to which he withdrew from such areas and attended to lack of senior women in higher ranks. He undertook concept of corporate social responsibility for extending competitive advantage within the industry. He went ahead with then job cuts for generating better cost-to-income ratios then further undertook organisational transformation processes (Hayes, 2014). His primary focus was to rapidly transform the organisation impacting it from top-down approach as well as bottom-up approach for creating ANZ with a human face that could deliver financial benefits and shareholder returns. There were tremendous amounts of discrepancies that existed in employee vision regarding the Bank and way the bank wanted to be structured. All changes that was envisioned by McFarlane was rapid and did not progress with the aid of a change management leader. Leadership of McFarlane can be considered tremendously ineffective as he could not bring about the gradual transformation in the organisation cultural processes (Oreg, 2011). 

Challenges Faced by McFarlane

Effective change management is progressed by help of a change management leader, who envisions and then later implements the change within the framework of the organisation culture. Change envisioned within ANZ was a qualitative change that had to transform the organisational climate existing within the Company. It aimed at transforming values and operations of employees which could in turn help render performance related objectives. Employee performance was inadequate at the organisation and could be impacted with changed processes (Jack Walker, 2007). Hence, for bringing about changes in employees, a transformational leader should have led the process. Failure in attending to the change process reflects the ineffectiveness and rapidness with which the change was brought about in the Company with lack of planning. Various change management models that could have been implemented could allow the Company better results with change management rather than failing in the change methodology. One of change management models that is often accepted by industry wide participants consists of Kotter’s Change Management Model (Frankland, 2008).   

Kotter proposed a 8-step model for change management starting with creating a sense of urgency, followed by building a coalition, then forming a strategic vision with initiatives. Further steps includes enlisting a volunteer, then enabling action by removal of barrier, then generating a short-term win, then sustaining accelerated changed process and finally attainment of change process (Yu, 2009).

In first step of creating a sense of urgency, transformational or change management leader raises concern for implementing a process of change. In any change management process as it will be undertaken by employees, it is essential that a communication with confidence is created along with employees. This makes employees feel aware regarding the process of change and then implement step by step procedures (Kotter, 2008). However, in case of McFarlane change management procedure of cultural transformation at the Bank though employee engagement was the central point but they were not involved. A sense of urgency amongst senior as well lower levels employees. Though performance related parameters were designed but at every point a step was undertaken there was no evaluation of the measure.

In the second step that aimed at building a coalition, implying effective people in their own capacities for coordinating and communicating amongst activities (Thompson, 2010). Though McFarlane was very aggressive regarding the idea of affecting and bringing about the process of change, he was not focused on figuring out appropriate people in roles who could create an impact and make change processes ore effective. The change management procedure at the ANZ Bank was more haphazard in nature which included undertaking various activities at the same point in time (Inalhan, 2009).

Importance of Effective Change Management Leadership

The third step is the most critical step of all that encompasses forming of a strategic vision and initiatives. In this step transformational leader is expected to analyse ways in which future is going to be different as compared to its past by linking it directly to the vision. Vision of McFarlane was to make ANZ a human bank where customer satisfaction could be attempted by way of employee engagement strategies (Allen, 2007). Performance related objectives with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were set to set apart desired outcomes with those of present scores.   

The fourth step encompasses envisioning people who would effectively manage the change procedure. McFarlane visions regarding change was not very successful as there were not much participation from internal stakeholders. McFarlane way of leadership was rather transactional in nature compared to transformational styles. He linked performance based parameters by linking them to financial incentives for employees, rather than taking them into confidence for change management processes (Hamel, 2008). Opportunity to drive change can be enabled by moving in similar direction as envisioned by leader with all employees could generate positive outcome for changes within the organisation.     

Fifth step in Kotter’s change management procedure encompassed removal of all barriers. McFarlane leadership failed to visualize barriers and remove them. Primary barrier of productivity that was affecting ANZ was its bureaucratic style of management and traditional methods (Choi, 2011). Transforming this current style of management and bringing together more participative style could enhance productivity and created more employee engagement procedures. Employee engagement procedure is further encompassed by way of various innovative job design that could lead to employee motivation and their satisfaction. Employee engagement strategy can be brought about by leader and can lead to transformation in the organisation in a productive manner.

In generating short-term wins, KPIs needed to be collected to track progress and energize volunteers (Herold, 2007). Data was collected from ANZ in the first instance and then change management procedure was impacted, in between there were no endeavors made. If the management would have collected data to mark progress of change management procedure then it could have led to better outcomes for the Company.

In this step for sustaining acceleration for success, credibility for improved systems is developed with policies and structures (Connelly, 2011). Initiating change until vision is achieved is a major way to achieve success in change management procedure. The Bank did not collect much of information on its employees for generating their effectiveness and efficiency. The Bank did not highlight and provide clear path for its managers for guiding and arriving at results from their employees.   

Kotter’s Change Management Model

In the final stage articulation between the new behaviour and organisational success is attained for becoming successful (Shin, 2012). It is at this stage that the entire change process envisioned is implemented. The focus of change management procedure at ANZ was blurred hence the change management procedure could not be successfully attained to. McFarlane did accept that the change management procedure at the Bank was not planned out in a proper manner that led to its failure.

Primary vision of shareholders is to maximize the value of their investment in the Company, they appointed McFarlane as a capable CEO for ANZ. McFarlane had a successful career and reports that made him capable to handle the various challenges that was then posed by the Company. Tracking personal charisma and his performance he was appointed to take charge of the bank and to lead it. McFarlane was however, not a capable transformational leader, though he envisioned various changes in ANZ (Turner Parish, 2008). In order to bring about changes into the Bank he brought about several haphazard changes for keeping up with competitive nature in the market. Though he could not establish changes in regards to acquisitions. All his endeavors for generating profitability and sustainability in the bank was by talent management. He did not undertake thorough data collection and analysis of his various human resources hence his various schemes did not yield him much returns. Kurt Lewin’s model of change also proposes a three step procedure for bringing about changes in an organisation as Freeze, Change and Refreeze (Keller, 2009). In this procedure also change is encompassed in a step-by-step fashion and does not progress with varied dimensions in a multi-dimensional manner. Though the organisation yield success in its various employee related programs however it could be successful in its leadership and cultural transition management.     

Conclusion

Analysis of the above conditions for change reflects an ambience of positive spirit within the Company. While it is prevalent that organisational change is conducive to success and long term sustainability of the organisation, in case not applied properly can lead to mismanagement and loss for the organisation. The ambience of change as analysed in ANZ Bank was to bring about positive changes such as to match its services to current prevalent conditions in the industry. ANZ Bank needs to analyse appropriately its employees outlook prior to implementing any sort of change management strategy. The Company also needs to adopt change management or transformational leader, who has capacity to bring about changes within the organisation appropriately. As the scope of the organisation extends to various domains and it being a service related organisation, there needs to be appropriate change management strategies that is able to incorporate adequate changes within its framework. Thus, while change management can generate positive impacts, it needs to be carefully evaluated and then applied for generating overall positive outcome for the organisation.

Reference Lists

Aiken, C. &. 2009. The irrational side of change management. McKinsey Quarterly, 100-109.

Allen, J. J. 2007. Uncertainty during organizational change: Managing perceptions through communication. Journal of change management, 187-210.

Avey, J. B. 2008. Can positive employees help positive organizational change? Impact of psychological capital and emotions on relevant attitudes and behaviors. The journal of applied behavioral science, 48-70.

Choi, M. 2011. Employees’ attitudes toward organizational change: A literature review. Human Resource Management, 479-500.

Connelly, M. 2011. Kurt Lewin change management model. . Retrieved January 2013, from Change-Management-Coach. com: https://www. change-managementcoach. com/kurt_lewin. html.

Frankland, R. M. 2008. U.S. Patent No. 7,356,482. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Hamel, G. 2008. The future of management. Human Resource Management International Digest.

Hayes, J. 2014. The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave Macmillan.

Herold, D. M. 2007. Beyond change management: a multilevel investigation of contextual and personal influences on employees’ commitment to change. Journal of Applied Psychology, 942.

Inalhan, G. 2009. Attachments: The unrecognised link between employees and their workplace (in change management projects). Journal of corporate real estate, 17-37.

Jack Walker, H. A. 2007. Factors influencing organizational change efforts: An integrative investigation of change content, context, process and individual differences. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 761-773.

Keller, S. &. 2009. The inconvenient truth about change management.

Klaus, C. 2014). Change Management. . Grundlagen und Erfolgsfaktoren.

Kotter, J. P. 2008. Force for change: How leadership differs from management. Simon and Schuster.

Oreg, S. &. 2011. LEADERSHIP AND EMPLOYEES’REACTIONS TO CHANGE: THE ROLE OF LEADERS’PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES AND TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP STYLE. Personnel psychology, 627-659.

Shin, J. T. 2012. Resources for change: The relationships of organizational inducements and psychology resilience to employees’ attitudes and behaviors toward organizational change. Academy of Management Journal, 727-748.

Thompson, J. L. 2010. Strategic management: Awareness & change. Cengage Learning EMEA.

Turner Parish, J. C. 2008. Want to, need to, ought to: employee commitment to organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 32-52.

Young, M. 2009. A meta model of change. . Journal of Organizational Change Management, 524-548.

Yu, M. C. 2009. Employees’ perception of organizational change: The mediating effects of stress management strategies. Public Personnel Management, 17-32.