Sustaining Change: Managerial Self-Assessment

Change is a crucial aspect in an organization, which need to manage by an executive in order to work appropriately and sustain change. Change Manager is responsible for this act of action. Change management is not a single-handed work; many people in an organization are involved in this task, from different levels of management across the organization, which will be responsible for catalyzing, encouraging, supporting, facilitating, and driving change to implement it successfully in the organization (Kuipers & Higgs, 2014).

If I would have been appointed as a manager of change, I would rate myself at 8 points in 10 point scorecard. The aspects that were conducted well, being a change manager were:

• Empathize – this could be helpful to empathize towards others and express that properly so that the individual facing difficulties believe that the manager is understanding his feelings and he will be comfortable when change is implemented
• Applied knowledge of employee and organizational development – for better implementation of change, it is essential to have knowledge of organization and employee as well, to apply to implement change.
• Collected useful and meaningful data with the help of surveys, observations, and interviews – with my effective diagnostic skills, I was able to collect all the relevant data required, which was helpful in the implementation
• Drawn concrete conclusion to the complex data collected

Things that I did not get well while implementing change:

• Resistance to change – people resist to change, which I lack in handling. After the implementation of change, people resistance to change.
• Unable to manage group dynamics and groups(Doppell, 2017)

When I was in a position to receive what other manger implemented the change and took initiative for change, they were able to handle the situation well. The initiative they took, which get right, and turned out to be helpful was:

• Communication – communication is one of the main aspects in change management, which he performed well, to make us comfortable, and make us understand the relevance for change, what will be the result of implementation, and how it will benefit. Through this, resistance to change was minimized(Brown & Cummings, 2016).
• Simplify – he makes things simple and easy to understand and perform
• Incentives – this is the best way to motivate, through financial or non-financial incentives.
• Recognition program – he conducted programs to recognize employees who performed well, which will help to motivate them and others as well.
• Continuous monitor – the monitoring and feedback was an ongoing task performed by him. To correct the deviations, immediately instead of waiting until the end

Things that went wrong while implementing change were:

• Transparency – one thing where he lacks was to maintain transparency. To make things simple, and avoid resistance, the transparency was not maintained, which created problem afterward
• Lack of training – the training was essential while implementing change, as the process and structure were change too. Since he did not conduct a training program for the same, the problem occurs when the employees implemented the planned activities, and they were unable to perform the desired activity, due to lack of skills or competencies(Green & Cameron, 2015).

The case of “AGE and treachery” (pg. 415), can be resonated best because I have experienced the similar situation, where resistance to change was strong enough, which involved politics that I had to back out at the point.

From the case, the resistance to change aspect was understood clearly, because a person cannot believe to implement and observe change overnight. Change is a process, which took time to implement, and adapted by the employees. Since the employees were already comfortable with the ongoing process, in case the implementation is done immediately, then it would become difficult for the employees to accept that and they would try to push back change or resist to change (Found & Williams, 2015).

In such a situation in the future, I would like to conduct the following strategy while implementing change:

• Careful planning – with such incident I realized that change implementation need careful planning and observing people
• Continuous communication- this step is to get the employees ready to accent and make them mentally prepare for the change implementation in an organization. this will help employees to get aware well before the implementation
• Strong leadership – leadership is key to change management, with the help of strong leadership and appropriate leadership styles, the change can be managed more efficiently
• Invite participation – this is not always possible, but it would be beneficial to involve many people in change management to avoid resistance
• Do not expect implementation to take place overnight – as already discussed, the change takes time to implement (Carnall, 2018)

Handling unanticipated outcomes is difficult to act to perform, but I believe that I am good in this aspect. The strategies I used to handle these outcomes are:

• Monitoring – in case the result or outcome is something, which is not expected, in the negative aspect, that is the outcome is below the expected result. The first step is to monitor what is the cause of deviations and take feedback from others regarding the work done. Here I am able to understand that are people unable to perform due to their competencies, or the planned outcome is unrealistic and not possible to approach (Steigenberger, 2015)
• Revising – in case the planned or expected results are unrealistic and believe that these are not approachable, I revise those plans accordingly
• Training and development – the competencies of people are observed and monitored, and in case there are, deviations observed in existing competencies, and required skills of employees. I provide training to such employees to fill the gaps. Training and development tend to be very useful in this case.
• Controlling and feedback – this is the step taken to implement the change and control the activities according to the new plan, or with trained employees. Moreover, continuous feedback is taken and given to the employees involved in activities again, to avoid unanticipated results again(igi-global, 2018)

As a change manager, one idea that I feel would be very useful and I would like to adopt is “CMI competency model,” which explains the change manager skills requirement for master level. This model included the skill area that is required by the change manager. These include:

• Strategic thinking – for successful implementation of change, the strategic thinking ability is required to provide vision to the employees and set the direction for them to perform
• Facilitating change – the understanding of change principles, become the business focus, the environment understanding, cultural awareness, and change readiness
• Influencing others – an ability to influence is a competency required to motivate employees and adopt changes implemented. this skill is considered to be very important
• Project management – this includes the ability to develop a plan, monitor the progress, manage project implementation, cost management, opportunity gain, and risk management. This is important to accomplish a project on time and with better outcomes of  a project  
• Professional development – the learning is a never-ending process in any field, after being change manager, there is a requirement for regular development and enhancing skills, or retaining the existing skills
• Communication – as we have already discussed the relevance of communication while implementing change, it is the most important competency for a change manager to have. This is required for empathizing, and build relationships, therefore, this is the skill which needs to be there among change manager
• Self-management – this skill is required by change manager for resilience, time management, flexibility, prioritization, personal responsibility, and emotional intelligence (champlain.edu, 2018)

To sustain change one of the ideas to share is “steps to overcome resistance.”

Resistance is the major reason for the failure of change management, to overcome this issue, some of the suggested steps to follow are:

1. Understanding Resistance nature – the reason for the resistance need to be identified in the initial stage because to handle this problem it is important to understand the root cause of it and reason for the same.
2. Communicate change need – one of the biggest reason for resistance is communication, the communication gap does not let employees get ready for the change or make up their mind. With communication, it is possible to make employees understand and influence them to get ready for a change.
3. Involving people early – if the employees themselves be the part of change management then they would work to implement change rather than resistance. Therefore, it is advisable to involve people in the early stage
4. Create opportunities – small opportunities must be created for the employees to avoid resistance
5. Provide support – employees must have support by the management while change is occurring because change is in their process and work, which may lead to the incompetency of the individual in that aspect, for which management must be supportive and helping while execution of change.
6. Be patient and flexible – as already discussed it is not a one night of immediate thing to happen and results are seen, instead, it is a time taking process where patience and flexibility is required to overcome resistance (peoriamagazines, 2018)