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(v12) Page 6
One more time: How do you
manage change? - An American view
"The honest answer is that you manage it pretty much the same way you'd
manage anything else of a turbulent, messy, chaotic nature, that is, you don't
really manage it, you grapple with it. It's more a matter of leadership ability
than management skill.
- The first thing to do is jump in. You
can't do anything about it from the outside.
- A clear sense of mission or purpose is
essential. The simpler the mission statement the better. "Kick ass in the
marketplace" is a whole lot more meaningful than "Respond to market needs
with a range of products and services that have been carefully designed
and developed to compare so favorably in our customers' eyes with the
products and services offered by our competitors that the majority of
buying decisions will be made in our favor."
- Build a team. "Lone wolves" have their
uses, but managing change isn't one of them.
- Maintain a flat organizational team
structure and rely on minimal and informal reporting requirements.
- Pick people with relevant skills and high
energy levels. You'll need both.
- Toss out the rule book. Change, by
definition, calls for a configured response, not adherence to prefigured
routines.
- Shift to an action-feedback model. Plan
and act in short intervals. Do your analysis on the fly. No lengthy
up-front studies, please.
- Set flexible priorities. You must have the
ability to drop what you're doing and tend to something more important.
- Treat everything as a temporary measure.
Don't "lock in" until the last minute, and then insist on the right to
change your mind.
- Ask for volunteers. You'll be surprised at
who shows up. You'll be pleasantly surprised by what they can do.
- Find a good team leader
and stay out of his or her way.
- Give the team members whatever they ask
for - except authority. They'll generally ask only for what they really
need in the way of resources. If they start asking for authority, that's a
signal they're headed toward some kind of power-based confrontation and
that spells trouble. Nip it in the bud!
- Concentrate dispersed knowledge. Start and
maintain an issues logbook. Let anyone go anywhere and talk to anyone
about anything. Keep the communications barriers low, widely spaced, and
easily hurdled. Initially, if things look chaotic, relax - they are.
- Remember, the task of change management is
to bring order to a messy situation, not pretend that it's already
well-organized and disciplined."
Fred Nickols 2002 http://home.att.net/~nickols/change.htm
  
Contact: wolfgang.arlt@fh-stralsund.de
Office: 1/132, Tel. (03831) 45 6961
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