Psychology

Change Management Practice: Just do it – sometimes you have to act

change management / By

Change Management Practice: Just do it – sometimes you have to act

I was giving a lecture on change management the other day and the class and I were deep in discussion about involvement and ethical behaviour when one of the students asked ‘but what if we don’t have time for all this pink and fluffy stuff?’

I was a good question that needed a clear response and to some extent my answer is a little surprising coming from a confirmed pink and fluffy person like I am – my response was ‘sometimes you have to act’. When an organisation is in dire straits and on the brink of failure or when to enter a new market a new process has to be implemented then there is simply no time for long discussions to get people on board the change manager has to act and get on with it.

What this means is we have to seize the moment and implement a new system or close down a department sometimes in the teeth of stiff opposition. The ongoing discussions needed to bring people with us or the time needed to make those in the process ‘make sense’ of the situation is just not available – we must act.

But does this mean we need to be brutal or cavalier in the way we treat people? – well no – we do not have to behave in this way in order to get the message across. The key is to behave ethically and make the process transparent that needs to be gone through and explain openly how the change process will effect the persons concerned in a clear and relevant way. People respect managers who spell it out as it is without and prevarication or weasel words – ‘Say it as it is’.

What this means is, if say, a department is to be outsourced and there is a good chance that substantial people we be let go, you tell the full story. Concretely: ‘Your department is being closed and moved to the new Company – you and several of your colleagues will have to leave’. You make clear the process that is about to unfold in clear words (the person will be in shock at this time) and tell them to think over what you have said and invite them back when they have had time to think it through to discuss their feelings and concerns. Expect defence and emotion, this is normal, but respond in a clear way – do not prevaricate – stick to the line explain the process and allow the person to internalise the consequences. When giving bad news as in this case leave no room for doubt of what is occurring avoid constructs like ‘you may be selected’, ‘there’s a chance that some of you may stay’ and so on. This only raises an expectation that they will survive. In the same vein if you are asked ‘will there be job losses?’, say ‘Yes I expect many will leave’.

I know this seems hard but research has shown that when bad news is to be given out people are very resilient as long as it is clear they are not being singled out (a fair process is in place), that there is a valid reason, and the process is transparent and applied equally. What we as managers have to understand is it is our job to treat people fairly and ensure their self-esteem is protected and they are given the grounds they need to rationalise what has happened. Aggressive, perfunctory methods of change management do not work (so put away the phone no texts that people are sacked) and are a sign of management incompetence or inexperience – do it right and your people will respect you as a person who treated them fairly in difficult circumstances.

Royston

What makes a good decision maker – the three ingredients

decision making / By

What makes a good decision maker – the three ingredients

A 2004-2005 Teradata Report on Enterprise Decision-Making showed that over 70% of the respondents in their survey said that poor decision-making is a serious problem for their business. Other research in the UK conducted by the research agency YouGov for the Investors in People organization highlighted the negative impact that poor decision-making was having on employees. Other research in the area of organizational performance is consistent, with some suggesting that well over half of all decisions fail in some way. Specifically that the outcomes of the decision making process was poor – the ‘wrong’ decision had been taken or simply never implemented. It seems obvious that if decisions can fail for up to half of the time then organizations need to pay very close attention to the quality of their decisions and the people carrying out this role, but to-date, there is not much evidence that they are.

Decision-making is an age old problem that is being compounded today by increasing knowledge, population, complexity, speed and change. The number of decisions being made is increasing as is the pace of change and the number of people in an organization involved in the thousands of day-to-day decisions, from a new product launch to a decision on a new hire that have to be made. Decision-making is an essential requirement of management especially at the senior level and is perhaps the true core competence of leaders … ‘our society has largely neglected the fact that sound judgment and decision making are the crux of many professions’ (Smith et al 2004). The very best leaders appear able to make crucial decisions effortlessly ‘standing on their feet’ drawing on unseen resources of domain knowledge and experience that set them apart from the crowd. How effective managers and staff are in general at making good decisions is a moot point and understanding the process of high performance decision making is becoming critical to organizational success.

Problem-solving and decision-making are closely linked as each requires creativity in identifying, developing then evaluating options from which a course of action needs to be chosen. A problem always denotes that there are options to be chosen from – if there is a known solution then this is a puzzle not a problem. A decision is basically a problem solving process under uncertainty, so the steps or stages of decision making are more or less the same as those for problem solving. There are many n-step problem solving routines to guide decision making but at the heart of the decision making problem are the following three main aspects: how the problem is seen, how alternatives are generated, and how the decision is actioned.

The three key aspects of high level decision making:

  • Proactive cognition is a feature of people who actively seek to change the environment and not passively react to it. People strong in this feature scan for opportunities in the world preferring to make choices rather than follow procedures and create novel options by seeing problems differently rather than considering just the obvious.
  • Deciding is about making the decision, weighing and chewing over the options and above all considering the risk of alternatives. People who are high in this ability often draw on extensive domain knowledge and experience enabling them to make mental short cuts and come to a decision apparently quickly hiding the deep processes really going on.
  • Finally Action Control – making and enacting the choice. The effective planning and scheduling of actions to deliver the decision are examples of behavior of people who are able to ensure that decisions are not postponed, procrastination is avoided and decisions are implemented without delay.

A good decision is the direct result of clear criteria, the scope of the choice to be made together with the risk of each alternative – then taking action. From this perspective a good decision is the outcome of a process of optimally achieving a given objective from a certain starting point. A good decision is a logical one (or at least defensible and traceable) based on the available knowledge to hand that answers a particular organizational problem. Measuring whether or not decision making is good or bad needs to assess both the process and the outcome, the effectiveness and the quality of the decision making, as these are two quite distinct things. Effectiveness is how well the process of decision making is managed and how learning takes place – what caused a poor outcome to occur is fed back into the process. Output quality is to some extent comes well after the decision has been taken and is a reflection whether the right choice was made as well as on how well the choice was placed into action and implemented. There are many examples, particularly in the political world, where there is an assumption that the decision is the same as the implementation. A good decision making process therefore integrates the choice with the implementation and looks at the outcome to ensure learning takes place.

It is this latter point that completes the circle – it is a balanced decision making process that seems to be about right. Consciously attending to all three areas of the decision making process is key. The seeking of ways to control and act on the world, weighing up options carefully thinking about the choice then ensuring implementation takes place are the three key facets of effective decision making and features of high performers. When this balanced process is in place in more organizations perhaps then can the abysmal performance we currently have in this core area be improved.

Royston

The Psychological Paradigms – what they are an explanation

Psychology / By

On Paradigms

There are many different ways of categorizing paradigms. Have a think about the similarities and differences between different categorizations – for example the Alvesson & Deetz version compared to Guba & Lincoln – does the Guba & Lincoln constructivist paradigm perhaps include what Alvesson & Deetz term interpretive – so is it a much broader category.

There are indeed many ways of organizing paradigms – and the term itself is often misused (later on you will read an author who refers to the qualitative paradigm for example, which I would strongly argue is the incorrect use of the term). Similarly, you will see some research articles refer to constructionism when I would say they are talking about interpretivism, and so on. One of the important things to take away from all this is to be sure you know how people are using a term. Have they defined it? If not you can often tell what they mean, once you have worked a bit more on these modules, by looking at how they use the term.

For now, let’s not worry too much about the rather complicated issues about how we understand knowledge (epistemology). What is important is that you understand there are different ways of approaching organizations and research, that each of these make particular assumptions about the best way to do things and the nature of the thing they are studying, and that each of these has particular strengths and weaknesses. There is no one best way, but you can develop a more critical and analytical way of looking at organizations by using this type of knowledge.

Reading up on the history of psychology can help to put the different positions into perspective, but please do not think that the latest paradigm must be the best. They all have problems. It can help to draw up charts as your learning moves on, which cover things like main assumptions, examples of literature, similarities and differences, and strengths and weaknesses, of the four main paradigms outlined in the PowerPoint lecture on Issues. These four (normative, interpretive, critical and postmodern) are the ones that we tend to refer to the most.

The positivist, or normative paradigm is perhaps the one you are most used to, being the most ‘popular’ – or acceptable – at the moment in journals. However psychology at least, really started with more interpretive approaches, and then later shifted to ‘scientific’ studies. To some extent there has been a shift back, as some researchers became disillusioned by yet more questionnaire studies that seemed to shed little light on what was happening in the ‘real’ world of organizations. However the normative paradigm has its uses, and as long as the researcher is aware of the weaknesses (as with any approach), and does not assume that everything can be answered by numbers and broad general laws, then it can be informative.

The postmodern view does indeed question everything, and argues against any broad generalisations, they argue that society, and organizations, are far more fragmented and prone to change than is allowed for by other positions. The emphasis on language is partly to ensure a shift away from the isolated, coherent individual carrying out internal cognitive processes in the head, which dominates the positivist paradigm. Instead they suggest that looking at how groups of people talk, the similarities and differences both within and between accounts, can say something about how we organise and what influences us. They suggest that talk is active, we do things with words – for example when we make a statement we are often setting up a position that says something else cannot be true.

The critical paradigm is, in my view, less of a paradigm and more of a way of looking at organizations. In other words, it shares some of the assumptions of other positions, and can use a broad range of method, but will always take that very political, power based view of what is going on. I will go over the critical and postmodern perspectives (especially as there are a lot of similarities), and the interpretive, in further detail in a later note. For now, it would be great if some of you could comment on where you have perhaps seen these.

I would also like to add that you can indeed use all of these paradigms, or at least, use an awareness of them, to help with your work. When doing research or consulting, you will often have a preference for one paradigm. Indeed for something like an MSc thesis, it can be far too time consuming and complicated to try to cover more than one. However you can strengthen your use of the one by showing an awareness of the others, and how they might have informed (differently) on your subject matter.

You will also find that there are overlaps, and that some are more of a continuum – there are extreme positivists and others who tend more towards the interpretive.