The Change is inevitable
in any organization. In this era of globalization and fast changing technology,
this has created immense opportunity and challenges for the organization. The
assembly line is shifting; nationality of final product is now universal,
supply chain management and innovation is being seen as part and parcel of new
socialization process for organizational growth and development. In this prevailing situation, the change is
an attitude and a norm for the top leadership in the organization, which
reflects in the organizational structure.
This has been widely
acknowledged that organization has its personality and its own culture. The
force of socialization affects the culture of organization as well as both
prevents and motivates the individual for behavior change. The core essence of
change is based on the process and its strategy. John Kotter’s The Heart of
Change underlines the essence of dynamic relationship between the
“see-feel-change” and “analysis-think-change”.
There is no antagonism
in this relationship, but a healthy mistrust and a healthy persuasiveness in
the process play significant role in building a culture of not changing and
culture of changing. John Kotter delves into the subject of change and how
change actually happens. The core issue, which really disturbs the author, is
that what the fundamental problem that underlines every revolutionary
transformation is. In the first page, the authors clearly articulate that “people
change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their
thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feeling”.
This sentence itself shows that the change is the end, but its means lie in
between the “see-feel-change” and “analysis-think-change”.
Enabling environment and
culture of participation is two important pillar of organizational
transformation. The change in the organizational culture is a subtle process,
which combines the value of social and human capital, visionary approach supported
by substantial analysis provide opportunity to leadership in the organization
to evolve timeframe and contingency planning for organizational transformation.
This is also important here to recognize that the organization is not defined
as single entity and human resources are important factor to either support or
reject the transformation.
In many ways, failure is
important learning opportunity for the leadership. The analysis-think-change
approach is important driver of change, which help the leader to communicate
the failure in effective manner. This is the time in the organization, when a
leader can express the need of urgency for change and identify those resources,
which can be motivated and inspired to carry forward the value of urgency and
proactively involve other stakeholder in
this mission of change. In broader perspective, the Obama Election Campaign
clearly used the need of urgency as paradigm of change in the United States and
elaborated it further at international level. In fact, the hope, the need of
urgency and the changes is interrelated and interdependent to each other.
The basic difference
between the manager and leader is that leader envisions change as inevitable
force to break the status quo and internalizes the process of change before
suggesting it for wider audience and in broader circumstances. While manager
works for the change without considering its impact beyond their roles and
responsibility. Here, this is the responsibility of the leader to build a team
and also build their capacity to address the essence of the change in better
and effective manner. The main challenge of a leader in building team is to
identify the right person, who believes and trusts on the outcome of the
change. A consistent effort of a leader should be combined with the information
sharing, consultation, collaboration between different stakeholders, building
joint decision making process. In this way, a leader empowers his teams and
provides them a direction, which attains valuable changes at organization
level. The participatory approach plays vital role in strengthening and
integrating the forces of change in the organization.
The communication skill
of leader matters a lot for motivating the team to work hard and the leader
able to inspire them. In the book, this has been clearly acknowledge in the
following words that “You need to show people
something that addresses their anxieties, that accepts their anger, that is
credible in a very gut-level sense, and that evokes faith in the vision”. The
change is not simply a reflection of objective and motive but a vision, which
get shaped on the basis of existing and new opportunity in the organization.
The effective communication skill of a leader is essential asset for him and
also for the organization. In the process of sharing and communication, a
leader enables his followers to celebrate the small success and involve other
in the celebration. The big success is not a 100 meter race, but a marathon,
where a long time preparation and consistency is required for. The celebration
of small success motivates the leader and followers to speed up the process of
change and strategically manage the future course of action and goal.
The book
asserts that momentum of small successes should not be faded away. The emotional upliftment of teams and other
members of the organization because of the celebration of small successes
motivate both leaders and followers. The leader is able to build strategy for
the future course of actions and motivation. In action segment, he initiate
decentralization process of decision making, try to reduce interdependency and
excessive control over the resource, established collaboration and alliances
with external partners, evolves a
supporting system, reorganizes the human and financial resources. In
motivational aspect, a leader identifies the need of the employees and
organization.
Potential Roadmap and Building a Change Methodology:
The road map
of change methodology is not an easy task and neither the content of this book
can be a magic bullet for every organization to embrace change. The guiding
philosophy of this book is that the effective and conscious leadership play
significant role in introducing change in the organization.
Having
worked in nongovernmental organization, I realized that sense of urgency is
always prevalent in generating financial resources, agenda setting, building
development proposal, allocating roles and responsibility to staff members. The
sense of urgency is neither path driven nor internally generated problem in
this organization. The nature of social development is quite different than
nature of economic growth. What I feel that the difference between the nature
of social development and economic growth is motivating factors, which make the
organization to have sense of urgency to bridge the difference and enable the
stakeholder to access opportunity. I observed that every organization needs a
different kind of leadership approach to address the challenges effectively and
sensibly.
After going
through this book, I realized that the strategic planning and resource
management is key for successful intervention in organizational. The eight
steps implementation of strategy requires multilayer preparation. Therefore,
the effective leader can prepare the blueprint and mobilize resources for
building long term vision and perspective of the organization.
The concept
empowerment is quite inspiring for many organizations and also for many
leaders. To achieve a functional level of empowerment, leader should persuade
his or her team members to create a transformation process witin the
organization. In the nonprofit organization, the main challenge is changing
behavior of staffs and community member. Here, leader can identify different
nature of capacity building training and activities, in which the involvement
of staffs and community members ensure that they enable themselves to break their
own stereotyped and perception. The vision of the organization provides
supporting force to leader to break away the status quo and introduce changes
in the organization.
The
organization change and its sustainable future are complementary to each other.
Many change initiative fails because the action is directionless and lack of
communication presents the gloomy picture of future. In kotter’s description
“difficulties inherent to the process”- this clearly shows that the change is
process oriented and process is developed on the basis of existing resources
and visionary approach of organizational future. In last, this is important to
share that the organization identifies the need and resources, this is the
leadership, which translate the vision into reality.
