Real Time Strategic Change: How to Involve an Entire Organization in Fast and Far-Reaching Change - Softcover

Jacobs, Robert W. Jake

 
9781576750308: Real Time Strategic Change: How to Involve an Entire Organization in Fast and Far-Reaching Change
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1576750302 ISBN 13: 9781576750308
Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

The most successful organizations of the future will be those that are capable of rapidly and effectively bringing about fundamental, lasting, system-wide changes.

In response to this challenge, Real Time Strategic Change advocates a fundamental redesign of the way organizations change. The result is an approach that involves an entire organization in fast and far-reaching change. Interactive large group meetings form the foundation for this approach, enabling hundreds and even thousands of people to collaborate in crafting their collective future. Change happens faster because the total organization is the "in group" that decides which changes are needed; and the actions people throughout the organization take on a daily basis are aligned behind an overall strategic direction that they helped create.

Complete with conceptual frameworks, tools and techniques, agendas, and roles key actors need to play, this is the first book published on this powerful approach to organizational change.

The process Robert Jacobs details has proven effective in diverse settings, ranging from business and industry to health care, education, government, non-profit agencies, and communities.

Real Time Strategic Change demonstrates the flexibility and power of this approach in stories from such diverse organizations as Marriott Hotels, Ford Motor Company, Kaiser Permanente, First Nationwide Bank, United Airlines, and a group of 18 school districts.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Robert W. Jacobs is a partner in 5 Oceans, a consulting firm dedicated to supporting people and organizations worldwide in bringing about rapid, sustainable, fundamental change.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

WHY COMMON APPROACHES TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE FALL SHORT

Most people consider fundamental, far-reaching and fast-paced organizational change to be a contradiction in terms, and basically impossible to make happen. Their past experience in a variety of change efforts reinforces this belief. Yet fundamental, far-reaching and fast-paced change is something that most organizations would benefit from and many need to achieve.

The factors driving this need are changing market forces, increasing customer demands for quality and service, the introduction of new technologies, and people’s desire for a greater say in shaping their own and their organization’s daily operations and future direction. “Business as usual” is no longer a viable response. Large multinational corporations and small local volunteer organizations alike are being forced to rethink basic assumptions governing their strategies, the way they organize themselves, their work processes and support systems, workforce composition and competencies, and their culture. Said another way, an organization’s capacity to change is a key factor in its short and longer term success. The most successful organizations of the future will be those that are capable of rapidly and effectively bringing about fundamental, lasting, system-wide changes.

Despite the best efforts of boards of directors, leaders, managers, and workers, organizations are failing to effectively respond to these clarion calls for change. Why, with such clear demands, do most organizations and the people in them—from leaders to front line workers and everybody in between—find themselves frustrated, still searching for concepts to guide and practices to implement really effective change? The problem is that most troublesome issues plaguing organizational change initiatives are inherent in their design. They occur because of the way in which these initiatives are commonly planned and implemented.

A look at how a typical change effort occurs sheds light on why these issues are largely unavoidable, even when the best plans are implemented flawlessly. The following scenario could occur in a wide variety of organizations raising diverse sets of issues and located anywhere around the world.

A small, select group of people regularly meet for a period of several weeks or even months, carefully crafting plans for a new and better future for their organization. They may be a strategy development or planning and policy unit, a top leadership group, a steering committee or task force. Informed by surveys, studies, and analyses, plus additional data collected from others both inside and outside of their organization, this team of highly committed and respected people forges new ground. Others, especially senior managers and maybe the board of directors, get periodic progress reports from this group and offer comments regarding the focus and direction of their work. However, in large part, the initial journey into the future is their own.

After documenting the strategy or plan, including recommendations for change that need to be made and securing senior management approval, the implementation phase begins. The plan and recommended changes are rolled out to the entire organization. The case for change is clearly communicated, necessary actions spelled out, questions asked and answered and buy-in, agreement, or compliance sought. Numerous informational meetings may be held to allay people’s concerns about the impending changes and to inform them of the new ways in which they will need to do business in the future. For some in the audience, resistance to the plan remains high; others agree with the recommendations and begin implementing them back on the job. Overall, enthusiasm for the plan exists, at best, in pockets. The organization moves into the future with some needed changes being made and others, unfortunately, being left on the drawing board. After an initial flurry of activity, eventually things pretty much return to business as usual.

The exercises illustrated in this scenario may have been a moderate success in many people’s eyes. But the result was not nearly enough considering the depth and breadth of change required for the organization to thrive in the future, let alone recouping the investment in the change effort itself. Rather than proposing minor modifications to this existing paradigm of organization change, such as adding a few more key people to one of these working groups or including a little more time to really hammer home and clarify expectations in the rollout phase, I am advocating a fundamental redesign of the way organizations change. The result of this fundamental redesign is real time strategic change, an approach that involves an entire organization in fundamental, far-reaching and fast-paced change. Let’s visit our scenario once again, but this time let’s explore it as if it were a real time strategic change effort.

Hundreds of people come together at the same place and time to address substantive organizational issues and to create their collective future. Creativity and synergy are unleashed as system-wide strategies and decisions are set in motion. These strategies and decisions are informed and considered, based on a shared view of the challenges and opportunities facing the organization, its customers’ expectations, and internal capabilities. Planning and implementation merge together as collaborative working agreements are established across levels and functions resulting in common purpose, shared goals, and renewed commitment to their organization’s future, which they themselves are creating.

People practice new ways of doing business in real time in this and in other similar large group gatherings. They leave these interactive, organization-wide events behaving differently, making different choices about how they work together and where they focus their time and energy. Change happens faster because the total organization is the “in group” that decides which changes are needed and how they can best be made. Over the long term, using this approach increases the individuals’ capacity for strategic thinking so that each person is better able to respond on a daily basis—no matter where he or she works in the organization—to other changes as they continue to emerge over time. An entire organization moves together into its future, aligned in a common strategic direction. Each person commits to how he or she can and will contribute to doing business in new ways, both during the large group meetings, immediately afterward, and on into the future.

This sounds like a tall order, and it is. But not impossible. In fact, the better part of the rest of this book outlines this innovative approach to change that my colleagues and I have developed, refined, and extended during the past decade. The result of these efforts is a set of principle-based processes and practices that are constantly being renewed and applied in different contexts. This concept of real time strategic change has been put into practice and successfully applied in diverse settings ranging from businesses, to industry, service, health care, education, government, other non-profits, and in community development. It has proven equally useful within the United States and in joint ventures between U.S. and Pacific Rim companies, as well as in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. In addition, this way of thinking has been used to significantly accelerate the implementation of major system change efforts involving organization strategy, total quality management, work design, reengineering, cultural diversity, and community-based initiatives focused on social, political, and economic issues. Because these initiatives rarely occur in isolation from...

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Verlag
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Erscheinungsdatum
1997
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1576750302
ISBN 13 
9781576750308
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
360
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt
hello@eucompliancepartner.com

139b-14
Tallinn
11317
Estland

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