Making Sense of Change Management
Authors: Cameron E., Green M.
Published year: 2003
Pages: 29-30/96

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Groups and teams are different, with different characteristics and different reasons for existing.
Teams are important in organizational life for accomplishing large or complex tasks .
Team work is important for management teams when they work on risky issues that require them to share views and align.
There are many different types of organizational team, each with significant benefits and downsides.
Teams can become more effective by addressing five elements:
- team mission, planning and goal setting;
- team roles;
- team operating processes;
- team interpersonal relationships;
- inter-team relations.
Teams develop over time. Tuckman’s forming, storming , norming and performing model is useful for understanding this process.
The team development process involves different leadership challenges at each stage.
Bion’s work highlights four possible pitfalls that need to be worked through:
- dependency;
- fight or flight;
- pairing ;
- cosiness.
The composition of a team is an important factor in determining how it can be successful. Belbin says that well-rounded teams are best. Deficiencies in a certain type can cause problems.
The Myers Briggs profile allows mutual understanding of team member’s preferences for initiating or adapting to change.
Belbin’s team types offer a way of analysing a team’s fitness for purpose and encouraging team members to do something about any significant gaps.
Leaders need to be aware of the types of team available during a change process, and how to manage these most effectively.

Below is a summary checklist of the key questions you need to be asking and answering before, during and after the change process:

Where are the teams affected by the change process?
What types of team are they and how might they respond to change?
What do they need to be supported through the change process?
How can we best use them throughout the change process?
What additional types of team do we need for designing and implementing the changes?
As all teams go through the transition, what resources shall we offer to ensure they achieve their objectives of managing business as usual and the changes?
How do we ensure that teams that are dispersing, forming, integrating or realigning stay on task?
What organizational process do we have for ensuring teams are clear about their:
- mission, planning and goal setting;
- roles and responsibilities
- operating processes;
- interpersonal relationships;
- inter-team relations?

Chapter 3: Organizational change

OVERVIEW

This chapter tackles the issue of organizational change. How does the process of organizational change happen? Must change be initiated and driven through by one strong individual? Or can it be planned collectively by a powerful group of people, and by sheer momentum, the change will happen? Perhaps there is a more intellectual approach that can be taken. Are there payoffs to understanding the whole system, determining how to change it, and predicting where resistance will occur? On the other hand, maybe change cannot be planned at all. Something unpredictable could spark a change, which then spreads in a natural way.

This chapter addresses the topic of organizational change in three sections:

how organizations really work;
models and approaches to organizational change;
summary and conclusions.

In the first section we look at assumptions about how organizations work in terms of the metaphors that are most regularly used to describe them. This is an important starting point for those who are serious about organizational change. Once you become aware of the range of assumptions that shape people’s attitudes to and understanding of organizations, you can take advantage of the possibilities of other ways of looking at things, and you can begin to understand how other people in your organization may view the world. You can also begin to see the limitations of each mindset and the disadvantages of taking a one-dimensional approach to organizational change.

In the second section, we set out a range of useful models and ideas developed by some of the most significant writers on organizational change. This section aims to illustrate the variety of ways in which you can view the process of organizational change. We also make sense of the different models and approaches by identifying the assumptions underpinning each one. When you understand the assumptions behind a model, you can start to see its benefits and limitations.

In the third section, we come to some conclusions about organizational change, and stress the importance of being aware of underlying assumptions and having the flexibility to employ a range of different approaches.