change management process change management plan
When coaching individuals we always remind people that having good goals - knowing were to go or what to do - and good motivation are not enough to ensure results. Two people may have similarly clear goals and may be equally driven by these, yet the results each achieve could be quite different. The difference has to do with the belief system the two individuals have. Many beliefs have to do with outcome expectancy. If you don't believe your outcome is going to be there when you get through working on your issue, or you don't believe you have what it takes to get the outcome, you're not going to do what it takes to achieve your goal. If you grew up believing you were born unlucky, your actions will prove your belief. If you grew up believing that no matter what happens you always succeed, so you will.
Unfortunately when it comes to organizations, this seems to be sorely missed by organizational leaders and senior managers. The emphasis of all organizational change m anagement and development remains predominantly concentrated on goals and strategy, and to an extent on the question of how do we motivate staff towards these. In my consulting career I have discovered that especially in the social and humanitarian sector, a sector where you would think belief is the driving force behind the organization's existence, sadly there is a preoccupation with the mechanics of goals and strategies. Leaders can get so caught up in planning and managing the process that they don't notice that little tangible results are being achieved. The activity becomes more important than the results.
Nowhere is this more evident than in humanitarian crises. In the Horn of Africa, tens of thousands of people have perished because of lack of timely humanitarian assistance. Yet some couple of months ago, when I was discussing this issue in a meeting attended by number UN agencies and NGOs, some of the senior officials almost defended their lack of early action saying 'we could not have responded until the second season of rains failed' - by which time people were already dying. Now those of you who may not remember, the 2011 drought and famine in the Horn was well predicted almost 9-10 months before it became CNN news. The argument went like, 'we have all done our jobs - made plans, identified supply sources, worked out strategies, and all that - it's the governments which did not do what they had to do'.
I have now seen this many times before - Haiti was another classic case where people continued to rot in inhumane conditions in the camps in Part-au-Prince while the humanitarian agencies sat on over a billion dollars in the first year after the 2010 earthquake, blaming the government for inaction. Have humanitarians somewhere lost the belief that they are here to save lives, not simply to make plans and strategies, make excuses and fulfill the technical requirements in the job descriptions?
Eve n business organizations are reorienting their own purpose to 'customer welfare' (Walmart), 'promoting health' (Johnson & Johnson), 'looking after happiness of park visitors' (job purpose of janitors at Disneyland) and instilling these beliefs about their purpose in their staff, the social and humanitarians need to ask themselves if they are drifting farther and farther away from their raison detre.
More resources on organizational change management are also available at Results Matter Blog: http://resultsmatter.wordpress.com/ Abhijit Bhattacharjee is a strategy and change management expert with over twenty-nine years of senior management and consulting experience in international development and humanitarian organizations. He is also an Executive Coach and small business coach. He is the founder of Results Matter Consulting. For more similar resources, visit the company website: http://www.results-matter.co.uk/Resourceslinks.html.