Despite change is
and has always been with us, especially during the last decades change, with
particular reference to the exogenous environment, has occurred at an
increasingly fast pace. This circumstance has accounted for employers feeling
the urge to acquaint themselves with change and to virtually constantly be involved
in the implementation of change initiatives within their organisation.
As contended by
Kotter (2008), over the centuries the rate of change has been going up and down
not following a linear and clearly identifiable trend so that it could be argued
that, over the past century, the rate of change has been averagely creeping up.
More recently, however, the frequency change takes place has remarkably increased,
insofar as change which has been traditionally deemed episodic can nowadays be
regarded as continuous.
Leading change is typically considered as a
difficult feat by reason of the energy it requires and the efforts managers
have to make to oppose the harsh and fierce restraining forces usually emerging
during its introduction. As properly summarised by Kanter (1983), change is
considered “exhilarating when done by us and disturbing when done to us.” To achieve
the intended results managers should drive change providing first and foremost a
sense of direction, purpose and meaningfulness to the overall process. Yet, since
for the successful attainment of the final aim people definitely represent a
key factor, managers efforts need to be directed to, and focused on, engaging
and truly involving in the process all of an organisation employees.
The activities performed by managers to implement change invariably encounter the harsh resistance opposed by the individuals who feel threated by the employer initiative. To counterbalance and win individual resistance, managers might be at times tempted to resort to methods which could be apparently considered questionable and controversial so that the need to answer the question whether it could be considered appropriate applying in change management the Machiavellian dictum “the end justifies the means” emerges somewhat of spontaneously. An additional significant point is represented by the behaviour exhibited by managers when implementing change and more specifically whether these might be considered as acting with integrity and ethically in the event should manipulate information.
Analysing the most widely recognized change
management models developed so far we can actually identify in some of them a
few traits which could apparently (but just apparently) be considered very
closely linked to information manipulation. The change management frameworks
developed by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (Kanter et al, 1992) and John Kotter (1996)
consider indeed both crucial for the successful introduction of change
establishing or creating a sense of urgency, but can this requirement actually be
considered as, and associated with, manipulation? The answer, it is better to
immediately point it out, is: no, it cannot.Manipulation
Robbins (2007) defines
manipulation as the managers “covert influence attempts”; meaning that to
practically achieve their intended results managers might at times opt to manipulate
the information provided to employees. Robbins (2007) refers to manipulation as
to a process aiming at deliberately and intentionally providing to others
distorted and false information. The intended objective is to let information appear
more acceptable and to some extent even attractive to the other individuals.
News are hence spread deliberately avoiding unveiling the aspects and facts
which are likely to be negatively perceived by employees and thus likely to prompt
these to oppose resistance to change. At the same time, false rumours aiming at
influencing individual perception of the real consequences of accepting or
resisting change are also diffused.
It clearly was a case of manipulation, but
reportedly in that instance it revealed to be particularly important for the
successful implementation of the overall process and did not allegedly produced
any major reported downside.
The two informal
communication channels activated, clearly aiming at preventing the emergence of
restraining forces whereas favouring the development of the driving ones, are
intended to produce the exclusive objective to facilitate the planned or
ongoing introduction of change.
An example of manipulation
can be represented by the management activity of spreading rumours about the imminent
closing down of one of the employer factories, stores or branches to prevent
employee resistance to the planned “across-the-board salary cut” (Robbins, 2007).
The aim would clearly be that to receive the employees’ support to the planned reduction
of the personnel budget smoothly and quickly, before unions could have the time
to organise and threat industrial action or the worst comes to the worst
prevent the employees to plan any activity aiming at opposing the plan. Faced
with the possibility to lose their job and not having other available options, individuals
would very likely accept a salary reduction.
Manipulation
nonetheless is not invariably intended to completely and deliberately distort
the real content of a message. Buchanan (2001), for instance, reports the case
of a successful and controversial change implementation process in a hospital
where manipulation was indeed used, but in a rather particular way. One of the
hospital managers in charge of leading a “re-engineering change process” recounts
that, despite he dislikes using the verb manipulate, at one point he had to do
that. He also refers that he had to resort to manipulation as somewhat of an
obligation, the last resort to surmount an unexpected severe situation. One day
the manager was approached by a very angry consultant who had learned about a
particular aspect of the change procedure underway, which would have directly affected
him and about which he was not clearly happy. The manager was then prompted to
provide a suitable and convincing answer and so he did with the help of
manipulation, insofar as the consultant was even quite happy for the feedback
he received. The answer was neither completely a lie, nor completely the true,
but the consultant accepted it and the process went on.
Crisis or urgency?
Before investigating
the appropriateness and effectiveness of practically resorting to activities
aiming at establishing a sense of urgency or instilling a sense of crisis, it
is worth to determine whether the two terms “urgency” and “crisis” can actually
be considered equivalent.
The Oxford
Dictionary (2006) defines urgency as a state requiring immediate action or
attention; the Cambridge Dictionary (2008) also stresses the need for the required
action to be performed before anything else. Crisis is defined by The Oxford
Dictionary (2006) as a time of intense difficulty and danger, whereas the
Cambridge Dictionary (2008) defines crisis as a situation which has reached an
extremely difficult or dangerous point.
The presence of
some overlaps notwithstanding, it appears that the two words relate to two
different levels of severity and necessity and consequently concepts. The two terms
nonetheless are very often interchangeably used in practice, as whether these
were actually synonyms. As acknowledged by Clarke (2009), to the largest part
of professionals “urgent” appears to be a “close cousin” of “crisis.” The former
IBM CEO Lou Gerstner delivering a speech to Harvard Business School’s MBA
students did not make any difference between the two terms either: “Transformation
of an enterprise begins with a sense of crisis or urgency. No institution will
go through fundamental change unless it believes it is in deep trouble and
needs to do something different to survive.”
Kotter (2009), who recognises
that there actually is a certain degree of confusion on the use of the term
crisis in change management, maintains that the belief according to which
“without a burning platform” you cannot successfully deliver and implement
change is actually erroneous. The concept of “burning platform” relates to the
hypothetical circumstance in which whether an individual should find himself in
a burning platform, although the two available options are indeed both
terrible, jumping from the platform is a better option compared to stay. Under the
“burning platform” circumstance, however, an individual would essentially have
no choice; jumping from the platform would represent the only option available
to the person to try and save his/her life. Perceived in this way, crisis is likely
to negatively impact people behaviour by reason of inducing stress, panic and
anxiety, feelings which would hardly reveal to be useful for an individual undergoing
change or any other difficult situation.
The concept of
urgency to which Kotter (2009) refers has nothing to do with such concepts of crisis,
which whether instilled to employees is unlikely to produce any positive
outcome. Despite urgency is intended to strongly motivate individuals to
relentlessly achieve the final objective, it is in fact not intended to produce
considerable levels of stress or anxiety.
Crises are not
necessarily helpful to implement changes; these can eventually be used by business
leaders to investigate whether they can capitalize on the current state of
crisis to curb complacency and establish a truly sense of urgency. According to
the circumstances, notwithstanding, employers might also have no chances to
make this attempt and what business leaders can hence actually hope is that
their organisations will be able to emerge well from those situations (Kotter,
2009).
Despite the terms urgency and crisis actually
have a different meaning and their inappropriate use might have an impact on individual
perception and feelings, in business the two words are still interchangeably
used.
Establishing or creating a sense of urgency
As discussed
earlier, generating or establishing a sense of urgency is one of the pillars of
the change management models proposed by Kanter et al (1992) and Kotter (1996).
Kanter, according to the information and feedback gathered by some empiric
studies and investigations, is attributing a growing importance to this component
of his model insofar as considering it as an “exceptionally important asset”
(Craven, 2008).
Establishing and
creating a sense of urgency could be to some extent considered as an initiative
similar to that of manipulating information, but this is not actually the case.
Kanter (2008) defines a false sense of urgency as a “terrible, terrible
problem” in that it is very likely to generate in turn anxiety, frenetic
behaviour and stress. These components cannot be obviously identified with what
it takes to facilitate and ease the implementation of change. By contrast, during
this procedure individuals need to be lucid, involved, informed and aware of
the positive effects that the successful change process implementation can bring
to them and to the overall organisation. Individuals whose feelings are
dominated by confusion, fear, stress and anxiety are much more prone to take a
defensive position and as such to resist change.
A false sense of urgency, Kotter (2009) warns, is
extremely detrimental for a business and points out to frequent meetings and
Power Point presentations, which he defines activity and not productivity, as a
clear evidence of a bogus sense of urgency. What he also deems extremely dangerous
and capable to seriously jeopardise the successful implementation of change is
complacency, which sometimes is more difficult to identify. Managers invariably
claim that in their area everything is going sorely well and that they are performing
their activities in the most proper way so that there is no need to plan,
design and implement any change.
The overall idea could
apparently be considered puzzling: on the one hand business leaders have to establish
and generate a sense of urgency, which actually sounds as somewhat of an artificial
procedure, but on the other hand this sense of urgency has to be genuine and
truly existing. From this point of view, urgency can be considered as the opposite
concept of complacency. Whereas managers may think that everything is going absolutely
well and nothing need to be done, business leaders should investigate,
scrutinise and examine what is going on in the market and what their competitors
are doing to foresee possible threats and take advantage of the opportunities
offered by the external environment. Urgency has to actually be generated from
this constant investigation.
The need for urgency cannot be considered as a geographically
limited issue. It acquires the same significance, and can be managed in virtually
the same way, in North America, Europe and East Asia (Kotter,
2008). Some differences might, by contrast, occur amongst organisations
according, for instance, to their size. Large corporations might find, for
example, it more difficult establishing a sense of urgency (even though it was
not the case for Mr Yun when in the mid-1990s he had to introduce a massive
process of change in Samsung), albeit it does not mean that this is a straightforward
task to perform within small businesses.
As Kotter (2009)
suggests, a true sense of urgency is not a natural state and “it has to be
created and recreated.” This requires CEOs and top executives to be very
skilled, mindful and invariably active in trying to come up with better and
more suitable approaches to do things, albeit in practice the largest part of the
business executives (possibly in a bid to avoid being forced to leave their
comfort zone) may be persuaded to be already acting with “smart urgency”
(Kotter, 2009). To create and establish a sense of urgency employers need to
understand how to generate urgency and identify which circumstances can help them
to generate it, but they do not essentially need to invent anything.
To eradicate false
urgency and genuine complacency business leaders should every now and then leave
their offices and visit the different areas of their organisation premises to
look at what people actually do (and say), rather than only listening at what
managers say (Kotter, 2009). Whether urgency is generated on the basis of false
information the result yielded by the initiatives implemented in the light of
this cannot obviously be positive.
Does manipulation invariably represent a viable,
supportable option?
Whilst resorting to
information or people manipulation cannot be in general considered as appropriate,
things are different as regards urgency.
It can be assumed
as a general rule that whether an employer has real, compelling reasons for introducing
change this should not find it particularly difficult, after having established
an efficient communication channel, to get the employee approval and support at
large. In these instances, information manipulation and distortion would indeed
reveal completely pointless. Manipulation actually habitually comes to play
when employers:
- Are extremely
uncertain and doubtful about the outcome of their plan;
- Lack trust and confidence
on the proposed change;
- Are essentially aware
of actually posing a real threat to employees;
- Adopt an
anachronistic autocratic leadership style.
Whatever the case, information
manipulation will not never ever turn to be useful whatsoever. Sooner or later
people become aware of the real reasons for the employer having introduced change
and would invariably be in a position to come back to the old way of doing
things or threat industrial action. Under such circumstance the employer
bargaining power would result extremely weakened by the aggravating factor that
the employer had actually tried to conceal from employees the truth.
The only case in
which manipulation could turn to be effective is perhaps that in which a change
process has to be implemented within an extremely short period of time, for
instance according to the Big-Bang approach suggested by Peters (1993): “change
radically and do it quickly.” In such a case, since the employer has to
implement change rapidly, this might find it particularly difficult to put in
place what it takes to appropriately communicate the reasons for change and
wait for individuals to genuinely understand these. It clearly depends on the
circumstances, but manipulation at large should never be considered as a valued
option, nobody likes to be told lies and untrue stories.
Manipulation has hence
nothing to do with establishing or generating a sense of urgency, which has rather
to be based on real facts and circumstances.
Longo, R., (2011), Manipulation and instilling a sense of urgency: do they really contribute to make the process of change smooth sailing?, HR Professionals, Milan [online].
