 Case
Number 1
The Client:
An
international company with marketing operations in many countries in
Europe
.
The Change Problem: A hard-hitting South American manager, who had
been educated at one of the leading business schools in the
United States
, was nominated to take charge of the Dutch operation.
The Dutch staff, who were very good marketers, were sceptical about
the new manager because of his lack of country knowledge.
However, the Dutch part of the operation was losing market share
and needed new ideas from a world-class professional.
After the first few months in the job the new manager was not able
to get the Dutch staff to implement his ideas.
He was proposing them in a way that did not fit in with Dutch
professional culture.
What
we proposed and were then asked to do:
(1)
Hold
confidential meetings with the manager and the staff to get their opinions
about the situation.
(2)
Design
an initial off-site workshop. The
first part of the workshop would be based on case studies on different
leadership styles, the transitions all the actors had had to go through
and the practical (not theoretical) differences between Dutch collegial
managerial style and the more North American individualistic style.
(3)
Hold the
first workshop with the manager and his colleagues.
a.
Each
person present was asked to talk generally about the transitions, what it
had meant for the North American Manager to discover what he could and
could not do in
Holland
, what it had meant for the Dutch staff to realise the need to get away
from the consensual, laid-back style to meet the challenges facing the
company.
b.
In the
second part of the workshop Syre Consulting consultants pointed out the
differences between Dutch national culture and North American/South
American national culture. The
staff present talked through the endings they would have to make to find a
compromise style and how they would put in place the new behaviours.
c.
In the
third part of the workshop, all people present talked about the changes
they would need to make in their individual leadership styles:
i.
What
their preferred style was at that moment
ii.
Which
style they needed to work towards, for managing up and down
iii.
How they
would work through the transitions to get to the new style
d.
The
workshop ended up with a visioning exercise in which the people present
got back to the day-to-day worries of the business.
The synergies they had created among themselves during the previous
activities allowed them to work more in the “Dutch” way than the
American way but to come up with the results expected by the parent
company.
Result:
The American
Manager, who had personally identified the need for outside assistance,
became a driving force in
Holland
, knowing when to adopt a collegial style or a more thrusting style of
management with his Dutch colleagues.
He has given us references to other companies.
Some of the staff in his team have also moved on to Senior
Positions in other companies and contact us when they need to work on new
transitions with their teams.
Case
Number 2
The
Client : An international technology company (which we will call “X”)
with operations all over the world.
The Change:
The Company had decided to
outsource some of its non core-competence work in
France
. The change had already taken
place and had been badly explained and badly handled.
One example the Unions had been fighting the outsourcing.
The day the legal judgement came through the staff who had been
working for the company for up to 25 years were taken out of their
workplaces and put in the car park. They
were told that they could no longer have the advantage of company benefits
such as the canteen at lunchtime or the coffee machine (otherwise these
benefits, if even used only once by outsourced workers, would become
permanent). People who had not
been outsourced, whom the company wished to retain, were very unhappy
about the way their former colleagues had been treated and survivor guilt
had set in.
Some examples of the
problem:
The outsourced staff, in the middle of the union battles and the way the
final day was handled, were traumatized.
Because the change had been badly explained, rumours were
circulated and speculations were made.
“X” is a large international company with a good reputation in
the town where it is established. For
staff of “X” all doors opened automatically when they said that they
worked for the company. Outsourcing
meant they would work for a smaller local company; they would not get the
same recognition in the town. Even
though salaries were going to be maintained, they were worried about the
future. Staff felt they did
not have the same job security in the local company.
What
we proposed and were then asked to do:
1.
One
day transition workshops were organised for the staff affected by this
outsourcing, in groups of 15 people.
a.
First
they had to make sense of the change.
They reflected and discussed the “why” of the change.
They tried to understand why the company had to outsource the
service.
They could understand it rationally, but they had a hard time
accepting it emotionally.
They also looked at the other changes that have happened in their
lives (personal or work related).
b.
They
learned that the transition that is brought on by a change breaks down
into three parts:
i.
Every
transition begins with en ending, a loss.
They looked at what was ending for them with this organisational
change (the outsourcing), what they had to leave behind, what they could
take with them.
1.
What were they losing ?
a.
Status
b.
Identity
c.
job security
d.
benefits (comité d’entreprise, better medical insurance)
e.
company culture
f.
colleagues
g.
membership of social networks
2.
They
sorted through their losses and realised that they needed to seek all the
information necessary to deal effectively with these losses. Discussions
were held during which the outsourced staff could express themselves.
ii.
The
second part of the transition process is the Neutral Zone,
the in-between time where everything is confused.
The outsourced staff were asked to reflect on how they could
recover a sense of control of the situation, how to understand the
situation, how they could get support, and also to revisit the question of
their own life-purpose.
1.
The
affected staff were shown how to use this time in the neutral zone
creatively (taking stock, try new things,
noting down all ideas that came to mind, take a class they never
thought of taking before, etc..)
iii.
The
third part of the transition process is the New Beginning. The
staff were shown how to identify when they were ready for the new
beginning.
After a while in the neutral zone it can sometimes be difficult to
get back on track.
We are not sure yet if we know where we are going and how we are
going to get there.
1.
Some
suggestions to staff were to:
a.
convert
the ideas you want to put into practice in the neutral zone into clear
objectives;
b.
be
open to shifts in your plan;
c.
try
to prevent other changes from intruding on the attention and energy you
are putting into your plan;
d.
focus
your early efforts to achieve quick successes;
e.
be
certain of the new behaviours you will have to show;
f.
articulate
your new identity.
2.
Taking
action:
The staff looked through all the ideas they had generated throughout the
day and chose the ones that held the most promise of making their
transition successful and less distressing.
They decided what they could and would do individually and what
they needed someone else to do for them and how they would encourage them
to do it.
Syre
Consulting (Systèmes et ressources sarl) can help you with both high impact change management and breakthrough transition management.
Our workshops show managers
responsible for change how to use mature, structured and proven methods to
develop a change plan which takes all stakeholders and the far and near
environments into account.
William
Bridges'
transition methods are then used to help organizations and employees make sense of the
transitions which begin with the change.
The Creator of Transition Management in Business
William Bridges has been described by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top
ten independent development presenters in the United States. In over twenty years of
working with organizations he has developed the concept of Managing Organizational
Transition, which has been used effectively by organizations as diverse as NASA,
Procter & Gamble, Intel, Hewlett Packard, 3M, Shell Petroleum and many other
international companies and organizations. Bridges is the well-known author of JobShift,
Managing Transitions (Making the Most of Change) and Surviving Corporate
Transition. Bridges' thinking is based on the anthropological work
of Arnold van Gennep.
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The
method used by Syre Consulting is designed to help you effect high impact and
breakthrough change while preserving the knowledge base of your company. We work at every level of the organization : the
individual level, the work
group level and the company level. "This is
a time full of changes in strategy, technology, product mix, and culture", writes
William Bridges. "With many of them come reorganization and redeployment. As in the
past, all too many of these changes will be planned with little concern for how they will
affect people or for what people will have to do to make them work. It will simply be
assumed that if the changes are necessary, people will adjust to them. But experience
suggests that the psychological process initiated by change is more like distress and
disruption than adjustment." 