Managing Dynamic Change
Today's fast-paced economy and culture demands that
larger organizations change or die. Few companies manage corporate
transformations as well as they would like. It is said that anywhere from
50 to 80 percent of all change initiatives fail. Christian leaders can
learn a great deal from studying these business models and learn from
both their strengths and failures. We can compare these business models
to Bible principles to help us understand the dynamics of change.
The landscape for church leaders has dramatically changed. Economic
pressures now dictate that churches streamline their staffs and do more
with fewer paid staff members. To grow, we must continually look for more
efficient ways to manage our resources and ministries. If we fail to
change our organizational structure as we grow we will stop growing.
Between 1980 and 1995, researchers at the Harvard Business School tracked
the impact of change efforts among the Fortune 100. Only 30 percent of
those initiatives produced an improvement in bottom-line results.
Experience has shown that Christian leaders have similar results. As the
treadmill moves faster, leaders work harder, but results improve slowly.
One problem is that too few people at every level really support the
initiative. To foster pro-active effort and imaginative thinking, not
only do you have to engage more people, you've got to engage them more
fully.
Change is mostly personal. For change to occur in any organization, each
individual must think, feel or do something different. Even in large
organizations, which depend on thousands of employees to understanding
company strategies well enough to translate them into appropriate
actions, leaders must win their followers one by one.
Part of the problem stems from applying the only organizational model
some leaders know: the mechanistic structure. These principles were first
applied to managing physical work in manufacturing plants. When
superimposed on today's knowledge based organization, change initiatives
are broken into pieces and then the pieces are managed. But today's
change is dynamic and the pieces are constantly in motion. Change happens
in the heart before it manifests itself in production. Church leaders
should therefore strive to understand the impact of change on people and
relationships between people as well as how it will affect the bottom
line.
Thinking in anticipation of changes
How do you teach large groups of people to think strategically, recognize
patterns, and to anticipate problems and opportunities before they occur?
There is a new level of complexity and chaos that can be managed only
when information flows across boundaries. When we recognize that critical
information can be held anywhere in and out of an organization, we create
opportunities for those with information to influence decision-making.
Managing change means creating conversations between the people leading
the change effort and those who are expected to implement the new
strategies. It means managing the organizational context in which change
can occur, as well as managing the emotional and intellectual connections
that are essential for transformation.
"All real change involves major uncertainty, and we cannot deny the
questioning time to others simply because we have already answered the
questions for ourselves." - Bernice McCarthy
Feelings and perspectives
Change is fundamentally about feelings and spiritual perspectives.
Ministries that want their workers to contribute with their heads and
hearts have to accept that emotions are essential to the new management
style. Managing people is managing emotions. It is not whether or not
people have "negative" emotions; it's how they deal with them. The most
successful change programs reveal that large organizations connect with
their people most directly through biblical values - and that values,
ultimately, are about beliefs and feelings.
When an organization denies the validity of emotions in the workplace or
seeks to permit only certain kinds of emotions, two things happen. The
first is that managers cut themselves off from their own emotional lives.
And in doing so, they cut off the ideas, solutions, and new perspectives
that other people can contribute.
Transitions are the problem
"It isn't the changes that do you in, it's the transitions. Change is
situational: the new location, the new boss, the new team roles, the new
policy. Transition is the psychological process people go through to come
to terms with the new situation. Change is external, transition is
internal." - William Bridges, Managing Transitions, 1991
Dealing with loss
All change requires people to let go of something and begin doing
something different. It isn't necessarily the change that people resist.
It is the losses and endings that they experience. It does little good to
talk about how healthy the outcome of the change will be. First you have
to deal directly with the losses and endings. But how?
- Identify who is losing what and why.
- Accept the reality and importance of the subjective losses.
- Expect and accept the signs of "grieving". Acknowledge the losses
openly and sympathetically.
- Give people information again and again; define what's over and what
isn't.
- Mark endings; treat the past with respect.
- Provide plenty of forums for discussion about both the positive and
negative changes.
The second step through transitions involves the acceptance of a neutral
zone, a sort of no-man's land between the old reality and the new. It is
the time between the old identity and the new. It you don't expect this
period and deal with it, you may mistakenly conclude that the confusion
you feel is a sign that there's something wrong with the new program.
People make the new beginning only if they have first made an ending and
spent some time in the neutral zone. Yet most organizations try to start
with the beginning rather than finishing with the old first.
First You Lose, and Then You Win.
When major changes are announced, they emphasize all the benefits that
will follow with the successful new strategies. Fanfare and power point
presentations can be theatrical and entertaining. Little attention is
given to reality of loss that the changes are bringing. Change means
loss. First you lose, then you accept it - only then can you decide to
change. The loss has to be processed before people will change their
behaviors in the desired direction. Here are some common reactions:
Anger: This may be evidenced as grumbling, foot dragging, mistakes, and
even sabotage.
Bargaining: There may be unrealistic attempts to get out of the situation
by trying to strike a deal.
Anxiety: the fear of an unknown future may lead some to create fantasies.
Sadness: This is the heart of the grieving process. It may be experienced
as everything from tears to silence.
Disorientation: Even organized people may experience forgetfulness,
confusion, and clumsiness during this period. These feelings are so
uncomfortable that people will do strange things to avoid them.
Depression: Some people may experience feelings of hopelessness. While
this is intensely personal, you cannot ignore it. People must still get
their work done and participate in the change effort.
If you suppress the feelings and push people to get over them, it will be
difficult to successfully enter into the new changes with any sense of
commitment or enthusiasm. If you want to engage people to support an
initiative with their hearts and minds, you must recognize their
feelings, and recognize their losses before moving into new beginnings.
Jeff Wade, DBS
BibleLeader.com
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