DEALING WITH CHANGE AND INNOVATION

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Chapter 15

• DEALING WITH CHANGE AND INNOVATION

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This Chapter

• THE FORCES FOR CHANGE
• TWO VIEWS ON THE CHANGE PROCESS
• STIMULATING INNOVATION
• Without change
• Supervisors job would be relatively easy.
• Planning, problem-solving, and decision-making
  would be problem simplified.
• There would be no need to adapt.

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What Are the External Forces Creating a Need for
Change?

• Marketplace
• Competitors.
• Customers.
• Suppliers.
• Government regulations
• More and more laws.
• Often difficult and costly to comply with.

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What Are the External Forces Creating a Need for
Change?

• Technology
• Can make your product obsolete overnight.
• Can speed up your operations.
• Can reduce your costs.
• Can replace your workers with machines.
• Economic forces
• Price shifts in high demand resources.
• Government spending and taxing policies.
• Credit availability, interest rates, and
  unemployment and inflation rates, etc.

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What Are the Internal Forces Creating a Need for
Change?

• Long-range plans
• Always involves change of one type or another.
• Involves trying to predict the future.
• New equipment
• For example, from typewriters to word processors.
• New equipment could replace some workers and
  create the need for additional training for
  others.
• Work force
• Always changing in terms of age, education,
  gender, diversity.
• A major challenge to todays supervisor.
• Compensation and benefits
• New reward structures must be designed to more
  closely align rewards with performance, and to
  reflect the needs of a diverse workforce.
• Employee attitudes
• Company policies, practices must change in order
  to reflect the ever-changing needs and
  expectations of employees.

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EXHIBIT 15-1 Forces of change.
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EXHIBIT 15-2 The three-step traditional view of
the change process.
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How Can Supervisors Serve as Change Agents?

• Change agents
• Act as catalysts - assume the responsibility for
  overseeing the change process.
• Can be a supervisor or can be non-management.
• Can be either external or internal
  specialist/consultant.

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What Is the Traditional View of Change?

• Unfreeze
• Increase the driving forces, which direct
  behavior away from the status quo.
• Decrease the restraining forces, which hinder
  movement from the existing equilibrium.
• Change
• Implement the change.
• Refreeze
• Continue the implementation process until the
  change has taken hold.
• Must keep employees from reverting back to the
  equilibrium state.
• Stabilize the new situation by balancing the
  driving and restraining forces.

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Will You Face a World of Constant and Chaotic
Change?

• Constant and chaotic change
• If it aint broke, dont fix it, doesnt work
  any more. Its always broke.
• Treating change as an occasional disturbance in
  an otherwise peaceful world very risky.

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Who Do People Resist Change?

• Forms of resistance
• Overt.
• Implicit.
• Immediate.
• Deferred.
• Habits
• When confronted with change, the tendency to
  respond in our accustomed ways becomes a source
  of resistance.
• We dont like to change the routine.
• Threats to jobs and incomes
• Will the change mean layoffs, reduction in job
  security or income?
• Particularly threatening where pay is closely
  tied to productivity.
• Fear of the unknown
• Humans do not like ambiguity and uncertainty.

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Who Do People Resist Change?(Continued)

• Selective perception
• Individuals selectively process what they see and
  hear in order to keep their perceptions intact.
• They hear what they want to hear, ignoring any
  information that challenges the world theyve
  created.
• Threat to expertise
• Changes may threaten the expertise of specialized
  groups and departments.
• Threat to establish power relationships
• Can threaten long-established power
  relationships.
• Empowerment frequently resisted by supervisors
  who feel threatened by redistribution of power.
• Threat to interpersonal relationships
• Co-workers and friends we interact with.
• Change could mean transfer, reorganization, or
  restructuring.

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How can resistance to change be overcome?

• Build trust.
• If employees trust and have confidence in you,
  they are less likely to be threatened by proposed
  changes.
• Trust takes a long time to develop and is
  fragile it can be destroyed easily.
• Open channels of communication.
• With employees to help them see the logic of a
  change.
• Only effective where there is a climate of trust.
• Particularly effective in reducing threats caused
  by ambiguity.
• Involve your employees.
• Difficult for employees to resist change in which
  they have participated.
• Should be done early in the change process.

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How can resistance to change be overcome?
(Continued)

• Provide incentives.
• Offer incentives that might help overcome
  employee resistance.
• New skills training, new challenges, new
  responsibilities, more flexible hours, and
  increased job autonomy are just a few
  suggestions.
• Deal with employees feelings.
• Attitudes-evaluative statement of judgments
  concerning objects, people, or events.
• As a supervisor, you may be called upon to change
  the negative attitudes of employees.

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What Is the Contemporary View of Change?

• Constant and chaotic change
• Environments are both uncertain and dynamic.
• White-water rapids as opposed to calm-water.
• Recognizes that the stability and predictability
  of the traditional view of change may not exist.

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EXHIBIT 153 Why people resist change.
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How Are Creativity and Innovation Related?

• Creativity
• Ability to combine ideas in a unique way.
• Developing new approaches to things.
• Innovation
• Taking a creative idea and making it useful.

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What Is Involved in Innovation?

• Perception
• How you see things.
• Incubation
• Sitting on an idea.
• Inspiration
• When all your efforts come together.
• Innovation
• Turning inspiration into something useful.

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How can a supervisor foster innovation?

• Structural variables
• Less formalized structures favor work
  specialization, which enhances innovation.
• Plentiful resources.
• Inter-unit communication.
• Cultural variables
• Acceptance of ambiguity.
• Tolerance of the impractical.
• Low external controls.
• Tolerance of risk.
• Tolerance of conflict.
• Focus on ends, not means.
• Open systems focus.
• Human resource variables