MODEL FOR ENVIRONMENTAL
        CHANGE MANAGEMENT

By Larry O. Simmons, M.Ed.

By nature, organizations are political entities as well as systems assembled for producing specific, predictable outcomes or outputs.  People populate organizations.  People inherently social, form relationships, friendships, and cliques.  People in organizations can consciously or unconsciously become loyal to the processes the organization uses to fulfill its mission.  Resistance to change often is because it is the path of least resistance.  Organizational processes can become routinized to the point the output of the system is secondary to the process itself.  Organizational developers have identified this tendency in most systems and have sought to uncover ways of weeding this trait out of organizational life.

Due to rapid technological advances that are placing enormous pressure on the processes organizations use to fulfill their missions change becomes necessary at an increasing pace.  Living organisms, when their environments change they either adapt or become extinct.  Organizations in today’s climate of change also most adapt to remain vital and competitive.  If people populate organizations, and people become loyal to a process or how relationships between individuals in the system are maintained, how can organizations respond to changes in their environmental niche?  Adaptation, for them is not only necessary for existence but also to thrive in the face of change and dominate the niche.  Perhaps, even to create new opportunities from the adversity.

The Human Performance Technologist

Many times the person in the organization that uncovers the evidence that change is necessary are instructional technologists operating in the capacity of human performance technologist.  The problem then becomes, how to get everyone (the various stakeholders) in the organization moving in the same direction when those involved may have different agendas, political or otherwise.

Let’s define what service a Human Performance Technologist – HPT performs for the organization.  What value they bring to the organization that employs them either as internal or external consultants.  Like the Instructional Technologist, HPT’s are adept at looking at problems and situations systematically using process models to guide them through the steps of uncovering problem(s) to the range of viable solutions.  We use a process, systematically, to assess if problems exist or change has taken place within an operating environment.  Then try to ascertain if the problem(s):
 

· Will have an impact on the organizations health, survival or ability to compete within its niche.
· Analyze which problems pose a threat to the organization by ranking them in order of dangerousness.
· Determine what the likely consequence or impact the change will have on the organizations short-term and long-range future.
· Select the critical area(s) to focus attention based on the needs of the organization.
· Define possible strategies available to the organization to respond to the threat.
· Narrow the range of strategies to the best strategy and design a strategic plan with timelines.
· Determine the resources needed to implement the strategic plan effectively and begin the process of gathering them.
· Develop the tactics necessary to carryout the strategies over the life of the plan.
· Rank the tactics from first to last with the last ending the strategic plan.
· Implement the tactics.
· Summative evaluate the plan for guidance when a tactic has fulfilled it purpose and switch to next tactic of strategic plan.

HPT’s provide a process to respond to chaotic conditions that assist organizations in choosing between possible paths.  The value we bring to organizations that find they need ways to respond to change is an orderly process.  With the pace of change quickening and the need to effectuate a proper response shortening, an environmental change management process is needed.  A change management process can help guarantee the strategies selected for implementation are afforded the best possible climate for support and success within the organization.

Getting All Stakeholders Involved in the Process

During the past couple of years, General Motors has faced rolling strikes at the local level.  This situation, created mainly due to personnel at individual plants disagreeing with corporate policies they felt could have a negative effect on their future employment.  Certain strategic parts plants important to GM’s manufacturing process, overall had the effect of threatening to shut down their entire car production capacity.  What was the basis for the disagreement, personnel disagreed with corporate policy of selling GM parts manufacturing plants to supplier companies.  The disagreement also involved the general corporate strategy of how GM should respond to environmental changes that impact the company’s ability to compete in the US and international markets.  The company desired to better position itself by reducing operating cost in keeping with generally accepted auto production practices.

These were noble efforts that all stakeholders, corporate officers, managers, and employees should agree with and welcome.  Afterall, they would have the effect of ensuring GM's long-term health.  As with any organism and organization for that matter, survival is it’s first priority.  The fact that General Motors was attempting to response to the changes in its operating environment should come as no surprise.  In fact, if they did not respond to the changes it would have created possible grounds for removal of the top management team.  So, if moving to adjust to changes in the marketplace was correct then what was wrong in this situation?  How could General Motors have handled the situation better so local communities, workers and the company as a whole could have avoided the needless loss of income and productivity?  GM could have employed an environmental change management process to generate solutions that all stakeholders important to the implementation of the changes could have agreed with and enacted together.

Rationale for Environmental Change Management Process

Similar to most process models, the Environmental Change Management Process model – ECMP have steps seen in other process models.  The difference with this model is the end product the steps generate and the climate for change it helps create among the central stakeholders.  Those persons that need to accept and carryout the changes in order for the organization to quickly respond, maintain, regain or capture the competitive edge.

Environmental Change Management Process model

The Steps of the Model

· Assessment / analysis of operating environment: Has there been a significant change?  All stakeholders need to understand the conditions and limitations the organization must operate under to survive.  Then there must be the identification of the essential event(s) that impact the environment that have changed possibility impacting its survival.

· Have environmental changes impacted the organization?  Stakeholders need to question if the changes have impacted the organizations ability to survive and strive.  Strive means to compete with other like organizations in the same environment restrained by the make influences.  This is important since each stakeholders looks from different positions with different concerns and may not see the picture in the same way.  Change to be truly effective in the end must have the support of all stakeholders.

· What are the possible consequences to the organization?  All stakeholders should assist in generating a list of likely consequences to the organization that will impact each of their spheres of influence.  As stakeholders in the health and continued existence of the organization, each viewpoint is vital to generating a realistic list of consequences that all need to agree.

· What are the likely consequences to the organization?  With information from stakeholders with data pertaining to the operating environment, all stakeholders being equipped with that information need to narrow possible consequences to a list of likely outcomes from the environmental change.

· Set organizational performance objectives.  All stakeholders, now informed with the likely effects of the environmental change need to create a statement of objective.  This statement should define the standard of performance for the organization after a pre-determined period of time.
· Range of possible strategies to fulfill objectives.  Once the language of the statement of objectives is acceptable by all or most stakeholders, strategies to meet the objective should be determined.  In the case of GM, before their strategy to sell plants in their system to supplier companies has implemented their workers, also stakeholders, should have been part of the decision-making process.  This would have avoided needless strikes and loss income to the workers and company as well.  Efforts to better position the company because of changes in the operating environment actually had a reverse effect on the company.

· Force-field analysis of strategies.  For each strategy identified a force-field analysis pointing out the driving and restraining forces for each option will narrow the field of strategies to the most realistic and workable ones.

· Determine tactics to implement strategy.  Objective here is to generate a list of tactics with all parties supplying input.  After creating a list, rank the tactics in order of implementation.

Example: Tactic 1: Streamline production by selling excess capacity.
        Tactic 2: Outsource excess capacity with personnel to supplier
                company.
        Tactic 3: Re-absorb personnel from supplier to replace retiring
                personnel from organization.

Of course, this is just an example of ways to respond.  The advantage of this process is that by the time an organization arrives to this point all parties have agreed with the tactics to respond to change.  There will be no surprised, no strikes.  All stakeholders will see the problem, accept change is necessary and see it in their best interest to respond to it.

· Resources needed to implement tactics.  What should stakeholders, executing from their sphere of influence, contribute to successfully implement the tactic?  All parties must see and feel the burden is universally shared.

· Implement tactics.  Once there is a consensus between all stakeholders, the organization will have a template for change.  Each party, important to the implementation of change strategies, will know what to expect and what is expected.  Productivity will not suffer due to rumors, gossip or fear.  By involvement, rumor control and information management is established as secondary benefits.  Each tactic will have terminal objectives that serve as the enabling objective for the next tactic on the list.

· Evaluate.  During implementation of the plan the organization should execute a formative evaluation from the objective-oriented prospective.  This evaluation approach also is useful when carrying out a summative evaluation of the entire process.

Conclusion

An area where American industry remained behind the Japanese is in the ability to get a consensus among their workers in responding to change.  We have different cultural histories that still have an influence on the relationships between worker and company.  In Japan, the relationship between worker and company has historically been more amicable.  When environmental changes happen that negatively effect the company’s ability to compete they have little difficulty in responding to the threat.  In America, the labor movement fought great battles over the rights of workers.   Remnants of those past struggles still reverberate today.

For the past several years starting in the early 1980’s, Wall Street has driven a fundamental change in American business practice.  In American organizational management, the priority is given to the dividends paid to stockholders.  All American industries are affected by this fundamental change.  Before then, business decisions had the effect of being “labor intensive.”  Industries hired workers to produce their products and profit margins or stock dividends were not heavily emphasized.  Now management decisions must be “capital intensive.”  Business decisions must reflect an understanding that shareholders expect to realize a reasonable rate of return on their investment in the company.  Companies, to remain a good investment of venture capital need to demonstrate they are managed effectively to compete for this cash that translates into better organizational performance and productivity.  That translates into more market-share, that translates into higher profits, that translates into higher dividends, etc.

During the same period, many third world countries and communist or socialist societies in Asia and South America began the process of industrialization.  Industrial companies began partnering around the globe.  Industries could improve organizational performance by outsourcing to other labor markets.  All organizations were adopting the practice, which produced changes in operating environments that impacted the relationship between American worker and company that have historically always been strained.  Add to that the transformation of American society from industrial to high technological where whole industries are obsolete displacing millions of workers.  Indeed, change has become the norm, no longer the exception.  How can all this change be managed?

All must accept change is inevitable.  This is not a value judgement, just a statement of fact.  It would be nice to slow change down or control it but no one can stop it.  That accepted, how can workers and organizations live with one another and maintain a relationship while change happens?  The Environmental Change Management Process -  ECMP model addresses that question.  It provides a process for informing all stakeholders that something has taken place in the organizational operating environment that warrants a response.  It provides all stakeholders the chance to have input in the organizational response to the changes thereby affording all a measure of control over what happens.  It provides the organization some satisfaction in knowing it acts with a single mind.  Lastly, it brings some control to the change process giving workers time to adjust.

Since no one can slow change down or stop it, perhaps with the ECMP model organizations can control it so American industry can better cope with changing global economic conditions.

Larry O. Simmons, a doctoral student in Wayne State University's Instructional Technology program, is a performance improvement consultant with Innovative Solutions in downtown Detroit, MI.  He can be reached at 1321 Orleans St., Suite 1808 West Tower, Detroit, MI. 48207 / Voice: 313.345.5354 / Fax: 801.327.4423