Question

You have been invited to meet with the CEO of a large national Health Care provider regarding a major change initiative. You meet with the CEO.

The CEO advises that her company is in the process of acquiring a major competitor and the integration of the two companies will require significant change for the company. She advises that she does not have the internal expertise to manage such a change and is in the process of interviewing external consultants to be engaged to develop a change plan and work closely with her leadership team to implement the change. She states that she has heard of several change models from several consultants but they all sound very complicated and time consuming. She says that she needs something that people can understand and that will work both effectively and quickly. She says, “Frankly I don’t have time for a bunch of HR mumbo jumbo, I need to be able to move quickly and be very successful in the changes”.

Additionally she states that she believes her greatest challenge is getting her senior leadership team to agree and get aligned on the needed changes. She asks you to explain the change process you would use for such an engagement and why you believe your approach will achieve success. She states, "and I think most critical is how to get buy-in from my senior leadership"

You have 30 minutes to provide her with a comprehensive overview and one that will give her a high level of confidence that you and your team could deliver on her needs. Explain how you will approach this challenge in responding to her request.

Answer 1

To bring about any kind of change in the organization, the manager needs to involve all employee in the change process. The manager needs to align the thought process of the employees with the objectives of the transition process. The workforce of the company serve as the primary barriers to the change process. Hence their involvement in the change strategy is quite imperative. Their inclusion and involvement in every stage of the change process will help in making the change successful for the company. The top executives and management of the company will be required to develop the change objectives and strategy, the ground -level employees will be required to execute the change. The middle managers act as the link between the other 2 groups and assist in the execution and monitoring of the change process.

Some of the strategies, which can be used by the manager to overcome the employee resistance and facilitate the change process are

• The objectives and goals of the transformational change must be very clear
• All the stakeholders must have clarity about the objectives, features and benefits of the change process
• A dedicated change management team must be selected for executing the change process, which must have members of all employee groups. These members will act as change agents
• The available resource must be evaluated effectively so as to determine their usage in the change process
• The leader and the change agents must address all inhibitions of the stakeholders
• Comprehensive risk assessment of the change process must be conducted, so as to Identify the potential barriers to the change
• The change management plan must be formulated in a way to address each identified barrier

Some of the change management tools, which can be used by the manager and the employees, to keep track of the transition change status in processes and systems are:

• Force Field Analysis
• Flowcharting
• Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model
• Gantt Charts
• Lewin’s Change Model