How to Align Change Strategy with Organizational Personality

Many agents of organizational change and others fail to achieve the desired results because they do not know or are not aware of the need to align the organizational change strategy personality. I. Durk Jager, former CEO of Procter & Gamble Co., has been clear about his goals when he took office in 1999: to strengthen the functioning and growth overseas top brands. These actions would remedy the sagging sales and the takeover of P & G's image as a world leader in the marketing of consumer products. However, Jager's strategy to achieve these goals has been perceived as abrasive, so discordant with P & G, his personality, his management team who have rebelled against him. He was forced to resign in less than two years. Alan G. Lafley, a longtime leadership that understands and respects the culture of the company, took office in 2000. Through a combination of wisdom, humility, personal commitment, and a careful alignment changes to the strategy of corporate personality, Lafley has made P & G in one of the great successes of the companies in the twenty-first century . Lauded as the most innovative change agent for Enterprise Culture, Carly Fiorina could not achieve its desired result at Hewlett-Packard. Fiorina has had the good idea to transform HP into a market more flexible driver. By many accounts, it did almost everything right, except for one thing: it has underestimated the power of the HP Way. Even as criticism mounted about its imperial style, intolerance of dissent, finger-pointing, rapid and drastic steps, and the alienation of rank and file employees, it continues to pretend contumeliously. Accordingly, the net results of HP worsened under her leadership. Ironically, Mark Hurd, a relatively obscure figure, which replaced Fiorina after being sacked in 2005, was able to accomplish much of what Fiorina-delayer dreamed of the organization, to replace some of the old guard, " increase response time to market, improve financial performance without encountering the same level of resistance and backlash. As Lafley, Hurd shows that any degree of change can be achieved by working across cultures, even if the ultimate goal is to replace this culture.The above high-profile examples illustrate what can happen when there is a lack of 'alignment at the highest levels of an organization. The emphasis here, however, is on how to deal with this issue at all levels of the organization, focusing on the role of human resources, organizational development, and training organization is leaders.What Personality? Personality is composed of a person's innate tendencies, as left-handedness or introversion, and outside influences such as education and experience. Both influences, both natural and learned, the shape of assumptions, beliefs, interests and behavior.Just because each person has a unique personality, vision, mission, values, beliefs, assumptions, experiences , and the attitude of each organization is its distinct personality.Additional information on how organizations learn, act, grow and eventually die like living organisms is well documented in books such matters as respected scholars Arie de Geus, Peter Senge, and William Bridges.Why is to know your organization's personality is it important? Strategy and organization alignment of the personality has implications for all aspects of business. No change in culture, strategic reorientation, growth plan, or the marketing or optimum brand campaign will be successful without it. Executives at Disney, Southwest Airlines and Nordstrom, to name but a few remarkable success entities, have a reputation for being able to take advantage of their cultures to achieve the desired results. They understand that the culture allows their success. They spend more time to improve the culture as they do in ensuring that the strategy is in sync with it. They know it is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve and maintain the results that their culture can support.What is your organization's personality? One of the mistakes made by the leadership change is to assume that they understand the culture of their organization. Fekete and Company, an Ohio-based marketing company, profiled fifty-five companies over a period of two years to determine their personality. As part of the study, each CEO and his management team were individually asked to describe the personality of their organization. In 78 percent of cases, the CEO of the organization saw differently than his management team. The study continues to show significant differences between the perceptions of senior management and the rest of the employees (Discover and live a company's True Personality, www.16types.com). Fortunately, the gaps in perceptions are not as broad in your organization. Plus you are removed from the social environment of front-line employees and tactics which tasks are performed, the less you should assume about your organisation culture.Change agents would do well to have a good understanding of the personality of their organization. They must invest in a proven approach for the collection of this information. Although there are many off-the-shelf of legal personality assessment tools, in collaboration with an agency that specializes in the collection and analysis of that information is recommended. These organizations include the Fekete & Company, PersonalityTM Parker LePla, Gartner Consulting, and The Pacific Institute.Other make mistakes agents of change: One size fits all. Smart organizations learn from experimentation and mistakes of other companies. If another company develops an idea which significantly improves customer satisfaction or employees, why reinvent the wheel? Leadership Change regularly borrow a process or an idea that has been validated elsewhere. They apply it in their organization hook, line and sinker. The danger inherent in this approach is that it fails, removes or disturbs the elements of their culture that are incongruent with the new scheme.Scantily Hooters waitresses are dressed icons of the brand. They are the key to customer satisfaction and resulted in a significant growth for the company. Borrowing this idea, a hospital could serve up scantily clad nurses. They may have their male rip off their coats as Chippendale dancers before delivering care. If these suggestions has given you pause, consider the various ideas that you may have continued strongly in your organization. How many of them caused your employees back? Could you have adapted the idea to your culture? Strait and narrow. Every trade has its bag of tricks, and the field of organization development is not an exception. Most professionals OD for experiential learning, or learning by doing. This promotes self-discovery, to enable learners to acquire skills that will help them achieve self and others, solutions to problems. Some HR professionals and DO favour of this approach, with the exception of teaching didactic. However, the trainers might prefer a traditional structure, often lecturesque, method.Learning is the lifeline of change, and your organization will not change if the learning process is inhibited. If the only means of medical students has been learned about the anatomy to sit in a circle and exchange ideas on parts of the body, they would probably have major limitations on physicians.Depending as an organization of the personality, an approach or combination of approaches might be the right way to learn. Agents of Change has to be flexible enough to create or adopt the style necessary to facilitate organizational learning. The catch is that they have to understand their culture well enough to find style.Improper tenor. While it might be acceptable to have employees gyrate to some of Aerosmith's hardest hit songs in the early learning sessions at Google, and while most of the learning activities at the company could be end with Zen-like adventures, the same delivery strategy could attract dire consequences to Capital.Google Cerberus takes great pride in its friendly and egalitarian culture. Affluent-pop subcultures, nerd, geek crops part of the atmosphere. Dress code is as casual as possible, and some staff offices are also eccentric and personal than their old college dormitories. Yet society is remarkably innovative and continues to enjoy high investor, employee and customer satisfaction. Google distinct personality, which allows it to attract and retain the kind of employee who shares his vision.On contrast, Cerberus, a private equity firm, is revered and feared on Wall Street. The company, which recently bought Chrysler, buys troubled businesses, bands of excess fat and turn them into profitable businesses. It currently owns a group of companies employing more than 250000 people.CEO and founder Stephen Feinberg is intense, hard-driving, but elusive and self-effacing person. Directly in employment to about three hundred people, its intensity and the provision conservative extend throughout its organization. Some of its leaders have left in the wake of its workforce do-it-yourself approach. "If someone Cerberus has his photo in the newspaper," Feinberg joked during a recent business meeting, "we will do more firepower than anyone else. We are going to kill him. The prison sentence will be worth it "(Conde Nast Portfolio, September 2007). Never mind that the name is borrowed from Cerberus mythologic the three-headed dog who guards the gates of Hades. Unlike Google, the dress code is formal and office? R is unusually bare bones. Yet many employees Cerberus thrive in this environment, and the company has consistently outperformed the competition. For all organizations between, an eccentric or too radical activity can be a distraction. It can erode the integrity of the leader because it smacks of personal knowledge deficit or a lack of understanding or disregard for the culture.Aggressiveness. In the film The Mask of Zorro, Antonio Banderas drunk and angry toward his archenemy charged, a soldier trained and without heart, to avenge the death of his brother. His mentor, Anthony Hopkins, has managed to limit it. In conversations, Hopkins him these words of wisdom: "You could very courageously fought and died very quickly." Resolve, energy, passion, patience, and concentrating forces are essential for the change leaders. However, when combined with an aggressive and abrasive, or dismissive attitude, especially in the pursuit of an initiative that clashes with the existing culture, often results in spectacular failure. Even when the conduct is not abrasive, "irrational exuberance" (my apologies to Alan Greenspan) or unfounded produce a similar outcome.Change optimism does not always produce alienation, and massive change should not Equal massive alienation.Asphyxiation. This refers to a change in strategy that lack of contribution from the employee population will be affected. Typically, an individual or a small group of leaders, a sort of oligarchy, initiate change, identifies critical issues and the implementation plans. Throughout the implementation phase, they remain faithful to their original plan to make adjustments usually only when there are adverse financial implications. These cocoon their own leaders breathe the air, and if the change process lasts long enough, will run oxygen.Maintaining to change the alignment between strategy and corporate personality is a dynamic process. Change leaders who want to succeed will seek the views of the appropriate before any decisions on the change will be finalized. They constantly monitor the feedback and results of ongoing change and adjust the strategy accordingly.Babel. That's what happens when interventionist organization try a variety of approaches in rapid succession blitz or an organization with multiple interventions without achieving culture change. This creates a state of perpetual motion confusing that inhibits deep commitment and encourages the adjustments that are detrimental to strategy.Often, Babel is evidence of poor planning in the initial phase of a process of change. Instead of fishing for ways to salvage the failure of the strategy, acknowledge your return to reality and drawing board.A terrible consequencePerhaps the most insidious, and, paradoxically, often ignored consequence of a change in strategy is the misaligned feelings of contempt it creates between Employees.When rank-and-file employees who have first-hand information are not asked for entry, or when their input is being ignored, when their efforts went abruptly dismissed, when new demands at odds with existing standards without sufficient explanation, when the implementation of practical methods without violating Warning, where the change of leaders show a lack of understanding of today's culture, when they show insensitivity to the scale of change being demanded of workers, and for the reassessment when the appeals are rejected and the dissenters are punished, an organization moved to the experience of the consequences of Trouvent its workforce.Disrespect for workers breeds apathy, resistance, burnout, low productivity and high turnover. A study conducted by Sigal Barsade, a professor of management Wharton, concluded that "the organization burn in compliance with the influences beyond the effects of job demands and negative affectivity." In other words, when employees feel contempt, they tend to have higher levels of burnout. The study also showed that productivity fell and sales increased when employees feel that their complaints about "negative" change were met with inertia. (More Than Job Demands or personality, lack of respect organizational Fuels Employee Burnout, Wharton School Publishing, December 8, 2006.) These results are consistent with the experiences of P & G and HP, in the reigns of Jager and Fiorina respectively.How do you create alignment? Before creating a change in strategy, first understand the personality of your organization. Instead of going with your intuition, care, personal experience, or the aspirations of your business, make an objective assessment of culture. This information is worth its weight in gold. Relentless innovation and improvement are prerequisites for success in the business environment of today. This is reflected in the rapid and continuous change. Thus, organizations must find ways of speeding up the metabolism of business. To achieve this goal, identify and deal with your culture that inhibit the desired pace and magnitude of change.With the exception of situations posing significant risks or immediate change, regardless of the massive ' not to occur in a draconian or disrespectful. Even when they can not alter the outcome, speak with impacted employees about your idea of change and the underlying logic. This dialogue should take place before the decision for change is finalized. This action shows that you care for your workers as human beings, respect for their intelligence, their composition and value in your business. A patient who is diagnosed with a malignant tumor may not have a choice on the removal of the tumor, if he wants to live. However, it should have the opportunity to explore several options surgical and non-surgical methods for eradicating the disease. If the patient has opted for a non-surgical option, it can assess a range of drugs for the side effects and choose the most appropriate. By rubbing with your minds, you have a better chance of choosing the most effective approach to achieve your goal.Even when you are confident that you understand your organization's level of tolerance, keep your hand on the pulse through the process of change . Just as you would observe emotions such as fear, anger and sadness into a person, look for signs similar to the organization's climate once the process of change begins. Addressing these early symptoms can prevent them from escalating into more dangerous diseases such as mistrust, apathy and disloyalty.Properly timetable for the introduction of your initiatives and your name attests to its level of Stress your workforce. No matter how industrious and committed perhaps your employees, you will be doing a disservice to your organization pushing beyond their breaking point.ConclusionAs a doctor friend once remarked, all blood is red, but not all blood is good for everybody. Not all changes in strategy, design, delivery method, or activity is good for your organization. Your ability to work in partnership with your colleagues to discern the best approach is the essence of your role as an agent of change.
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