Painful Change versus Painless Change - Essay Example

Running Header: SHOULD ORGANIZATIONS IMPLEMENT PAINFUL CHANGE OR SHOULD THEY ATTEMPT TO INTRODUCE PAINLESS CHANGE? Painful Change vs. Painless Change Introduction Business environment is changing on daily basis. Organizations have focused their resources on the maintenance of business stability and certainty (Nordvang, Rolland, & Simpson, 2008). An increased gap between changing business environment and the need to remain competitive calls for businesses to implement changed that is in tandem with changes happening in the business environment (Bligh, 2006). Modern organizations often incur complex change process. Many approaches for change exist. These include rapid or slow change, continuous or periodic change and painless or painful change. In spite the need for change, most people usually change only when the effects of not changing becomes worse than remaining in the same state. Thus, even change, which is perceived to be positive, is often seen as disruptive and unknown (deKler, 2007). Many people find it comfortable to stay in familiar state rather than change hence they tend to resist change. However, the rapid and continuous changes in business environment calls for an organization that wants to stay afloat to introduce change in the way it runs its business (Burnes, 2005). Therefore, those involved in change ought to recognize the need for stability and continuity of the firm. This paper takes a critical look at whether organization ought to develop a painful change or if they should attempt to introduce painless change. Developing painful change Painful change is usually characterised by low level of employee engagement. In such cases the emotional attachment of the employee to his or her duties are very low and hence productivity of such a firm are also very minimal. Consequently, customer satisfaction is very low. In addition, there are high workforce turnover and lost workdays. When change is being implemented in such environment, managers provide no secure base to employees. Thus, such managers make employees to feel unsafe when change is being implemented. As a result, the employees often stop to look out for danger and therefore they cannot seek out the benefits that accompany the proposed change. This often leads to increased resistance to change. In such firms, the level of trust between employees and their managers and fellow workers is often low. Due to low trust, people feel insecure and therefore management of anxiety or uncertainty when change is implemented is difficult. Firms that undergo painful change are also characterised by poor leadership. Such leaders are usually unable to provide a sense of protection to its employees. The managers also do not know how to communicate the benefits of implementing changes in the firm. Such employees in firms with poor leadership often resort to negative aspects of the pending change. Such leaders do not represent a secure base required by employees in order to embrace change. The leaders are usually uncaring and do not involve themselves in building bonds among employees. The managers in firms that implement painful change put much focus on cost cutting, on facts and figures and on goals instead of focusing on the employees and in the process. They thus forget about the pain being incurred by employees whom often creates resistance and failure to anticipated change. Most managers implementing painful change lack skills of forming positive bonds between them and their employees. This often leads to destructive disconnection. People in such firms lack space, courage and freedom to move forward and therefore their self-esteem is low. This low self-esteem has negative impact on the employees’ output. The lack of needed leadership skills in these organizations makes people to fear change. Painless change Recent research has indicated that people do not resist change naturally. Instead, the findings of these researches show that people resist the pain of change. Once the benefit of change is clear, change becomes painless. All best performing individuals undergo continuous painless change and often seeks change and takes risks that often results in accruing the benefits that come with positive change. Successful painless change depends on the feeling of being secure. GE exemplifies firm which has undergone a painless change program at GE was effective mainly because of five reasons. First, the management team of GE was intact during the time change was being implemented. This resulted in each team reaching out for group consensus on the factors that may hinder change. This allowed them to come up with innovative ways of tackling these barriers. Second, all hard and those involved in implementing change at GE considered soft barriers. In addition, attention was focused on the challenges of external leadership on the management of short and long-term changes simultaneously. In addition, the program of change at GE created a new change vocabulary. Finally, the teams, which were involved in bringing about change at GE, came up with an action plan for implementing change in different individual departments of the firm. These plans had mechanisms, which were in place that were to be delivered upon to avoid inflicting pain to employees during the period of change. Thus, change at GE was well planned and as a result, little resistance was incurred in addition to it being successful process. The change was also well resourced since different teams carried out preliminary surveys on what needed to be done and how it ought to be undertaken. Strong leadership is the cornerstone of implementing painless change. This calls upon leaders to lead more instead of managing more. This enables such leaders to build a winning organization. Strong leadership skills also ensure that employees are harnessed to help in building a firm that is a leader in the market as happened in the case of GE. Firms that implement painless change are also characterized by a culture that supports change. This is often achieved through inspiring vision, innovation that is relentless, leadership that inspires others at the work place and encouragement of shared values at the workplace. Thus, leaders ought to encourage organizational culture that embraces change for any change that needs to be implemented to be less painful. Leaders should also lead the change instead of laying back and hence they should lead by example. They should also demonstrate confidence while implementing change. In addition, leaders should be involved in energizing and empowering people throughout the change process. Furthermore, they ought to openly communicate the benefits of the change being implemented and at the same time listen, offer support and help other employees in embracing change. They should also involve everyone in the process of change. The leadership of the firm should also be involved coaching other employees to bring about the best attributes of each employee. Group decisions should also be encouraged in order for the change to be less painful. Leaders ought to monitor the progress of change instead of micromanaging the employees. In order to introduce painless change in an organization, several steps ought to be followed by an organization (Catrin, & Mats, 2008). First, the organization needs to develop a positive climate for change. The second step involves encouraging an interest in improvement (Markus, 1977). This should entail increasing the general level of being ready to change and establishing favourable conditions that are capable of encouraging people to draw on their best talents. The next stage is showing employees how the change being undertaken by the organization can be helpful to them (Jennifer & Kerry, 2006). The firm need to enlighten its employees that change will improve their well-being than ever before. The fourth step of bringing about painless change is via increment of competence among employees (Markus, 1977). Since competence is vital to almost all individuals, the firm should be able to demonstrate to its employees that change will improve their levels of competence. Furthermore, to ensure that painless change take place in an organization, all the people in the organization in making decisions concerning the impending change (David & Paul, 2003). Psychologists have found out that people are more receptive to implementing ideas that they think they are their own. Since such decisions will also ensure that, the interests of employees will also be incorporated in them hence they will be more motivated to accomplish the tasks involved in bringing about change (Catrin, & Mats, 2008). In addition, change should be related to the values of employees to ensure that it is painless (David & Paul, 2003). The change should involve provision of opportunities for employees to fulfil values that they consider important. This will help in winning the cooperation of employees in implementing change. Moreover, a value for teamwork ought to be developed. The firm should create an environment where employees need one another to attain their goals (Catrin, & Mats, 2008). Another step that organization ought to take is avoiding any direct confrontation with employees (Jennifer & Kerry, 2006). To do this the firm should prepare its employees for change rather than openly confronting them with ways, which the firm considers the beliefs of employees are the one causing resistance (Bligh, 2006). The firm should also know that debates are risky and hence firms should try as much as possible to avoid them (Markus, 1977). This is because employees may engage in arguments, which may try to substantiate their beliefs that change is not good for them and hence they might mount strong resistance to the implementation of change (Abrahamson, 2000). The management of the firm should not react emotionally since such impatient and frustrated reactions can make employees to be either angry or afraid and this can increase resistance to change. Therefore, the management should direct their efforts toward objective facts that seem to be causing resistance and address them accordingly instead of reacting to them (Markus, 1977). Inadvertent mistakes such as making decisions or offering advice prior to gaining better understanding of the facts should be avoided (Bligh, 2006). The firm’s management should ensure that it makes assessment to check that other employees concur with their assessment and they should avoid being critical or insensitive to other employees in front of their peers. Finally, the management should concentrate on factors within their control (Abrahamson, 2000). This will enable them to use such factor to work in their favour. Conclusion From the discussion above, it is imperative that firms need to implement change for them to be flexible in the turbulent market environment. However, this change ought to be less painful. This can be attained effectively via well-planned change, well-resourced change that involves good people and enough money and strong leadership: which lead to employee commitment. In addition, firms ought to nurture a culture that supports change. Thus, leaders need to develop capacity for rapid and continuous change to encourage innovation and development of entrepreneurial skills. By putting in place these mechanisms, change in an organization will be met with less resistance and such a change is more likely to be successful as opposed to change that is characterised by poor management and leadership that is often painful to employees. Thus, the management ought to device ways on how to integrate both methods of bringing about change to enjoy advantages of both methods of bringing about change. References Abrahamson, E. 2000. Change without pain. Harvard Business Review, July-Aug. Achilles A.A., & Stanley, G.H. (2002). Designing a change message to create transformational readiness. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 15(2), 169 – 183 Bernard, B. (1996). No such thing as … a “one best way” to manage organizational change. Management Decision, 34(10), 11 – 18. Bligh, M.C. (2006). 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