Change Management Strategy

Change Management Strategy Change agentry – the next information frontier Presented by ParasChheda

Summary • How to make Information Systems (IS) specialists’ to become more effective and more credible agents of organizational change.

Introduction • IS specialists need to become better agents of organizational change • New Information Technology is an organizational intervention • IS specialist cannot achieve IT implementation success alone • Change agentry will become the largest and and most important in an organization • Outsourcing • Development in-house • To improve IS specialists credibility • Effective change management behavior builds credibility

Two Basic Issues • 1. Substantial disagreement in theory and practice about what is means to be “an agent of organizational change” • A. Reflects the views and practices of IS Specialists • B. Identified in various Organizational Development texts (academic) • C. Innovation, management and change politics literatures

Two Basic Issues (cont’d) • 2. Change agent roles grow out of, and are maintained by, various structural conditions • Structural conditions are social and economic arrangements that influence the processes of IS work • In-house specialists • Vendors • Organizational policy

Ideal Change Agentry Model • Traditional IS Change-Agent Model • The Facilitator Model • The Advocate Model

Traditional IS Change-Agent Model • IS specialists referred to themselves as change agents • View information technology as the real cause of change • IS specialists identify psychologically with the technology they create • Organizational managers set specific goal of technical change

IS Specialist Occupational Role Orientation (Traditional Model) • Design and build the systems that enable and constrain people and organization • Design and build systems are used by people and organization that will produce desirable organization change • Do not determine what is a desirable organizational outcome • Acted as an agent for the managers of the organization by building a system that could achieve their objectives • Not responsible for setting objectives or goals • Responsible only for providing technological means • Expert in technological matters • Not a business subject area expert

Consequences (Traditional Model) • Many IT failures • Attributable primarily to implementation problems • Many IS units consider training is relatively minor importance • Many IS departments outsource responsibility for systems training to human resources specialists and external vendors

Consequences (cont’d) • IS inhibiting change • IS specialists are stereotyped as being in love with technical change • Clients complaint is technical environment is changing too fast for them to keep up or not as fast as clients wants in adopting new technologies • IS specialists have personal/group interests in addition to organizational ones • Believed what is in their interests is in the organizations’ interests • Differences in interests between clients and IS on technical change

Consequences (cont’d) • Reduced IS credibility • Poor technical performance from outsourcing. • Poor interpersonal relationships between IS specialists and their clients.

Structural Conditions (Traditional Model) • Work of IS specialists was shaped by • Policies that established internal IS specialists as sole providers of computer services • Technologies and structures that limited the number of options available to users • Lack of external competition, which protected IS departments from budget cuts • Measured and rewarded for functional unit goals, such as delivering systems on time and on budget

Traditional Model Summary • IS view of change agentry assumes that technology does all the work of organizational change • Change agents only need to change the technology slowly • Narrow focus on building technology, rather than a broader focus on achieving business results

The facilitator model • Believe that it is people (clients) who create change, not themselves as change agents or their change in technology • Not accepting personal responsibility for change that causes ineffective behavior or consequences • View themselves as experts in process, not content • Explicit awareness of their power and the dangers to the client of their using it

IS Specialist Occupational Role Orientation (Facilitator Model) • Help people create the condition of informed choice • Expertise in various subject matters • Avoid acting as a content expert • Would not express views about the specific technical or business issues at hand • Primary role is facilitating the group and organizational processes by which people work on content • Act as a process facilitator • Always serve the interests of the total client system

Consequences (Facilitator Model) • IS specialists would focus on providing full and valid information about the alternatives • IS specialists would disclose their own group interests while encouraging open discussion of differences • Legitimizes IS responsibility for IT education and training for clients • Places a value on making clients self-sufficient • Many new information technologies provide greater opportunities to IS specialists who act as facilitators, ie. voicemail, www, videoconferencing

Structural Conditions (Facilitator Model) • Cannot be members of the groups they facilitate • Avoidance of expertise displays • Avoidance of authority for organizational control and technical outcomes • Places a high value on increasing client self-sufficiency, reducing client dependence which promotes downsizing of IS department

The advoate model • Induce change targets by positive influence • Holds people, not technology, are the factors in change • Thinks people more as targets of the advocate’s interventions • Is much more flexible than the facilitator about the acceptable means of change • Summarized as “whatever works” • Does not insist that the targets make an informed choice based on valid information

IS Specialist Occupational Role Orientation (Advocate Model) • Change is made through the actions of many people • See what needs to be done differently • Try to find a way to change people’s minds about the need for change • Often try to change client minds by creating an desirable target or shock them with outrageous actions • Remain steadfast in support of vision of change over long periods of time • Stabilize and reinforce the change by replacing certain individuals who retard change or rewarding those whose behavior embodies the desired values

Consequences (Advocate Model) • Effectively understand what users want and what they need • Emphasis on communication • Induce improvement on credibility • Enhances interoperability between departments

Structural Conditions (Advocate Model) • Structural conditions assumptions • Lacks formal managerial authority over targets • OR • Advocate is a line manager with direct authority over the change targets

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Change Management Strategy