Planned Change Model

Review the animation Planned Change Process, which you first viewed in Unit 1. After viewing the animation, what insights and perspectives for your team-building sessions do you now have? What would this add to your change theory analysis?
Planning Change
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Planned change is a process that moves an organization toward a vision of the future.
In order to initiate change, an organization needs three things:
1. A compelling vision for the future and to understand that vision.
2. To assess and come to an agreement on the current situation—where it is now, and
3. To manage the transition from where it is now to where it wants to be.
Let’s look at an example of a current situation.
• Cross functional teams don’t work well. Team efforts are limited or fail because organizational responsibilities or duties conflict with the team’s agenda.
• A risk averse organization expects employees to follow decisions made for them. Employees can make decisions about relatively unimportant things.
• Autocratic supervisors rule with undisputed authority and expect employees to follow directions without question.
All of the above can lead to product and service dissatisfaction by customers, whether that customer is inside or outside of the organization.
Now, let’s look at a vision for the future.
• Cross functional teamwork means increasing cooperation, collaboration, and effectiveness across groups and organizational levels.
• An empowered and responsible workforce can make decisions without having to consult a team of people.
• Supervisors act as coaches instead of rulers.
All of the above can result in high performance teamwork and an organization that enables people to serve the customer, both internally and externally.
Now, let’s look at a vision for the future.
• Cross functional teamwork means increasing cooperation, collaboration, and effectiveness across groups and organizational levels.
• An empowered and responsible workforce can make decisions without having to consult a team of people.
• Supervisors act as coaches instead of rulers.
All of the above can result in high performance teamwork and an organization that enables people to serve the customer, both internally and externally.
Think of planned change as a process rather than an event.
In order for the organization to stop functioning in the current situation, assessment of the current situation is important. The organization must be honest and forthright on where it is now relative to a vision for the future.
The organization must start now to do all the things it wants to have in place for the future.
The planned change process can be divided into four stages.
Stage one is awareness:
First, creating change requires a “felt need.” There needs to be some pain in the organization for a change to be considered. Someone has to feel the need, and for large system change, the more people to feel this need, the better.
Stage two is designing the change:
The change has to be designed and defined not only at the level of broad objectives, but also at the level of specific, tangible actions.
Stage three is implementing the change:
The change has to be operationalized. This could mean redesigning the organizational infrastructure. It includes such things as workflow, mechanisms for integration, decision making processes, the skills and mix of people to perform tasks, the reward system, and the organizational structure.
The change must be internalized by the members of the organization.
Stage four is stabilize:
Successful change requires the organization to sustain the change over time. One way to do that is to make adjustments so that the system will stabilize.
When change is occurring there is always a pressure to remain or revert to the old situation.
During the change process an event needs to occur that signals to the organization as a whole that the change is happening and that the organization is moving forward.

The event could be:
• The removal of key personnel who have been keeping the organization in its current patterns.
• An organization-wide event that ritualistically demonstrates moving in the new direction, such as kicking off a new company division.
During the change process, there can also be resistance—and even disbelief—about whether the organization can or should change.
As a result, the time period from the design phase through the stabilize phase is called chaotic time. This is why change can be unpredictable. And, when the organization is in the middle of the change process, it is difficult to tell if the change is going to be successful.
The change process needs to move people from the old values, assumptions, and beliefs to the new values, assumptions, and beliefs. People need to know what success looks like in the new situation. This is the challenge that needs to be overcome.
For planned change to be successful, the change must be sustained over time.
Sustained change requires people to move from self-doubt to higher levels of self-confidence. This is probably not the target of the planned change, but it is a by-product of successful change efforts. When people feel that issues surrounding the “felt need” have been addressed, they will start to feel better.
Finally, for the new vision to be successful, the motivation for new behaviors must be driven from internal motivation. People need to see that that they can shape the new vision to fit their needs and that it is a useful part of their work.