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Making Sense of Change Management

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Making Sense of Change Management

A Complete Guide to the Models, Tools & Techniques of Organizational Change

Kogan Page,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Individuals and teams confront organizational change differently. Here’s how to pull them together and lead the change.

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Editorial Rating

6

Recommendation

Authors Esther Cameron and Mike Green provide a short, reasonably accessible introduction to the nature of change and the methods and techniques for managing it. The introductory chapters summarize the most important points from the literature on change and change management, with a brief detour to discuss the development of psychology during the latter half of the twentieth century. Then, the authors dig right into the details of team building, team management and other nuts-and-bolts issues in organizational adaptation, giving readers enough information to hold their own in a discussion of the subject. getAbstract.com recommends this to anyone charged with managing organizational change, or even surviving it. The implicit promise of the title is that the authors will help readers make sense of change management. They keep that promise.

Summary

Change in the Individual

Learning takes a toll on performance. People usually don’t perform at their highest levels when they try to do something for the first time. In the early stages of learning, people tend to pay close attention to what they are doing and how they are doing it. They are quite conscious of their performance. As the novelty wears off, they become less aware of their performance and more competent. This state of unconscious competence continues until they have to adjust to a new situation - until, that is, they encounter change. Then they start over again, attempting self-consciously to master a new skill or technique. People are typically anxious about change, but they are anxious in two distinct ways:

  • Survival anxiety motivates change because people fear that if they do not change they will not survive or, at least, they will not prosper.
  • Learning anxiety inhibits change because it springs from a person’s doubt that change is possible. Individuals worry, "How can I ever learn this? What if I fail?"

For change to happen, survival anxiety must be more powerful than learning anxiety.

How People Change

Four schools...

About the Authors

Esther Cameron and Mike Green help organizations and executives manage and lead change. Green teaches at Henley Management College and Cameron has lectured on change management for the University of Bristol for the past ten years. She is the author of Facilitation Skills Made Easy.

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