Cultural resistance and change management in organizations

¶ … allbusiness.com/science-technology/behavior-cognition-Psychology/13413337-1.html

This website offers a serious, research-based assessment of some of the ways in which management style and decision-making strategy affect people's willingness to follow a leader. This seems to be an aspect of leadership that is often overlooked, especially within the literature of management. Certainly, the ways in which a manager acts is essential, but such actions so not take place in a vacuum. An effective leader acts in a way that connects with that person's followers/workers. This picture of leadership style is complicated by the fact that effective leadership must also be congruent with the specific goals of the leader and the organization as a whole. Assessing and furthering goals shared between leaders and followers is based on concepts of focusing on psychological strengths that already exist among followers. These strengths are then multiplied by attuned leaders through the emphasis on hope, self-efficacy, resiliency, and optimism as tools for each person to increase both efficiency and self-expression

2. http://www.breakoutofthebox.com/transchange.htm

This website presents a very clear exegesis of the ways in which fundamental change can occur in an individual through a series of steps. I found this particularly useful -- and convincing -- because it made clear that change often (and indeed probably most often) occurs not in a single step but as a series of interlinked events. The first step of change in this model is "learning," or acquiring new skills and capabilities through "incremental improvement" "without examining or challenging underlying beliefs and assumptions."

The second step of change is "reframing" or "double-loop learning." This can include basic learning processes but is marked in addition by "fundamentally reshaping the underlying patterns of our thinking and behavior." This change thus allows a person to incorporate new knowledge and skills into profoundly new ways of seeing and doing.

Finally, sometimes people (both leaders and followers as well as teams of both) can effect even more fundamental change. Transformational or "triple-loop" learning involves an overall transformation of self, changing who one is as well as how one conceives of oneself.

3. http://humanresources.about.com/od/organizationalculture/a/culture_change_2.htm

This website makes the excellent point -- which should be obvious, but all-too-often is not -- that organizational change can only be effective if there are clear goals for that change. All too often when an organization's leaders feel that something is wrong, they seek change in a non-directed way. But knowing that things should change is not very helpful in the absence of any other information.

The process of making organizational cultural change requires, first, understanding the way in which an organization's current culture works. The next step is to understand the ways in which the current culture differs from the organizational culture that the leaders desire. The next step is to derive the process or processes that can be used to connect attributes of the current culture to attributes of the ideal/desired culture.

Another important point made on this site is that organizational change is behavioral change. While it is important to shift values and goals, these shifts are not meaningful in the absence of behavioral shifts.

However, knowing what the desired organizational culture looks like is not enough. Organizations must create plans to ensure that the desired organizational culture becomes a reality.

4. http://www.accilifeskills.com/cognitiverestructuring.php

This website provides a general definition of "cognitive restructuring." This definition underscores both the advantages and weaknesses of this model. A primary strength is that it is a simple, straightforward model. Parsimony is indeed a virtue: Simple models (all else being equal) tend to be stronger and more viable.

Simple models also have significant problems much of the time, and this site also demonstrates that. While there is a certainly a relationship between cognitive model and behaviors, that relationship is complex. The author argues that the relationship between the conscious and the subconscious is as follows: "The conscious mind belongs to you, but your subconscious belongs to your early environment and those who raised you." There is some truth in this. But it is certainly not the whole truth.