Managing Organizational Change

How you can Motivate Culture Change

Discover how managing organizational change in the workplace can be simplified to achieve more effective results!

Understanding Behavior

On the previous page, you discovered the link between managing organizational change and employee behavior. You also learnt that you need to focus on influencing employee behavior.

Now, we will guide you thought the next stage of your managing change journey.

T o influence employee behavior you will need to describe, clearly, the behavior change that you are looking for.

Many managers make the mistake of trying to manage culture change without clearly describing the behaviors that make up the change that they are seeking. These managers will often use intangible statements or slogans to describe their change ambitions.

Whilst their rhetoric has some immediate appeal, these managers rarely execute their change plans.

The speed and effectiveness of your change depends on the how clearly you are able to describe the behaviors that you seek to influence. To ensure your success we have provided information on this page to help you to develop a clear understanding the behavior you want to change.

Defining Behavior for Managing Organizational Change

When we talk about you changing your culture by changing your employee’s behavior, we are referring to specific observable behaviors in your employees.

However, it is common for managers to use references to attitude when they talk about culture change, for example. I want to

Create a small company mind set

Develop a can do attitude

Treat the business like you own it

One Team or, Teamwork

For people who worked in medium to large organizations through the 1980’s and early 90’s you may have seen or experienced a series of management trends. Each Trend was accompanied by its own catchy slogans, however few of these trends resulted in any meaningful change because they did not focus on specific behaviors to change.

Similar to past management trends, good intended managers will often target attitude or high level intangible behaviors, some examples to illustrate the point

Example 1

A manager seeking to influence a change in a sales person who is not currently following up on quotes, might say

“Kim, you need to be more persistent, with your quote follow up”.

Whilst this sounds reasonable; it will not necessarily result in behavioral change. To influence your employee’s behavior, you will need to describe the specific behavior that you are seeking.

The behaviour could be “for each quote you give you need to follow up with three phone messages within 10 days of providing the quote, then wait a month and repeat”.

Now the employee knows exactly what behavior you expect

(If you are truly passionate about sales, you might even provide the key components of the message that they should leave)

Another example

A manager seeking to influence a change in an employee who is seemly not listening to instructions, might say

“Ashley, I want you to listen more carefully to the instructions I give” which, again sounds reasonable.

Again it does not focus on employee behavior. To influence behavior you could say

“When I ask you to do something – repeat back to me in your own words what I have I have asked you to do”. This is more likely to result in a behavior change.

Last Example

A manager seeking to influence a shop assistant to improve their customer service, might say, “Shannon, I need you to be more attentive to the customer”, again correct but still not focused on behavior.

To influence behavior you might say, “when you hand back the credit card to the customer, look them in the eye, smile and thank them for their business, touch their hand lightly as you give them the card and pause for 3 seconds before starting your next task”.

This will help the employee to know exactly what you want them to do however; the example is a bit complex. In this case, focus on one-behavior at a time

“Look the customer in the eye and smile whilst saying thank you for shopping with us today”, or

“Lightly touch their hand as you return the credit card”, or

“Pause for three seconds before going on with your next task”

Special Note:

Some of you are now wondering: are we being a little too prescriptive.

The answer is no, when people are learning a new behavior is it ok to be prescriptive and then as the employee gains experience you can allow them some latitude to experiment with the process to develop a process that works for them.

All too often I see managers avoiding being prescriptive and then not delivering the required culture change.

Recap Key Point

When seeking to manage organizational change you need to identify behaviors that you

would like to increase the frequency of, or

you would like to reduce the frequency of

To influence a change in behavior you will need to describe the specific behaviors that you seek to change. The description of these behaviors will need to focus on specific observable behaviors.

The next step in your managing organizational change journey is understanding reinforcement, click to go

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