Organizational Culture Change - 6 Advantages to Enhance Performance

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there! What the rabbit said to Alice is also true when reversed. If you don't know where you are now, you'll never get where you want to be.

This is what happens to some managers and organizations. They're working to achieve goals and enhance performance. But 80% of their endeavors generate 20% results or even less. That's not because their goals aren't properly set. They are. The only thing lacking is a precise bearing. Standing precisely here, what would be the most effective way to reach that future?

So, having your goals set and preparing to change, spend 15 minutes to assess your organizational culture. Why? Because culture is found to make the difference. It is why up to 70% of organizational culture change programs fail. Wouldn't it be great to avoid just that? Make your change endeavors more effective, aiming for 20% endeavors generating 80% results, and take your current organizational culture into account. Learn the current potential and possible resistance right here, right now, before your feet. Knowing it is dealing with it. Overcome resistance and mobilize your organization's potential. It is a powerful starting point for successful change. Leave no sooner than after you've done this!

Organizational Culture Change - 6 Advantages to Enhance Performance

Are you ready? Just follow me!

Fifteen minutes will do for managers and staff to assess their organizational culture quickly, easily and reliably. The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) is developed by professors Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn and is a validated research method. No wonder that the OCAI is currently used by over 10,000 companies worldwide. How come that this instrument takes only so little time and is still valid?

The Competing Values Framework

Cameron & Quinn learned from statistical analysis that out of a list of thirty-nine indicators of effectiveness for organizations, only two dimensions made the difference. So four quadrants were constructed, corresponding with four organizational culture types that differ strongly on these two dimensions:

Internal focus and integration VS External focus and differentiation Stability and control VS Flexibility and discretion

Organizations in the two left quadrants are internally focused, like: What is important for us and how do we want to work? The two quadrants on the right consist of organizations that are externally focused on: What is important for the market, competitors and customers? The upper quadrants desire flexibility, while at the bottom organizations value stability and control.

In short, the four archetypes of culture are:

1. Clan Culture: A friendly, people-oriented working environment where colleagues have a lot in common, similar to a family. They value teamwork and consensus. Executives are seen as mentors or father figures. There is great involvement. Success is defined as addressing the needs of clients and caring for people.

2. Adhocracy Culture: A dynamic and creative working environment. Employees take initiatives and risks. Leaders are seen as innovators. Experiments, innovation and prominence are emphasized. Success is growth and creating new products or services.

3. Market Culture: A results-based organization that emphasizes finishing work and getting things done. People are competitive and focused on goals. Leaders are hard drivers, producers, and rivals at the same time. Market penetration and stock are the definitions of success.

4. Hierarchy Culture: A formalized and structured work environment. Procedures are leading. Leaders are efficiency-based coordinators. Keeping the organization functioning smoothly is most crucial. Reliable delivery, smooth planning and low costs define success.

Of course these descriptions are a bit short and therefore monochrome. They're just meant to give you a quick glimpse of the four types. You can check a more extensive and nuanced explanation about the OCAI.

Six key features

To find your organization's core values and thus the dominant culture type, you need to complete a short survey. Just assess the following six features of organizational culture:

dominant characteristics organizational leadership management of employees organization glue strategic emphases criteria of success

The organizational culture assessment shows four statements for each of the above key features of culture. By dividing 100 points over these four descriptions, you'll get a weighed assessment of the current culture mix.

Just like in reality you don't need to choose just one culture type. Reality is ambivalent and so is organizational culture. The Competing Values Framework states that the values and the corresponding organizational cultures compete with each other. Organizations can spend their money, attention and time only once, so they tend to emphasize certain values. Quinn and Cameron found that flexible organizations are the most effective, which sometimes leads to contradictory behavior. Research shows that there is no single "best" culture type. The best mix of culture types depends on the situation. In a saturated market for instance, you could flourish with a competitive market culture, while this culture would produce opposite effects in a start up company that thrives on innovation, creativity and serving new developing markets.

You can find your unique culture mix of for instance, people-oriented clan culture and results-oriented market culture. Knowing your specific mix of internal focus and flexibility (clan culture) versus external focus and stability (market culture), you can prepare a successful pathway to the preferred situation.

In the assessment you also define the preferred situation. Just rate the six key aspects of organizational culture again, but this time you keep the preferred future in mind. You divide 100 points while you imagine it's five years from now and the desired situation has come true.

The outcome!

Now you know where you stand and where you want to go! In just 15 minutes an entire team or organization can assess their starting point and their goal.

Before there was an automated version of the OCAI, it was a lot of work to calculate the profiles by hand. Nowadays, there's an online automated OCAI tool available that is free for individual participants and at a very reasonable price for teams and organizations.

Using this online tool, every participant receives their personal profiles of current and preferred culture by email. A team of participants can discuss their personal profiles and create a joint profile as a basis for their change program.

In case of large corporations with a great number of participants, you can work with the collective profile, constructed by averaging all the individual results. This provides a clear, quantified starting point for change.

A culture profile gives a lot of quantified information:

The dominant culture and its strength The difference between present and preferred culture The congruency of the six features Comparison with the average for the sector or industry group The developmental phase of the organization

ad 1: Imagine that you have a very dominant market culture (48 out of 100 points): this indicates that people experience a culture of competition and getting things done.

ad 2: For instance, you see that employees would prefer 10 points more of a people oriented clan culture. The difference between current and preferred profiles indicates your organization's readiness to change (or their current discontent) and gives an impression what kind of change or approach would be motivating.

ad 3: Congruence means that the 6 key features of culture align, so that they all emphasize, for instance, market culture. Mostly this works smoothly, while incongruence means that there are inconsistencies that can take a lot of time, energy and so on.

ad 4 and 5: It's interesting to compare your culture profile with your economic sector and see how mature your organization is. Cultures evolve over time from extreme flexibility to more stability and an external orientation.

Qualitative fine tuning

Once you have this quantified picture, you might color and detail it with some qualitative information. Instead of doing interviews through the organization, as some consultants tend to do, you could simply settle for an OCAI workshop. Interviews are not only a lot of work but also produce loads of information that is difficult to standardize or combine to a meaningful whole. Working with your results in an OCAI workshop is adding qualitative information, fine-tuning your profile, understanding it better and working on consensus about the current and preferred situation. When this is accomplished, you mobilize people's readiness to change. That's a lot of potential to work with. It's great energy to start a change, I can tell from experience.

In my next article I will tell you how you can work with your results and start your change program effectively with the OCAI workshops.

6 Advantages to Performance

Conclusively, diagnosing and changing organizational culture can actually pay off if it's done correctly. Don't neglect culture since it's such an important factor. Let culture work for you and enhance performance.

As a consultant guiding organizational change I got enthusiastic about using the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument. A discriminate factor for success that beforehand was considered "vague" and impossible to manage, was made easy to grasp and even utilize, mobilizing employees beyond their "normal" resistance to change.

The OCAI has 6 advantages that help organizations enhance performance:

It's focused: it measures the six key dimensions that were found to make a difference in organizational success. It's timely: both assessing and developing a change strategy can be accomplished in a reasonable period. It's involving: either by including all personnel or those who give direction and guide change. It's quantitative: based on figures, completed by qualitative information when working with the results to establish the desired changes. It's manageable: it can be implemented by a (management) team; outside consultants aren't necessarily needed. It's valid: the OCAI is validated and people recognize their outcomes.

So if you're planning a roadmap to change, spend 15 minutes on your current position. Any traveler can tell what a big advantage you gain to take the best possible road, avoid roadblocks and actually reach your preferred future.Use these 6 advantages of the OCAI and enhance organizational performance.

Organizational Culture Change - 6 Advantages to Enhance Performance
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Marcella Bremer MScBA is a consultant, trainer and writer in the field of organizational culture. She's always been fascinated by the human mind and human behavior. She explores the field of change, leadership, management and organizational culture.

She's especially fond of the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument because it works quickly and easily. The OCAI can be found online for teams and organizations and is also used for research purposes.

It's free for individual respondents, so assess your organizational culture today in 15 minutes at OCAI online.

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Role of the CEO in Change Management

A change initiative involves a concerted, consistent effort at various levels. The Top Management and Board of Directors are as important to the process as is the change agent, the sponsors, the steering committee and the people at large.

The various key roles in an organizational change process include the following:

The Initiator of Change: Organisations often understand the need for change only when they've been stung by some deep loss. The loss could be in terms of a dipping sales figure, the departure of key people, a fall in the market share or the loss of an important client to a competitor etc. Often, a change is initiated when someone within the organization reacts to such events and signals the need for a change.

Role of the CEO in Change Management

The Change Agent: The change agent is one who is responsible for driving and implementing change across the organisation. The change agent can either be an external consultant or an internal consultant. In fact, at different stages in the change process, different individuals or teams may come to occupy this role. For instance, if change management task is outsourced to an external consultant, he serves as the initial change agent. However, when the project team starts actual work on the recommendations of the consultant, the team leaders become the change agents. Basically, change agents at various stages push change by reinforcing the need to change, and championing the cause of change.

The Official Sponsor Team: Usually, the organisation will identify a team or a department to officially coordinate the change process. In larger organisations, the sponsors may be the HR Department or the IT department. In smaller organisations, a team of senior leaders can play this role.

Finally, while change efforts are undertaken at the ground level, they need to be steered by the top management. The role of the top management is paramount in ensuring that the initiative does not lose focus or get stranded due to operational or motivational issues.

THE ROLE OF TOP MANAGEMENT

Change can either "make or break" an organisation. Change never takes care of itself. Change is initially difficult but ultimately stabilizes. These are the three basic facts of an organizational change.

Although after an initial denial phase, people will finally adapt to change, the transition phase is difficult. And this is where Top Management can help. As we saw, change is initiated by one deeply affected by some crisis in the organisation and carried forward by agents and sponsors. However, the success of the change efforts ultimately rests in the hands of top management. Depending upon the structure of the organisation, the work is delegated to different levels of employee participation depending upon the complexities involved. Thus, the Board of Directors may supervise the CEO, the CEO supervises the Executive Assistants, who in turn delegate work to the middle management, until it trickles down to the entry level supervisors.

The Top Management is instrumental, rather vital in setting the mood for change. Not only does it play a key role in communicating the vision and the concomitant goals, it also plays a major part in objectively setting targets and defining results to accomplish the change. People are most deeply influenced by the actions of their supervisors. Hence, leaders themselves need to imbibe the expected behavior that the change warrants, so as to ensure that they induce such behavior in others.

Top Management Teams can reinforce the agenda for change by using their power positions or external links, even pushing it through the media, but ultimately, actual progress comes only in collaboration with workers. Again, it is important for top management to generate a sense of collective responsibility. A key to inculcating this attitude lies in genuinely valuing workers and their role in the whole process. There can be nothing more motivating than to know that your labors are acknowledged and appreciated by the company. Adopting a culture that cuts across the hierarchy and treats all people as equals, giving organisational goals priority over personal goals etc. are all perceived as symbolic acts to signify the need for change and the value that is assigned to it. Thus, a lot lies within the capacity of the top management in terms of sending out the correct signals that will propel change.

Off late, I noticed that a certain brand of shampoo, has its product (read: the bottle) carry the signature and a small picture of the hair expert they collaborated with to create the product. What are they doing? In my view, they are trying to increase the credibility of the product, so that more people come to trust the brand. Similarly, "selling" a change to your people requires what I term "credibility management". And that is a major responsibility of the Top Management Team. The top management not only needs to communicate the vision for change, but also needs to tie the vision to business needs and show how the change will impact profits, productivity or quality of work life. Equally important is the management's ability to realistically address the existing gap between the current situation and the envisioned situation, and present to the people a powerful, reasonable and well planned strategy - a blueprint for success. Next, driving speedy implementation is extremely important. Once people are convinced of the strategy, the top management needs to quickly put them to "act" upon it. The faster your strategies are put to action, the earlier they are likely to succeed. It's like a "buzzer-round-quiz-game", the faster you hit the buzzer, the more your chances of winning. On the other hand, you may well know the perfect answer, but if you don't hit the buzzer on time, it really doesn't work! Even with a perfect strategy, immediate action becomes the buzzword. With every success you move closer to your vision and increase your credibility, so eventually people will volunteer to follow you.

Another important observation is that during organizational change, resistance from people is directly proportional to the perceived threat from change. Change challenges the status quo and demands that people venture out of their comfort zones. It means abandoning the "way things are done" and embracing a new set of potentially better conditions. But despite the potential benefits of change, it is always initially abominable. It comes with fears of a job loss, a change in role, a change in reporting, and so on and so forth till people are so consumed with anxiety and doubt that they have little left to think of it constructively. To maximize benefits from change, top management must minimize the perceived threats from change. Many times a lot of the apprehensions may actually be baseless, hence addressing them at the top level means credibly putting unwarranted fears to rest, thereby averting precious loss due to stress and mental anxiety.

So, we spoke of the top management's responsibility in vision sharing, developing collective responsibility, managing credibility, erasing out meaningless apprehensions, setting goals, defining targets and leading by example, but there's still something we haven't spoken about. Listen, because this is important....

Now consider: How fast did you dismiss the last four words in the preceding paragraph, expecting to stumble upon a great management secret in the next?

Doused expectations apart, the simplest fact that the top management needs to understand about communicating change is that it is IMPORTANT to LISTEN. Just like most of us would miss the message in those four words, hoping for something greater to follow, the management often skips attention to employee concerns, preferring to advocate rather than to listen. Often, employee concerns can raise relevant issues, which need inclusion in your change Management Plan. Top Management Teams need to take care, that communication between them and the organisation, is held as interactive sessions, rather than imposing one way talks. Do not rush to explain how great the change is going to be or offer examples of how people survived earlier changes and how they were expected to do the same again. Rather, acknowledge that change is difficult and that every concern is worthy of attention. Be firm on the agenda, but sensitive to the concerns. From there, the secret of effective communication lies in attentive listening, for only when you listen can you respond appropriately. Only when you respond appropriately can you address your people's concerns effectively, and only by doing that can you minimize perceived threats from change, and maximize productive efforts towards change. So, take time out, listen and attend to the employees' individual, special needs or issues, while handling change.

Rather than advocating that a certain "new system of working" is better than the "old system of working", Top Management could try the "thesis-antithesis-synthesis" method to communicate change. "Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis" is a philosophy, commonly associated with the 19th century German thinker, G.W.F. Hegel, who contended that historical evolution is the outcome of conflicting opposites. Simply put, thesis is a statement. Antithesis is the counter statement. Obviously the thesis and the antithesis are contradictory or opposed to each other. The synthesis implies resolving this conflict by offering a solution at a higher level, by combining the positive elements of both the thesis and the antithesis. The synthesis then forms a new thesis, which, in time, encounters an antithesis, and is resolved at the next higher level through another synthesis. This philosophy is often used to explain Hegel's dialectic on the process of historical evolution.

How can it be applied to organizational change? In our context, let us take the current situation as the thesis. So, the new system or the ideal situation is the antithesis. Now, if you try to impose that the new system is better than the old because of a, b, c, d, e reasons, you pose a challenge that is most likely to be resisted. No one wants to think that they are operating in a sham system, which is no longer capable of working. Instead, try striking a "synthesis" between the current and the ideal situation. Communicate the positives in the current system and the desirables from the ideal system. Suggest that the change will bring about a synthesis between the two, for better functioning. This way, you promote the change, without devaluing the current way of working. Psychologically, this has a positive impact on the way people react to the idea of change.

Moving ahead, the top management need also ensure that work processes, performance systems, training programs, job descriptions etc. that form or support the framework within which employees work, are aligned to the change objective and complement each other.

While, in general, change calls upon identifying the different business units involved and delegating work to them, through able team leaders, the top management needs to chart out a macro plan. Having identified the tasks involved in achieving change and the time frame available to complete those tasks, top management must map a critical path of all tasks, wherein they have a clear picture of which task has to be completed by when, which task follows which, and how are different task areas tied to each other. This helps achieve synchronization of work efforts, without which the desired change can never be achieved. From there, the team leaders can take on the responsibility of guiding their respective teams to achieve the set targets within the defined time to accomplish change.

Various studies in the area have shown that it is a better approach for top management to work its way through the existing culture than trying to change it, all of a sudden. This can be done through a shared vision and a buy-in of managers operating at the lower levels of hierarchy. Generating an interest among them and the employees they supervise means pulling in precious energy for your project. For, the real work needed to implement your plans happens here. Once they are committed to their roles in achieving Change, the project can pick up considerable speed. However, while the management adopts such an employee oriented approach, it must also ensure that those not committed to their roles be mentored or shown the door.

Research has shown that many companies, for instance, Navistar International Corporation, who spectacularly accomplished change, did so, not by engaging external consultants, but by having their top management study the organisational context, company history, standard operating procedures and then building improvement teams to drive change wherever required. Thus, these results sufficiently testify to the importance of the Top Management Teams' role in handling organizational change.

MANAGING CHANGE SUCCESSFULLY - HOW CAN CEO'S ACHIEVE THIS?

In a survey conducted by the American Productivity and Quality Centre, researchers indicated that since change is almost always met by resistance, there arises the need for a champion to drive change across the organisation. Further the more powerful and visible the champion is, the more successful the change project tends to be. In this direction, the research concluded that the leader of the organisation, most often the CEO is often the most effective communicator of the vision and the necessity of change across the organisation. In fact, change projects in most of the best practice organisations were found to be spearheaded, planned and managed by the CEO of the Company. Often, it is not enough for the CEO to just communicate the vision to the workforce. In order to ensure that vision successfully translates into reality, the CEO must also play a major role in planning and implementing the change process. The active involvement of the CEO in the project underlines the significance of the same, thus ensuring organisation wide support and commitment.

The CEO perspective Often times, change is viewed as an objectively measurable output. It could be a surge in sales figures, a new business unit or a process reengineering. However, what some CEO's may miss is the transition phase. Till the output becomes visible and operating, the impression could be that the change effort has been unsuccessful or worst not achieved. Fact is, the transition phase, which precedes the phase where change results become visible is not only the toughest phase, but is also the phase where the maximum change effort is required. This is a time, when people are adapting to the new situation, adjusting themselves into new found responsibilities, and sometimes operating both old and new systems simultaneously. While this phase may not show any visible output, this is the phase where the maximum change is actually taking place. The CEO needs to empathize with his employees during this phase rather than worry about the observable result. The only hurdle that they may face is there are no limits to how long a transition phase will last before the change finally sets in and becomes visible.

Another hurdle for the CEO is to effectively handle pressure situations, wherein the Board may want to see how the change has affected a return on investment too soon. This disregards the fact that a Change is always gradual and can eventually lead to a regression.

A third challenge, which is quite inconspicuous, is that the CEO often runs a shorter transition cycle than the middle management, and hence is actually not as "connected" to the middle management as he may feel. The reason is that, for him, the change is often signified by the accomplishment of a strategic objective, whereas for the middle management, the actual change impact sets in after the objective has been achieved and a new set of circumstances established. For it is the middle management that has to deal with this change on a daily basis, slowly regularising the change to make it a part of the system. That requires time. Hence, a longer transition phase. This disconnect, between the CEO and the middle management in a change scenario can pose a challenge to the CEO.

Role of the CEO in Change Management
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Percy Dastur is the founder of a global multi-discipline business consultancy based in Canada, with a focus to provide critical learning resources to help corporate professionals understand how to effectively create strategies to handle change at various levels enabling organizations to innovate. Percy is a widely respected academic having lectured thousands of senior corporate professionals in various subjects of Business Management. Percy is the author of two books, "The Art of Change Management - Implementing Change from the Top", a bestseller, offering an indepth understanding of how top management can steer organizations through the demands of changing economic environment and "Disruptive Innovation - what every business leader should know" another potential bestseller which uncomplicatedly answers every question that senior management and executive leadership of any company might have on Disruptive Innovation - one of the most powerful tools that can aid businesses in meeting their strategic objectives.

http://www.percydastur.com

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How to Implement a Change Management Plan When Change Is Necessary and You Don't Know Where to Start

Worldwide organizations located in countries that have experienced war or other politically related upheavals in recent times or during the past few decades are having to change for a number of reasons in order to gain and retain a competitive edge in the regional and international markets:

1. the need to bridge the gap between obsolete and state-of-the-art technology in one leap due to the isolation imposed by the unstable situation experienced;

2. super-normal post-war growth for which most were unprepared;

How to Implement a Change Management Plan When Change Is Necessary and You Don't Know Where to Start

3. demographic changes locally, and political and market changes regionally;

4. the dysfunctionality of three incompatible sub-cultures within the workforce: the war-veterans, the expatriates and the fresh university graduates;

5. managerial structures that do not respond to contemporary needs or new trade legislation; and

6. the need to compete internationally by qualifying for ISO or other Quality Assurance certification. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it identifies the main agents of change required to survive in today's fast changing business environment.

With such powerful drivers of change at work, the constraints imposed by decades of war and isolation, plus the belief that "things will always be the way they are', only a fool would underestimate the challenges that lie ahead.

In counterpoint to the external drivers of change are the tremendous inertial forces within the organization. These come from individual and organizational resistance to change. The most common sources of individual resistance are:

Selective perception: Every individual has a unique view of the organization and their role in it. Most will reject any threat to a cherished element in that view.

Habit: Everyone has habits which allow them to do things quickly and easily. The more reasonable and rational these seem to the individual, the greater the reluctance to change them.

Security: That which is familiar brings security, while the unknown inspires fear. Most people prefer the security and comfort of the known, to the insecurity and fear of the unknown.

Economic: Any change which could affect an individual's basic pay, bonuses, benefits or other element in the reward package will be met by resistance.

Status and Esteem: Changes that could be perceived as bringing lower status or loss of esteem will be resisted.

Organizationally, it is the established structure and the policy and procedures that consolidate the status quo and make change difficult. In addition, are the shared assumptions and beliefs forming the present culture of the organization. It will be much more difficult to change these than to change artifacts such as the corporate logo.

The degree of resistance to change is a function of the magnitude of change and the strength of the prevailing organizational culture:

Resistance to culture change = Magnitude of the change in culture x Strength of the prevailing culture.

There is no doubt that managing culture change is no simple matter. It requires careful study and coordination of many aspects of organizational life. Here, it is worth considering the principles of culture change as outlined in Hassard and Sharifi's review of culture management literature.

Organizations possess values and assumptions which define accepted and appropriate patterns of behavior.

Successful organizations tend to be those which posses assumptions and values which encourage behaviors consonant with the organizational strategy.

Successful culture change may be difficult to achieve if prevailing values and behavior are incompatible with strategy.

If an organization is contemplating change it first needs to check to see whether the strategy demands a shift in values and assumptions or whether change can be achieved using other means.

Senior management must understand the implications of the new culture for their own behavior and be involved in all the main change phases.

Culture change programs must pay special attention to an organization's 'opinion leaders'.

Change programs must also take an organization's culture transmission mechanisms (such as management style, work systems and employment policies) into account.

In order to create a change in culture, channels should be programmed with new messages and old contradictory ones eliminated.

Every opportunity should be taken to reinforce the key messages of the new values and assumptions.

Qualifications

The deeper the level of culture change required (artifacts being the most superficial and assumptions the deepest), then the more difficult and time-consuming the culture change program is likely to be.

If there are multiple cultures and subcultures then this will make the change program still more difficult and time-consuming.

Some of the easiest changes to effect are alterations in behavioral norms.

Managing the deepest layers of an organizational culture requires a participative approach.

A top-down approach may work when there is only a single culture or when the focus is on changing norms rather than assumptions.

Top-down approaches yield changes which may be difficult to sustain in the long-term, because they produce overt compliance but not acceptance.

Participative approaches are most likely to be successful and are the only real option if assumptions are to be altered. However, they are difficult to implement and extremely time-consuming to enact.

Questions that need to be answered prior to any Change Management Program include:

1. Where do we need to be going strategically as an organization?

2. Where are we now as a culture?

3. What are the gaps between where we are as a culture and where we should be?

4. What is our plan of action to close those gaps?

Once these questions have been successfully answered, the Change Management Plan can be created and then purposeful actions can be taken and the end results better guaranteed.

How to Implement a Change Management Plan When Change Is Necessary and You Don't Know Where to Start
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Fay Niewiadomski founded ICTN (International Consulting & Training Network) in 1993. ICTN provides complete management services to its clients who are among the leading regional and multinational players. Furthermore, she has worked with CEOs, Board Members, Presidents and Ministers of Government and other Leaders to help them meet the challenges of change within their organizations through creative problem solving, management interventions and powerful communication strategies. Prior to founding ICTN, she researched the subject of "Managing Change through Needs-Based Assessment' in large Lebanese Organizations" for her doctoral work at the University of East Anglia in the UK. Additionally, she also held various university positions as a professor at AUB and LAU and as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at NDU.

For additional information on how to improve performance and increase productivity through people, decrease cost and better ensure growth and sustainability, visit http://www.ictn.com.

Discover easy and proven techniques that will help you Guarantee Results by improving your leadership skills. CLICK this link http://www.ictn.com/english/free-articles.aspx?id=17 and receive your Free copy of Management Problems & Solutions.

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Maslow Theory of Motivation - The Basis of Successful Change Management

The Maslow Theory of Motivation also known as "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" model was developed between 1943-1954, and first widely published in "Motivation and Personality" in 1954. Starting from the premise that each human being is motivated by needs that are inborn, presumably as a result of tens of thousands of years of evolution, here is the hierarchy in ascending order:

(1) Physiological needs

These are the very basic needs such as air, water, food, sleep, sex, etc. When these are not satisfied we may feel sickness, irritation, pain, discomfort, etc. These feelings motivate us to alleviate them as soon as possible to establish homeostasis. Once they are alleviated, we may think about other things.

Maslow Theory of Motivation - The Basis of Successful Change Management

(2) Safety needs

These have to do with establishing stability and consistency in a chaotic world. These needs are mostly psychological in nature. We need the security of a home and family. However, if a family is dysfunction, i.e., an abused child - cannot move to the next level as she is continuously fearful for her safety. Love and a sense of belonging are postponed until she feel safe.

(3) Love and needs of belonging

Humans have [in varying degrees of intensity] a strong desire to affiliate by joining groups such as societies, clubs, professional associations, churches and religious groups etc. There is a universal need to feel love and acceptance by others.

(4) Self-Esteem needs

There are essentially two types of esteem needs: self-esteem resulting from competence or mastery of a task; and the esteem and good opinion of other people.

(5) The need for self-actualisation

Maslow theory of motivation proposes that people who have all their "lower order" needs met progress towards the fulfilment their potential. Typically this can include the pursuit of knowledge, peace, esthetic experiences, self-fulfillment, oneness with God, nirvana, enlightenment etc. So ultimately this is all to do with the desire for self transcendence.

A paradigm shift that forms the basis for good leadership and successful change management

The Maslow theory of motivation brought a new face to the study of human behaviour. Maslow was inspired by greatness in the minds of others, and his own special contribution to the field of motivational psychology led to the creation of the concept of Humanistic Psychology. Most psychologists prior to Maslow had focused on the mentally ill and the abnormal. In complete contrast the Maslow theory of motivation investigated and attempted to define positive mental health.

In so doing, he instigated a paradigm shift via Humanistic Psychology - predicated on the belief that humans are not simply blindly reacting to situations, but trying to accomplish something greater. This new approach represented in the Maslow theory of motivation became the source of many new and different therapies, all grounded in the belief that people possess the inner resources for growth and healing and that the point of therapy is to help remove obstacles to individuals' achieving them.

It also forms the basis of much current understanding of what constitutes good leadership and forms a major foundation of prevailing models and theories of successful change management. The most fundamental value of this theory is to emphasise and remind those of us involved in leading and managing change of the complexity and multi-facted nature of human needs and motivational drives. Closely aligned to that observation is the difficult realisation that people have transcendent needs and aspirations as well as the more prosaic needs of survival and "pay and rations".

Maslow Theory of Motivation - The Basis of Successful Change Management
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See here for the full change management implications of the: " Maslow Theory of Motivation "

I invite you to take advantage of this FREE download: Starting the Change Process "

Find out the 3 main reasons for the 70% failure rate of all step change initiatives and how to avoid it. This FREE 29 page document offers a brief introduction to some of the key themes and key points that you need to consider in starting the change process.

Stephen Warrilow, based in Bristol, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Stephen has 25 years cross sector experience with 100+ companies in mid range corporate, larger SME and corporate environments.

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