Shyamal Majumdar: Can you be a change manager?

Most companies still consider informing employees and dealing with their concerns as a soft and fuzzy exercise

Mr X, a senior vice-president managing human resources of a large “Indian multinational”, sensed something wrong as he walked into his rather spacious cabin. He could see people huddled together whispering something that he could only guess.

The morning’s business papers had reports about his company being close to acquiring a fairly large competitor, something that was denied by the top management. Mr X had called the COO early in the morning only to be told that there was no truth in these reports.

So, Mr X was ready with the answer when his general manager came rushing asking him about the reports. “Just tell everybody not to believe in baseless rumours,” Mr X said, rubbishing the rumour-mongers.

 

At around 4 pm, the COO called to say that he would like to discuss something urgent. As he walked into the conference room, Mr X heard the CEO telling everybody in a hushed tone that the company had entered into an acquisition agreement with one of its closest competitors and that the announcement would be made to the stock exchanges in minutes, as soon as the trading hour was over. Then turning to Mr X, the CEO said, as the HR head, he would have to manage the people side of the merger.

The meeting was over in a few minutes and the COO said he hoped Mr X would understand why he denied the morning paper’s reports since these things have to be kept secret till the last minute. Mr X went straight to the general manager’s cabin to apologise for his “baseless rumour” comment and went home. Next morning, he faxed his resignation letter. “I just couldn’t move around with a fake smile to show off that I knew it before all of you did, but couldn’t say it because of secrecy, etc,” Mr X says, adding, while no company can announce such things over a loudspeaker before everything is formalised, he just couldn’t figure out why the top management couldn’t trust even the HR head with such information.

The incident happened two years ago, and Mr X, now running his own HR consultancy, says he was naïve enough to believe that the company he worked for was an exception. Top managements in quite a few Indian companies still think they are god’s gift to mankind and often consider communicating with employees, even senior ones, about change initiatives as their last priority. This is because most consider informing employees and dealing with their concerns as a soft and fuzzy exercise that can be tackled by HR managers who, incidentally, are always the last to know.

Many companies still believe in a top-down approach: CEOs or a few of his trusted lieutenants trying to force their version of change on a reluctant workforce. But they forget the fact that it only breeds increased resistance and cynicism in an organisation. There are far too many such examples of top managements wanting to remain on the cutting edge always, while standing still on their approach to people management. While it’s a fact that change initiatives surely can’t be decided by popular vote, the only solution is to effectively communicate with employees about the reasons and where each of them — at least the ones the company would like to retain — fits in the scheme of things.

If one is to avoid polarisation, with a handful of members of a change management team dictating strategy on one side and the remainder of the company viewing each of the team’s move with suspicion on the other, what is required is an “engagement approach”, which helps create the critical mass required to make change efforts successful.

The obsessive secrecy often spills over to relatively simpler issues. Mr X gives another example of a senior employee asking his boss about rumours of a planned expansion of the company in another city. “I can only say it will happen sooner rather than later,” the boss said. The “sooner” happened to be the next day when the company announced the expansion on its intranet.

Such things happen as some managements (usually comprising the top two or three people) assume that people will rebound quickly, accept the change and move on. The reality is, however, completely different. Surveys have shown barely 10 per cent of organisations have seen their change efforts succeeding. And as many as a third of them say there were unsure whether they had really succeeded.

In case you want to check out how effective you are as a change manager, here are just five questions (excerpted from Managing Change by Harvard Business Press): Are you accepted by others as trustworthy?; do others perceive you as competent?; do you involve those who will be most affected by the change?; are you comfortable with a certain level of disruption and conflict?; are you aware of/can you describe how your own patterns of behaviour have an impact on others?

If the answers are “yes”, you have it in you. But don’t forget to look in the mirror while answering them.