Introduction
The case study dwells upon the implementation of the Sustainable initiative and "Green Thinking" in the Spectrum Sunglass Company, working with direct consumers as well as retail sector distributors. My role was to develop, get the buy-in from the critical mass of stakeholders and implement the initiative to develop a special "green" product for our largest retail chain Bigmart, responsible for 30% of the annual revenue of the company. As the Director of Product Innovation within Research and Development (R&D), I am a strong believer that "green thinking and product" is the future of the forward-thinking companies and is an opportunity to build a new market even in a mass product.
Levels of the Change Program
It is evident that the theoretical knowledge gained from the reading was not enough to successfully run the program and receive the necessary buy-in from the stakeholders by the end of the 96 weeks, allocated to complete the project. The decisions made at the beginning of the process were precipitated, assuming that there will be little resistance from the senior management level and the level of awareness is higher than the reality. The assumptions behind the first levers, such as the need to focus on the operational level within the company; little need to get the buy-in from CEO, as the initiative was initially supported by him and most of the management and the fact that the formal communication process could replace the word-of-mouth, determined the effectiveness of the change management. The first level taken was to announce the goals and deadlines, which received zero response from the stakeholders, as people were not aware neither prepared for the change and the project in general. This made me loose 4 weeks, followed y another inaccurate decision to involve CEO and announce his public support. The reality demonstrated that the focus at the beginning of the project should have been on gaining informal support and buy-in from the strategic organizational levels. Once I realized the need to change the approach, I made the next step. "Walk the talk" allowed me to gain credibility, which I have lost as the ambassador of change over the first 6 weeks. The reality shows that individual decisions and opinions are still built upon collective knowledge and information sharing. The relationship network made it possible to spread the word and create interest in a number of people, which was the fist correct step, based on the timing of the project.
Further down the line, I realized that better credibility and significant interest and even trial stage, which I managed to level up among the senior management, will allow me to build my coalition network and delegate the responsibility of building the knowledge and awareness among operational and tactical levels of the organization. Surely, I was extremely late in achieving my goals in this initiative and realized that the resistance, which I created by "pushing the project forward" without proper buy-in at the beginning, will become a serious barrier to achieving my goals (Audia, Locke, and Smith, 2000). Once I received the positive response from the organization, I decided that it was the right time to announce the support of the leader of the company. By taking the "CEO´s public approval" as the next lever, I managed to start making the impact on operational levels within the company, bringing Ian Newman and Sam Puffer to adoption stage and finally gaining interest from Bob Ingram and Diane McNutt. This was clearly not enough to ensure successful and complete adoption of "green initiative" in the company. Taking into consideration the time constraints, I made another executive decision to build on internal awareness through training, which would give a spin for natural information flow and the higher level of awareness about the CSR role in the company. This decision brought the positive return, increased my credibility, as employees developed stronger feeling of belonging and clearer picture of the strategic fit of the program into the company´s long-term planning and profitability goals. At the same time, my next lever to “tell a success story” did not render expected result. Beer et al (1990) argue that many change programs do not produce change as we fail to recognize the most important element of the change process – actual change agents and personalization of the change process. My experience shows that I focused the change effort on the top management and while understanding how to go around change at this level, I failed to understand that implementing "green thinking" was a process that should be implemented as a bottom-up approach. I reached out to those, who I targetted, but my expectation that the senior management adoption of the program will be delegated down was wrong. The effort to "tell the success story" to resistors on the strategic level of seniority did not render results. I further focused on gaining back the credibility and decided to take the lever of building a coalition of support, which was not effective, but the change in my strategy to conduct interviews and understand the "mechanism of change" allowed the clearer view of the situation and opened up some boundaries. Understanding the position of Leslie and Andrew I managed to turn Andrew into adopter while he demonstrated the strong level of resistance previously (Balogun, 2001). This turnaround made the net step of public CEO support announcement more effective this time and gained and turned two middle managers and my colleagues into adopters. At this stage, I felt a need to conduct a pilot and build on external skill building, which also resulted in significant improvement in the level of acceptance in the organization and, finally on its lower levels. Louise, Yao, Regina and Walt entered the trial stage. I further built a coalition of support and confidence level among the trial stage and adopters improved. I tried to boost the buy-in within the company by recognizing the adopters, but this action was irrelevant due to the fact that at the level of acceptance, people needed more physical evidence and follow-up on the actual project rather than intangible motivation. By week 47 I announced goals and deadlines, which moved the project forward and boosted the credibility. Once I focused on internal changes, including the first confrontation with the resistant and building the coalition, followed by the organizational restructuring, I recognized that I required an external consultant that would be able to address the issues, which I could not see as an internal participant. This lever was effective, but late move. I issued email notices, which also helped to improve the acceptance of the change, but was not fully effective at this stage. My choice was explained by the need to demonstrate results and make the project more tangible for most of the stakeholders. I was planning from the beginning to focus on the town hall meetings by week 52, but the delay in the project allowed me to do so only on the 74th week. The result was very positive, though it affected my credibility as people started to have more questions and doubts, which were not timely addressed. I several times went through the same stages of coalition building and goal announcement without expected results, until I focused on the informal strategy to "walk the talk", which aimed at saving the credibility of the project, which fell down to only 4. This along with internal skill-building lever launched on week 93, returned credibility to the change process and reached out to the most of the ambassadors. I started to go back to the "politics" of the project, by recognizing the adopter and trying to delegate the change, but, effectively reached the deadline and could not proceed further.
Rationale of Self-assessment a Change Agent
Any experience, whether it is a positive or a negative change is a learning process that individual can benefit from.I recognize that this simulation identified several points, which I consider the focus for improvement and learning in the future. The score of a change management of only 0.9 and very unstable credibility position demonstrated my lack of awareness and preparation for the task as a change agent (Balogun, 2008). The best I can take from this experience is to use this as an opportunity to grow and ensure that the negative experience brings positive change and can help me to develop as a future leader.
Learning Points
Based on the above observations and the outcomes of the simulation for the Spectrum Sunglass Company, I can take several major learning points for the future:
While learning from theoretical frameworks on conducting change, that bring forward the importance of transparency, goal setting and focusing on building the ambassador group within the organization, it is critical to take into account the diversity of the company, its internal culture, and politics. Often change is not a top-down process, but a mix of bottom-up and top-down approach.
While it is critical to developing and prepare internal climate within the company to handle the change and ensure lowest possible levels of resistance, it is essential that this change comes along with external communication and negotiation process. This process should be communicated and explained to the internal stakeholders to build on the feeling of belonging.
Many times, formal process, goals, objectives, pilot and revision of the process will not guarantee the success of the change project if they are not accompanied by informal "walk-to-talk" strategy that allows natural positive information flow through vertical and horizontal lines within the company.
Finally, it is critical that training on external skills comes along with internal processes to ensure that individuals within the company see the change as a collective process.
What Will I Do Differently?
When it comes to the future processes, I will first of all ensure that the coalition and the base of internal ambassadors are built prior to any official action and announcement in the company. This should come along with the adequate training on internal and external skills and understanding of personalities that are decision-makers and influencers in the process. That said, I would start the process with a set of private interviews, training, and coalition buildings. This, followed by the official announcement and assurance of support from strategic levels will ensure lower resistance and higher levels of understanding among middle management and non-managerial level personnel(Beer, 1990). Finally, there is a certain point in the process of change implementation where theory and informal preparation should be supported by actual evidence, such as pilot and goal announcement along with official emails and negotiations. I will ensure that I am well-prepared to understand this turning point and start the implementation in the due time to maintain the high level of credibility and adoption among all the levels within the organization. Organizational behavior is a complex set of relationships that have to be understood and used by change managers in order to be able to achieve the results. Politics and relationships between individuals may affect the success of the program more than actual goals and formal training and preparation process. It is essential for a change management and agent to reach a certain level of emotional intelligence to manipulate these relationships and use diversity as a tool to facilitate and empower change.
References
Audia, P., E. Locke, and K. Smith. 2000. The paradox of success: An archival and laboratory study of strategic persistence following radical environmental change. The Academy of Management Journal, 43 (5): 837-854.
Balogun, J. 2001. Strategic change. Management Quarterly (January): 2-11.
Balogun, J., and V. H. Hailey. 2008. Exploring Strategic Change. New York: Prentice-Hall.
Beer, M. 1990. The Critical Path to Corporate Renewal. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Beer, M., R. A. Eisenstat, and B. Spector. 1990. Why change programs don't produce change. Harvard Business Review (November–December): 2-11.
