General Model of Change

...

we are at the stage “Doing Right Thing Poorly”. Again at this point people can still reject the experiment due to “Brain Barriers”, like “Failure to Finish”. If we can move past it and accept the experiment, then we can form our new baseline, reaching the stage “Doing Right Thing Well” again.

Part 2

Tobacco sector recently went through a major change. People don’t want to consume an unhealthy product, but since nicotine is addictive, they also don’t want to quit. This causes them to move to healthier alternatives like electronic cigarettes. While these have been in the market for a while, it has only recently started to become significant. My company failed to see the change early on, and was only able to see it after collection of data, which could mean it is too late. Competitors already have taken many actions, like launching several relevant products in many markets.

My company received disconfirming data and was at the stage of doing “Wrong Thing Well”. They realized this after receiving some data. They initially rejected it by saying our primary business is regular tobacco. Then denied it again by other various statements, which is confidential. Eventually an electronic cigarette team was formed and they made the idea feel much more inspirational to people. There weren’t concrete steps taken as in the writings, but several things do match.

They made data understandable for everyone, it became very clear in everyone’s head what can be done better and what direction we must be going. The vision was clear, every role in this process got clearly defined. There were several experiments identified, meaning they started working on developing several prototypes. This took a lot of time, and a lot of effort was put in. The process was described to everyone, and it included ideas from a lot of people. Eventually they started being tested within the company. Anyone who wanted to learn more about the product and give feedback was welcome to attend booked sessions. People felt like they belonged and they were making a difference.

Later these products got tested in actual markets with pilots. Some didn’t work quite as good as the company hoped for. I think this was the “Doing Right Thing Poorly” phase. More research was done, people continued working on it. Mission and vision was constantly reminded to everyone. How to get to destination was mentioned again and again in many meetings to ensure commitment by the teams.

Eventually a real launch happened. The launch went well and for the first time the company’s product looked like it stood a chance against the competitor. There was a lot of excitement about the project. People that worked on it devoted their own time to it, since they were so driven about it.

My company started shifting a lot of talent and money to this new function of business. After quite a long while, I think the company finally reached “Doing Right Thing Well” stage again.

This process could still have been handled better. Maybe consultants could have been hired to make the transitioning phase easier and to identify points that were not visible to company’s own employees. Managers could have spent more time on trying to understand what the next trend would be instead of being biased with what worked in the company. These would have ensured that the “failure to see” barrier to be avoided.

“Failure to move” barrier could have been avoided possibly by a reward system. If it was shown that this was a great development opportunity for the employees or that they could learn different things since it is an entirely different work stream from what they normally do etc., maybe this phase could have been shorter.

The company handled transition through “failure to finish” barrier well since everyone was motivated and inspired from this work by that time.

Conclusion

Change isn’t a very complicated process to understand and implementation of a good change process is not difficult. Establishing change teams in the companies and implementing the above-mentioned methods in the company can be very simple, yet very effective solutions to such a comon problem in organisations

...