Chapter: Managing Cultural Transformation From a Traditional Management Structure to Team-Based Culture

Benjamin Franklin is often quoted as stating that there are only two things certain in life - death and taxes. Given the relatively relaxed pace of life in his times, it is understandable that he may have forgotten to add the concept of change to his list. Change has become an increasing part of everyone's life, with today's rate of change creating a situation of heightened anxiety for organizations and individuals alike.

Organizational need for change is driven by many forces. Economic pressures in terms of competition are certainly primary. Legal and governmental considerations, such as changing environmental and workplace regulations, are also drivers of organizational change. Cultural forces, such as changing consumer tastes and the need to be increasingly sensitive to multicultural and national values in today's global environment, exert a different set of pressures on organizations. Finally, the dizzying rates of technological innovation, knowledge explosion, and telecommunications capacity improvement require continuous reinvention of an organization's mission and objectives. The bottom line is that if an organization is to fulfill its needs, it must change.

Each person who works in an organization also needs change for personal fulfillment. However, one basic need of any individual is the maintenance of a sense of security. This need is increasingly difficult to fulfill in light of the decisions facing today's corporations. Downsizing is almost everywhere, low-skilled manufacturing jobs are moving offshore, and employee empowerment movements are reducing the number of middle managers. The evolution to teambased management, with its structures such as self-directed work teams, has resulted in the elimination of the traditional supervisor's role in the organization. All of these trends translate into reductions in the overall number of corporate jobs.

The pressures exerted on corporations thus add new dimensions of change for employees to handle, which are often threatening to their personal security. The need to manage change is driven by the basic conflict that arises between the corporation's need for\] change and the individual's need to maintain a sense of security.

How Change Affects People

Most organizations dedicate significant resources to addressing the behavioral aspects associated with a change process. In the case of the introduction of new technology, operating manuals and training sessions that focus on the physical aspects of the change are routine and rigorous. Unfortunately, the same level of attention is not given to the psychological and social impacts of organizational change.

Psychological considerations include those that cause people to alter the way they relate to and feel about their jobs. Any change creates doubts and questions. The severity of these doubts depends in part on the individual's personality and experience; however, it is likely that many of these questions can be predicted. Social considerations refer to alterations in the individual's established relationships with others in the work group and with the organization as a whole. Concerns about being alienated from fellow employees, about being less informed, and about one's status in a new peer group are examples of predictable questions that are driven by social considerations.

Employees' questions and concerns can and should be anticipated; the key lies in managers placing themselves in the position of those affected by the change. The development of an effective change management strategy starts with the recognition that, at the moment of change, managers have little control over employees' predisposed feelings, sense of personal security, historical events, and cultural beliefs. Managers do have full control, however, over the manner in which change is introduced and implemented, and over how many, and how effectively, questions about unknown futures are answered. Successful implementation of change can thus nurture those factors that tend to reduce future resistance to change.

Four-Step Process for Managing Change

Harris Semiconductor's human resource development (HRD) professionals defined and integrated a team development process with a four-step change management process. The process helped to reduce the potential negative effects associated with the company's successful transformation to selfdirected work teams.

Harris's considers natural work groups to be self-directed work teams when their members are capable of and accountable for managing the work they do on a day-to-day basis. These teams represent a formal, permanent organizational structure. Members of mature teams carry out their operational responsibilities while also planning and scheduling their work, making production-related decisions, taking action to solve problems, and sharing leadership responsibilities. Mature teams have developed and applied the knowledge and skills required to make 85 to 90 percent of the day-today decisions affecting the quality of their processes, products and services.