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June 2007
Engineering
Organizational Change:
An Integrated
Approach to Change Management
By: Dutch Holland,
PhD
The discipline of Change Management can be viewed from two
perspectives:
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from the change
manager’s point of view and
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from the
point of view
of the workers
who are undergoing organizational change.
Both perspectives are important and demand active attention if
an organization and its workers are to experience successful
organizational change.
Change Manager’s Perspective
For the change manager who is responsible for executing an
organizational change, the purpose of the discipline of Change
Management is to ensure that organizational change occurs on
target, on time, and on budget
Change Management provides the change manager with actions and
approaches that will allow him/her to successfully guide
organizational change.
Key issues addressed by this perspective of Change Management
include clarifying the directions and reasons for change. Change
Management includes actions that might be taken:
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to develop the vision of the future organization,
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to develop the rationale or case for change, and
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to plan the alterations in processes, plant/equipment/rewards
that will need to be made in the organization in order for the
future vision to be realized.
Worker’s Perspective
For the workers experiencing an organizational change, the
purpose of the discipline of Change Management is to ensure that
workers complete the change process
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Prepared
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Motivated, and
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Competent
…
to work in the changed organization. In short this second side
of Change Management ensures that workers are Ready, Willing and
Able to operate the changed organization.
Key issues addressed by this second perspective of Change
Management include “healthy” and “unhealthy” responses to
change. On the healthy side, Change Management includes actions
that might be taken
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to
explain the reasons for organizational change,
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to
involve workers in planning and accommodating the change, and
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to
train and assist workers in acquiring needed skills, knowledge,
and attitudes for transition to the new (changed) organization.
For unhealthy responses to change, Change Management includes
actions that might be taken to assist workers who have severe
and negative reactions to changes in the workplace.
The Integrated Perspective:
“Engineering Organizational Change
With these two different perspectives in mind, we included
the critical actions that need to be performed from both
perspectives into our integrated approach to Change Management –
Engineering Organizational Change (EOC). We know that using the
EOC sequence will ensure that
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the actions taken to cause the organization to change (on
target, on time and on budget) and
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the actions needed so that workers will have healthy response to
change (prepared, motivated and competent) …
will be taken. EOC is truly an approach that will lead to
“killing two birds with one stone.”
 To find out more about our implementing change approach, call Dutch Holland at 713.800.3663. Holland & Davis can give you success story after success story ...and suggest ways that you can engineer change.
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