From the boardroom to the action

and the Far East in the process of crafting a company’s strategic plan it would be folly to have action plans that are summed up as below.
“Recruitment process need to be more responsive especially with emphasis on training for future skills. Inter-company payments need to be processed faster than they are currently being processed.
“Timeous payment for imports is required to avoid disruption of supplies. Restructuring process needs to be finalised urgently and ensure job security and certainty. Completion of the restructuring exercise needs to be expedited. Manufacturing equipment needs an urgent capital injection.” Such an action plan alludes to the awareness of the company’s inefficiencies and “leakages”.
The question is to what extent are these plans actually implemented — the current appreciation that we have is that change cannot be allowed to just happen, it needs some degree of management effort.
The Implementation phase
In a life cycle of any event in an organisation, implementation is referred as the execution phase.
This phase involves the execution of each activity and task listed in the plan, a series of management processes are undertaken to monitor and control the deliverables.
This includes the identification of changes, risks and issues, the review of deliverable quality and the measurement of each deliverable being produced against the acceptance criteria.
The lessons drawn from successful transformation efforts are very relevant in the current competitive business environment.
John P. Kotter in his book “Leading Change” wrote that “Successful change is 70 to 90 percent leadership and only 10 to 30 percent management.”
The in-depth difference between management and leadership will be discussed in subsequent discussions but change in business settings is often due to transitions in strategic objectives often driven by changes in leadership.
A typical example is changes at Hewlett-Packard where Mark Hurd in 2010 wanted to make the company a software company away from its traditional hardware resulting in him reorganising people, processes and structures. In 2011 when Meg Whitman took over the reins he reverted to focusing on hardware resulting in further changes in people, processes and structures. This brings us another question on how important the human factor is in the process of change?
The Participatory approach
Participatory change management has been viewed as the bringing together of all stakeholders during the process of change management so that each one participates at each stage of the change management process.
The participation will be from the very beginning up to the end of the process. Stakeholders can include employees, management, board of directors, shareholders, suppliers and customers where possible. For example, a new field order entry system might involve salespeople, sales management, customers who might directly use the new systems, internal order administration, engineering, purchasing, planning and accounting personnel.
All these people in varying degrees need to understand why this is being done, how it will affect them, and what specifically to do differently.
Collective action
A gentleman came up to me one day after a workshop and said that participatory approach does not work — it can be costly since a lot of people are involved.
It is also time consuming, some stakeholders may take that time to push for their own agendas and generally it may not be suitable for some type of changes, for example changes as a result of new regulations.
While I do appreciate some of these demerits, the benefits do outweigh the negatives.
Some writers have gone on to describe participatory approach using the three Cs — Collective Problem Identification, Collective Problem Analysis and Collective Problem solution.
The emphasis is on Collectivism.  Drawing upon Rousseau and Hegel’s work, Karl Marx advocated a collectivist approach to organising society.
Moyra Grant wrote: “Collectivism is sometimes contrasted with both individualism and with statism to mean the advocacy of voluntary, co-operative and non-coercive groups and associations pursuing a common purpose; but is more commonly understood to include statist theories and systems such as fascism and Stalinism.
More broadly, however, collectivism embraces any philosophy, which perceives any group, society, or state as more important than the individual.
I know some of you might agree with the gentleman I mentioned — the human mind is so complex. It is amazing what the shop floor assistant can contribute to your overall strategy, these have the day to day experience that you as a manager might never have experienced in the comfort of your office.
By involving your stakeholders, you get the much-needed buy-in. This uniformity of purpose helps minimise conflict, as all the people affected and involved in the Change Management process know what is expected of them.
There is this sense of ownership that is built among people, which gives them the power to defy any odds against them.
Forms of Change Management
Change management takes many “hard” and “soft” forms christened as          theory “E” and “O” by Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria writing in the celebrated HBR article “Cracking the Code of Change”.
Theory “E” is driven from the top with the overarching desired outcome being the maximisation of shareholder value.
However, most companies now subscribe to the “O” theory, which takes a multi-stakeholder approach and focus on “soft” elements of skills, shared values, staff and style driven through building a good corporate culture, behaviours and attitudes.
What is evidently clear is that change is participatory, bottom-up and motivation is through commitment not financial rewards.
Economy changes
A few weeks ago the Ministry of Industry and Commerce launched the Industrial Development Policy (IDP) 2012-2016.
The policy seeks to restore the sector’s contribution to GDP from the current 15 percent to 30 percent by 2016, while the share of exports is expected to rise from 26 percent to 50 percent in the same period. The policy framework predicts an average GDP growth rate of 7 percent. What does it mean for a change manager then? A sound industrial policy can only be successful if all relevant stakeholders come together and each plays their role in contributing to economic growth.
Zimbabwe already has a potential competitive advantage in the manufacture of fertiliser, manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and other chemicals from ethanol extracted from sugar cane and development of emerging industries such as diamond mining.
For this to thrive, the people of Zimbabwe must come together and appreciate the need to transform from a supermarket economy status.
Be the change champion!
I have seen in my short lifetime met good orators — let’s take it a step forward and implement those action plans.
Dynamic companies like HP, 3M, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Sony continually renew themselves and achieve success. The HP cultural norms are said to bind the HP people for extraordinary success in implementing change.
Till next week remember: “If truth were not often suggested by error, if old implements could not be adjusted to new uses, human progress would be slow.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes.

l Shelter Hamandishe-Chieza is a Management Consultant. She holds over a decade of management experience and is at the completion of a Management of Business Administration Degree with a local university. She can be contacted at [email protected]