Pargas Exam 2: Change and Adaptability

Change requires...

Adaptability

Change Factors that Force Adaptability

-Technology
-Employment
-Aging
-Life itself

Change and Adaptability are Impossible Unless...

-we dismantle rigidity
-we recognize that discomfort is our ticket to meaning
-we drop the "should" in our mindset

Fluid Intelligence

Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood
- global capacity to reason
- Ability to learn new things
- think abstractly and solve problems

Crystallized Intelligence

Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age
- Prior learning and past experiences
- Based on facts

Growth Mindset

The idea that our abilities are malleable qualities that we can cultivate and grow

Fixed Mindset

The idea that we have a set amount of an ability that cannot change

First stage of Change: Status quo

A person's initial reaction is shock or denial

Second stage of change: Disruption

Anger and fear

Third Stage of Change: Exploration

Acceptance

Fourth Stage of Change: Rebuilding

Commitment

What We Need in Business Today?

- Organizations are becoming more and more global

- Those running these organizations lament the lack of skills that prepare students to succeed across cultures and comfort zones

- How do we extend the limits of our comfort zones?

- Change and innovation are moving us forward very fast

Reactive Change

Making changes in response to problems or opportunities as they arise

Proactive (planned) Change

Making carefully thought-out changes in anticipation of possible or expected problems or opportunities

White Water Metaphor

-When you can't count on stability or predictability, managers and organizations must constantly adapt and be comfortable and prepared for the next rapid

Lewin's Three-Step Process

The "Calm Waters" Metaphor
- Take it apart, rebuild, and settles

Managing Resistance to Change: Unfreezing

- Share reasons
- Empathize
- Communicate

Managing Resistance to Change: Change Intervention

- Benefits
- Champion
- Input
- Timing
- Training
- Pace

Managing Resistance to Change: Freezing

- Top Management Support
- Reinforce

Errors in Unfreezing

-Not establishing a great enough sense of urgency
-Not creating a powerful enough guiding coalition

Errors in Change

- Lacking a vision
- Under-communicating the vision by a factor of 10
- Not removing obstacles to the new vision
- Not systematically planning for and creating short-term wins

Errors in Refreezing

-Declaring victory too soon
-Not anchoring changes in the corporation's culture

Understanding Resistance to Change

- Caused by self-interest, misunderstanding and distrust
- "The way we have always done it"
- Humans have a general intolerance to change
- Fear that changes will result in a loss of something

Kiss of Yes

some of the strongest resisters may support the changes in public, but then ignore them in private

Organizational Decline

occurs when companies don't anticipate, recognize, neutralize, or adapt to the internal or external pressures that threaten their survival

Organizational Decline: Blinded Stage

Decline begins because key managers don't recognize the internal or external changes that will harm their organizations
- Lack of awareness to changes
- inability to comprehend the significance of changes
- overconfidence

Organizational Decline: Inaction Stage

Organizational performance problems become more visible, management may recognize the need for change but still take no action
- managers may be waiting to see if problems will correct themselves

Organizational Decline: Faulty Action Stage

Management will announce belt-tightening plans designed to cut costs, increase efficiency, and restore profits
- managers assume that if they run a stricter organization, company performance will return to prior levels

Organizational Decline: Crisis Stage

Bankruptcy or dissolution is likely to occur unless company completely reorganizes the way they function
- at this stage, companies usually lack the resources needed to fully change how they run their business

Organizational Decline: Dissolution Stage

- After failing to make needed changes, organization is dissolved through bankruptcy proceedings or by selling assets to pay suppliers, bank, creditors

Jim Collins's Five Stages of Decline

- Arrogance
- Undisciplined Pursuit of More
- Denial of Risk and Peril
- Grasping for Salvation
- Capitulation, Irrelevance or Closing

What is Creativity?

Combining new ideas in unique ways or making unusual connections

What is Innovation

Process of taking a creative idea and making it into a useful product, service, or method of operation

Technology Cycle

A cycle that begins with the birth of a new technology and ends when that technology reaches its limits and is replaced by a newer, substantially better technology

Product Innovation

Create new products or improve existing versions of products

Process Innovation

A change in the way a product or service is conceived, manufactured, or disseminated

Incremental Innovation

A succession of very small upgrades or improvements that a company makes to its products

Radical Innovation

Creation of products, services, or technologies that replace existing ones