Jennifer Bryan’s ABChange model doesn’t tell leaders how to lead in change – it shows them how to lead their change effectively. When faced with company upheavals, such clarity is invaluable.
Coaches and mentors are often recruited as agents of organisational change. But how can they best support leaders? Enter the ABChange model, which helps leaders identify the type of change they’re involved in and what they need to do to lead and manage it.
The ABChange model is based on popular leadership and change management theories, and was borne out of a research project at a large government agency. It is not about telling leaders how to lead in change – only they can define that – but it does seek to guide them on what they need to do to lead their change effectively.
The model was first used with senior leaders and a team at a 4,000-strong government organisation going through radical change. It is also being rolled out in other sectors, including in finance and property.
The research which led to the model’s creation sought to inform and increase understanding of how leadership affects change, and enable senior managers to identify the skills needed to stimulate it in the agency.
It mapped both change and leadership skills to identify a clear link. Use of Goleman’s change situations allowed for an understanding of the type of skills required. The advantage was that skills are more easily identified and developed than styles (see figure, Goleman vs Kanter).
The model
It is up to the individual to answer big questions, including, “What do I do with this change?”
Step 1: Type of change
Help the individual identify the type of change by answering these questions based on Nadler and Tushman’s Congruence Model of Organisational Behaviour (1979):
Individuals Who needs to be involved?
Information organisation What is the information the organisation has given you about the change?
Once they’ve identified the type of change, the model prescribes the type of leadership style the person should demonstrate while managing it, and prioritises the change skills (see figure, ABChange Model).
Some of the actions of the change skills may happen in tandem. The order of priority of the skills, not the actions, is key. To manage change effectively, they must spend more time on the highest ranked skill.
Step 2: Implementation
Help the client define how they will implement the change they seek. Alice, for example, had been working with her team for three years when a radical business change meant most members would lose their jobs.
Using ABChange, the coach explored with Alice how and with whom she will build trust, considering that this takes time. The coach encouraged Alice to call on her past experience with the individuals involved to find ways to continue building trust. This resulted in her sharing as much information as possible with team members, giving them specific deadlines, and letting them know when she would get back to them when she didn’t have answers. She was able to continue building on trust through a difficult transition.
“This was a very tricky time as many individuals felt ‘let down’ by the organisation, so building/maintaining their trust was crucial in managing this change,” says Alice.
As we see in the case study, ABChange takes into account the people side of change, marrying people with tasks, and helping ensure that an organisation’s ‘greatest asset’ is considered, managed and led through changes that may feel and/or be perceived as radical or incremental. After all, we all want to influence changes that have an impact on our lives.
Jennifer Bryan has been coaching for 10 years and is director in change and leadership at ABChange Consultancy. jlbryan.semark@googlemail.com
GOLEMAN VS KANTER
Goleman Leadership Skills
and Competencies (2002)
Self-management
Self-awareness
Social awareness
Relationship management
Self-confidence
Collaboration
Building bonds
Networking
Kanter Change Skills (1989)
Build trust
Collaborate
Work across business Functions
Stake reward
Self-confidence
Respect the change process
Work independently
The mapping was achieved by asking senior managers to identify situations they thought were appropriate and inappropriate for each of Goleman’s leadership styles, and to rank Kanter’s change agent skills, in order of priority, in each of the change situations (Kanter 1983; 1989).
Case study: Fitting in with the bigger picture
The ABChange model was applied during the planning of a significant and radical organisational change, to transform a customer service network.
The change entailed the closure of 39 offices across the UK, redeployment or redundancy of 170 employees, relocation of 100 employees to nearby offices, re-grading of 270 employees to a lower grade, introduction of new roles, introduction of remotely managed ‘flexible teams’ and centralisation of services.
Key issues
The biggest issue was that the change was announced without a strategy on how to implement the required actions. This was the first large-scale downsizing the organisation had ever implemented. There was no precedence on how it should be led and managed and the staff were shocked – redundancies had not been a part of their working culture.
Middle management did not engage with staff on issues. The only messages staff received were from senior management, which created a vacuum.
Furthermore, staff were geographically spread across the UK in small offices of six to eight people, many of whom were being redeployed or made redundant. With no middle management engagement, employees saw only redundancy and closure. They became very angry and were left alone with these emotions.
Using the ABChange model
The programme senior team of three met with a coach to work through how they could best lead and manage the change programme. The team had been fire fighting, but after using the model they started to have conversations on why the change was necessary and how it fitted into the future of the organisation. The model helped the team start managing people rather than numbers, ensuring managers had all the information and tools needed to manage their teams through the change.
After applying the ABChange model, the team decided the organisation had to create a vision and look at how this change had an impact on it.
“The ABChange model changed our focus and helped us realise we needed to understand how the change fitted in the bigger picture and how people may perceive, and possibly did perceive, the change, which we had not considered before,” says Caroline, one of the team members.
The model also helped them work out how they needed to change their leadership style: “The model highlighted the need for us to stop managing staff directly. Instead we needed to provide support to managers to manage staff directly.”
ABChange Model©
Further information
J Bryan, ‘How leadership skills impact organisational change’, London: City University MSc dissertation, 2009
D Dunphy and D Stace, ‘The strategic management of corporate change’, in Human Relations, 46(8), London: Tavistock Institute, pp905-920, 1993
D Goleman, The New Leaders: Transforming the Art of Leadership into the Science of Results, London: Time Warner Books, 2002
D Goleman, ‘Leadership that gets results’, in Harvard Business Review OnPoint, article 4487 (March-April), pp78-91, 2000
R M Kanter, The Change Masters, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983
R M Kanter, When Giants Learn to Dance: Mastering the Challenges of Strategy, Management and Careers in the 1990s, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989
Volume 7, Issue 4