Module Code: MOD033

Module Title: Leading Innovation and Change

Level of Study: Master s

Academic Year: 2012/2013

Semester: 1

Student Number: 110113889

Word Count: Approx. 6000 Words

“I declare that I am the sole author of this assignment and the work is a result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. All references have been duly cited”

AbstractThe Middle East has been the subject to the financial roller coaster like any other region, which has changed the way business have been conducted and managed. The Arabian Gulf in particular has been under a lot of pressure to change how business is managed and run due to the number of western expatriates running the business there while considering the cultural differences. The conflict of management theories has risen as a result of regional alignment between Europe & the ME. Below, we will be discussing the Innovation & Change theories that have been chosen and find the weaknesses and strengths in terms of implementation and feasibility within the ME. We will also be discussing and evaluating the Leadership of Leadership of Innovation & Change and the effect of the regional culture on them and how without considering the culture of a region can impact most if not all change and innovation theories.

We will also be evaluating two changes from personal experience that are related to the theories discussed and we will reflecting on the personal performance as a leader of change & innovation which in turn will result in a personal action plan to support my further development.

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................................................... 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS..................................................................................................................................... 2

INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................................ 3

BECKHARD AND HARRIS................................................................................................................................ 3

KOTTER'S 8-STEP CHANGE MODEL................................................................................................................ 6

IMPLEMENTED CHANGES............................................................................................................................ 10

RESOURCE RATIONALIZATION CHANGE.....................................................................................................................10ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURING CHANGE................................................................................................................12

CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................................. 14

LEADERSHIP & STYLE................................................................................................................................... 14

BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................................................ 15

APPENDIX 1................................................................................................................................................ 17

IntroductionThe whole world is (and always were) interested in the Arabian Gulf due to the resources over there, mainly Oil; however, most of the industries are being governed with a Middle Eastern mentality that is dominated and instructed by the region’s cultural ethics and customs. Change was needed in such a way that the number of consultancy companies invited by the countries decision makers was huge in number and they were all trying to align the definition of creativity & innovation to the region’s culture to be able to introduce the required Change to the cultural thinking and behavioural that is limiting the progress of the countries. Innovation by its definition means according to (MA West & JLFarr, 1990) “the intentional introduction and application within a job, work team, or organization of ideas, processes, products, or procedures, which are new to that job, work team, or organization” While Change was needed, the country needed innovate a new approach for the Change to happen.

We will be discussing, comparing & evaluating two Change theories and how they would perform under the regional requirements pressure, what would work well, what part wouldn’t and how to address the shortfall of these theories. Recognizing the need for the change was the first stage that the decision makers have made, they have seen the opportunities that would help them build the country and how the way things were being done could jeopardize all the efforts being made (Hayes,2002); Change is a tool to instigate creativity and innovation, so in order to make and change things to a better society; an engineered approach to change is needed to enable innovation and creativity in society to bring the desired change.

I truly believe that the change models and concepts need to be customized for specific environment and that there is no “One size fits all” model, yet!

Beckhard and HarrisAccording to Beckhard and Harris (Beckhard and Harris, 1987), the first step in change is an initial organizational analysis. Here the forces for and against change are analyzed and understood. The change formula is a mathematical representation of the change process. The basic notion is that, for change to occur, the costs of change must be outweighed by dissatisfaction with the status quo, the desirability of the proposed change, and the practicality of the change. There will be resistance to change if people are not dissatisfied with the current state of the organization, or if the changes are not seen as an improvement, if the change cannot be done in a feasible way, or the cost is far too high (Robbins, & Judge, 2009).

For change to happen, the forces for change must outweigh the perceived costs of change (Effort, discomfort, exposure, difficulty, risk).

C = ABD > X

C = change.

A = level of dissatisfaction with status quo.

B = desirability of proposed change or end state.

D = Practicality of the change (minimum risk and disruption).

X = cost of changing.

Since all three variables are multiplied by each other, they must be maximized in value to ensure the positive desired outcome, where the need for the change (C) has been clearly identified and the decision has been made to explore the options and ways to change. The level of the dissatisfaction (A) with the status quo was not clear due to the people’s feeling that “Culture” has always been right and brought solutions to their problems (Crozier, 1964), (Crozier, 1969) with this variable in the equation that is not clear or have a fluctuating value, the decision makers had to convince the people of the need for the change, the benefits that would be gained and how this would have a positive impact on their livelihood and way of living. This has been done through creating the urgency for the change by showing the people how the change would impact their lives in a positive way. Getting the buy-in from the majority of the heads of tribes (the stake-holders in this case) was the intended result as without their blessings to the change, it will fail as they are the communities’ leaders. Wining the majority of the people’s buy-in was the most difficult task at hand (Kotter, John P., 1995). As an (A) value, this must be maximized to ensure the end result fits the need. Workshops that draw on transpersonal psychology, a progressive branch of the discipline, can speed up cultural change and make it more enduring (Emily Lawson and Colin Price, 2003)

The many cases, change is required even though that the level of dissatisfaction with the status quo is very low such as growth plans which are usually a result of reaching a sustainable and profitable status (The desired outcome)

As for the desirability of proposed change or end state (B), most of the people were in favor of it, however, each of the community leaders has his own perception and interpretation of this end result state. In order to overcome this hurdle, communication can be achieved through one-to-one discussions, group presentations or a tribal gathering which was the case in our study. It provided the source of resistance adequate information and that management-employee relations are characterized by mutual trust and credibility (Hao, Kasper, & Muehlbacher, 2012).

Beckhard & Harris have an underlying assumption that the majority of the people involved are with good intensions towards the organization / country, which is not always true, so if the majority of the stakeholders have ill intensions, the value of (B) would be so low that it would impact the equation dramatically which is most likely the case and this is classed as a weakness in the formula. However, the formula only discusses the vitality of the change to happen, not the outcome.

Practicality of the change and the risks associated with it along with the disruption (D) that would be caused by the change required was one of the most difficult challenges to the decision makers. The countries already had some level of infrastructure that was built within the past 20 years and the change that was being introduced required rebuilding complete infrastructure which would in the process disturb the current set up and people would suffer as a result considering the fragile (but working so far) infrastructure. According to Beckhard & Harris (Beckhard and Harris, 1987), accepting people’s anxiety as legitimate and helping them cope with the change; the decision makers have a

better chance of gaining respect and the commitment to make it work. Again, Beckhard & Harris can be wrong here if the decision maker is of a narcissistic character (Bennis Nanus, 1997).

The Cost of the change (X) was huge in monetary terms as well as in human capital in countries that are limited by the population size, however, the outcome and the end result of changing the country in order to come out of the “3rd world” class to become a mecca for the international investments and to be recognized as a world class financial market, and as (Beer and Nohria, 2000) declared “Theory E change strategy is based on achieving economic value for shareholders”. The change proposed would make the country a destination for well living and one of the most desired “work-at” countries in the world due to the financial aspects as well as for the weather conditions since the ME is known for having an easier winter to live in compared to the Western world.

The decision makers have managed to get the investors queuing at their door steps to be part of the up-coming changes, especially when the decision makers have announced that the country would be a tax haven for investors with “Zero” tax laws. The end result had reduced the value of the cost of the change which had increased the value of the change (C) which was the desired result.

However, this is not always true; in some cases the cost of the change (X) can overweigh the forces of the change provided that the outcome result fits the requirements of the change. Since there is no time frames involved in the cost element in the equation, the short term cost of the required change can easily over-weigh the forces of the change by far; the changes required to accommodate the merger between two companies; this would in the short term require an investment that by far is more in value that all the change forces combined in the short term where the benefits and the long term value of the cost would be reduced over time so that the change forces would over-weigh after a while, a cost benefit analysis can kill the equation.

The decision makers in the example given have played the role of the Change Agents well considering the (Briner et al, 1996) diagram below as they have worked well with the stake holders (tribal leaders) and got their buy-in, they have worked upwards with the investors and created the right atmosphere for the required investment, they have managed forward when planning the future of the countries and backwards when they reviewed and recognized the need for the change required as well as leading by example and managing themselves and not being absorbed by the cultural boundaries which lead them to think out of the box.

Kotter's 8-Step Change ModelFor leaders of organizations, managing change is an important strategic task. In the last ten years, there have been numerous studies which all confirmed that between 60-80% of all change projects fail fully or partly: either the objectives of the project are not achieved or the projects cannot be completed in time or on budget. Usually, a lot is at stake: money, personal reputation, and the health of the organization. John Kotter, one of the leading management thinkers and writers has given his answer to the question of - how can a change project succeed - by providing an eight step model for leading change (Kotter, John P., 1995) and it is one of the most applied change models across the industries (Holger Nauheim, 2012).

1. Establishing the sense of urgency

In order for any change to be successful, the people involved and impacted by the change should support it, most changes fail due to the lack of buy-in from the people. Change is usually resisted for many reasons, such as loss of control or it would result in a heavier work load (Kanter, 1983) & (Holbeche, 2006) Changes are anticipated for the leaders and are seen as solutions to current or future issues, while for the other people in organizations the change is unexpected, imposed and could cause problems (Holbeche, 2006).

Getting the people buy-in for the change is usually the hardest part since without them the change will fail; according to (Holbeche, 2006), “Managing change is not about change, it is about managing people”. Steps that can be taken to create the sense of urgency could include identifying the key stake holders and start honest discussions with them, give them dynamic and convincing reasons to get them discussing and thinking more of the need for the change. We can also seek help from

outside influencers such as reputed academics or consultants to add value and an outsider’s view to enrich the discussion.

There are many forms and types of resistance to the changes proposed as noted by (Kanter, 1983) “Opposition or resistance seems to take a more passive form: criticism of specific details of the plan, foot-dragging, and low response to requests, unavailability, or arguments for preferential allocation of scarce time and resources to other pet project”. Each of the types of the resistance has its own reason such as self- interest, misunderstanding or lack of trust to the decision makers or even they see things can be fixed differently.

This can be linked to the variables (A + B + D) in Beckhard & Harris equation, however, they would not be multiplied by each other; They would rather be added to each other as the collectively form the reasons for the Buy-in from all the stake holders combined. The level of dissatisfaction of the current status added to the desirability of the proposed change would be the solid ground to build the sense of urgency within the team / organization. This can be a double sided sword as in Beckhard & Harris equation, the values are multiplied, so there is some space for one of the values to be somewhat little, however, in Kotter’s it is imperative to have the values as high as possible as they are added together and if one of the values is little even by a fraction, it would jeopardize the task of creating the urgency.

2. Forming a powerful coalition

In order to have the required force supporting the change within the organization, building the “Change team” and managing them requires a powerful Change Leader; The characteristics of the change leader are many according to (Buchanan, 2003) “A review of the literature on change agents uncovered a combined list of ‘over 130 competencies, qualities, traits, “habits” and other attributes” this doesn’t mean that the leader should have all the 130 competencies, the change team should collectively have, and even some of these competencies are not even required depending on the working environment and the working ethics that the employees of the organization follow and adhere to.

The change team should host the identified true leaders within the organization, ensure the emotional commitment and the team spirit is high within this change team. The membership of the team shouldn’t necessarily be on a hierarchy basis, you can chose the members based on how others within the organization listen to them and or respect them, and they do not have to manage the people for them to be listened to, however, the team must cover all the departments involved within the organization and from different levels to have the required mix of people supporting the change. According to (Balogun & Hope Hailey, 2004) “change agents need to have analytical skills, judgement skills, implementation skills and self-awareness the ability to deal with complexity, and to be good at influencing those around them to sell change and political judgement, common touch (to be able to deal with people at all levels), visibility, persuasiveness, networking, team building, communication awareness (to be able to communicate the same message through many channels in many different ways)”. In Beckhard & Harris equation, the ease of execution of the change, the minimum disruption to the operations and the organization and the minimum risk associated with the change (D) is critical for implementing the change it self, however, in Kotter’s it can be used along with (A & B) to reason with the people to reduce these values to the minimum possible as a justification as well as a motive to save the future of the organization

3. Creating the Vision for Change

A clear vision can help everyone understand why is the change happening and why is needed, as this would help everyone see for themselves what is needed to be achieved which makes the directives they are being given making more sense to them. The leader will need to determine the values that are central for the change, develop the “text” of one or two sentences to describe the vision, create the strategy to execute the vision and finally, ensure that the change team can describe the vision in less than 5 minutes. The change vision communication requires simplicity and repetition. Simplicity and repetition foster understanding and retention. Critical organizational stakeholders cannot embrace a change vision that is hard to understand. This communication also needs to consist of simple language that avoids the buzz words of the moment. Many employees and managers will be wary of change and will need to be convinced that this new future is better than their present circumstances. Buzz words make people suspicious of a change effort, instead, the vision statement should be simple to understand and very easy to memorize.

4. Communicate the vision

Creating a compelling story to communicate the vision to the people is good advice as per (Carolyn Aiken, 2009), however, there are many pitfalls when putting the words to actions such as, what motivate the change leader doesn’t necessarily motivates others, Letting others write their own communications to deliver the message of the vision to their own teams and it takes a story both sides of the fence by showing the positives and the negatives as this would create the required real energy.

The leader is asked to “Walk the Talk” as people usually believe what they see happening rather than just talking about it and honestly addressing people’s concerns and anxieties would give the change leader the power to convince others. Also, applying the vision to all aspects of work & operations from training to everyday tasks would also strengthen the belief in the vision which along with the repetition of the vision will make it sink in the minds of the people and they will subconsciously work towards. Also, the change vision communication needs to be two-way, It is not top down only; It is also bottom up. Employees and managers are not captives of the change effort. Rather, they are active contributors to the change effort and shape its implementation through open communication and ongoing feedback.

As McLuhan constructed three simple points as a result of his findings that technologies change the way humans communicate. First, inventions in communication technology cause cultural change. Secondly, changes in modes of communication shape human life. Thirdly, as McLuhan once stated prophetically, “we shape our tools and they in turn shape us” (Griffin, 1997)

5. Remove obstacles

When this step in the change process is reached, then the team has the sense of urgency required, the coalition team has been built and the vision has been created and communicated properly. The team now should be busy with facilitating the change and working towards the change plan that has been created along the way, however, there will always be resistance to the change; this can be

from individuals or even systems that cannot be modified to fit the new change. Obstacles will need to be removed, otherwise the change will fail.

Hiring Change leaders or assign from within the organization where their main role is to deliver the change is critical; examining the Organization compensation system to make sure it will support the change vision; recognizing the people who deliver the change and rewarding them sends the right message to others; identifying people who are adamant and are resisting the change and helping them understanding the change is needed and taking actions by removing the barriers to the change such as people or processes to be changed is critical to the change success.

“Participation and involvement in a process of change are one of the most elderly principles to counteract resistance” (Cummings & Huse, 1989)

6. Creating Short-Term Wins

As part of the change plan, there should be short term goals as well as long term ones; saying that, it could be aligning a system process or functionality that will facilitate the change required. Such wins will build more believe in the overall change, it would give the people evidence that the change is going forward as there is nothing that motivates people like success. This can also back fire if the short term goal is not achieved and it will not only disturb the change process and brings down the people’s moral, it will give ammunition to the resisting people to fire at the change and the whole change process will need to start all over again, else it will fail completely.

The short term goal has to be low in cost, easy to implement and is doable within the proposed time frame by the “Coalition team” that was built. Rewarding the members who were involved would give a moral boost to the rest to follow suite.

7. Build on the change

Building quick wins will gradually lead to the initial success of the change, however, Kotter argues that too early announcements of the change success will result in the change to actually fail as people lay back and the momentum is lost.

Having one quick win is good while having 10 consecutive wins is great. Setting goals to continue building on the momentum that has been achieved, analysing what went right and what needs improvements and keeping the ideas fresh by adding new change agents and change leaders to the coalition team members will definitely improve on the change process. Various methodologies can be used such as PDCA (Edwards, Deming, 1986).

The continuous improvement doesn’t exist in the Beckhard & Harris model which is classed as a weakness, implementing the change (even if it was successful initially); but without building on that change and closely monitor the progressing of it will in many cases lead to the change to fail or at least will not have the required outcome as anticipated.

8. Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture

To make any successful change stick, the values behind the vision should become a part of the organization’s core, the change done should become as part of the corporate culture as it determines what gets done and it should always show in the day to day work of the organization;

while making sure that the change is seen in every aspect of the organization, it will help the change to have a solid place in the culture, also, the leaders (Existing and new) should always support the change continually otherwise it is back to where we started.

Talking about the progress happening on every occasion possible and telling the success stories repeatedly will keep the change in people’s minds. Highlighting the new values of the change vision even with new hires will ensure to some extend the initial buy in from the new recruits which in turn will revive the win stories within the organization. To reduce the impact of leaders moving on to other organizations, a plan must be built for those key leaders as this will help in keeping their legacy and their roles in the change is not forgotten.

Again, making the change stick in the culture doesn’t have a big place in Beckhard & Harris change formula; it is more of a one off change rather than a “culture changing “change. Although some can argue that both change models target organizational cultures and it requires cultural changes, Kotter’s model is more focused on the long term impact and sustainability of the change within an organization rather than a one off change that could be calculated as a mathematical formula; also, I believe that they both can be right, however, the differentiator would be the size of the change and the nature as I see Beckhard & Harris change model would more fit a technological change within a company such as introducing an new ITSM tool to be used, while Kotter’s model addresses that as well as a more “Cross Organizational” change such as restructuring or merger between two corporates yet Kotter’s model doesn’t consider the other sources of influence other than the leadership on the success of the change.

It feels like Beckhard & Harris formula identifies when the change may happen and Kotter’s model is about how to make it happen they are not in contrast to conflict.

Implemented Changes

Resource Rationalization ChangeIn my current company, they had two service centers serving their client base which covers all 6 states within the UAE.

The justification for having two service centers was as follows:

Service levels & contractual obligations forced the company to have two service centers

Geographical coverage

The implications / business impact was:

Duplicate resource profiles & expertise

The company had to hire two of each engineer profile as they needed to have network engineers in both centers, not forgetting the back-fill requirements where they will hire extra two resources to cover the leave period. This has created a comfort zone for the engineers as they know that there is always someone else to do the job which has resulted in a zero accountability attitude

Communications challenges

Since the company had one service desk serving the client base and covers the whole country, they always had issues in assigning the incidents & requests to the right engineer since many clients had multiple sites across the country. This has always jeopardized the service levels agreed with the client and risked the relationship.

Changes were bound to happen to the “status quo” due to the above reasons; however, the company executives were reluctant due to the implications in the resources dismissal. We have managed to implement two centers of excellence instead of two centers of services. This was a typical example of a “Trap of Success” (Nadler and Shaw, 1995) as the current way of things being done has been working well for the past 10 years and there has been no performance monitoring effective enough to show the actual teams performance technically nor financially as the $ revenue per head was never known; another measurement - which was the travel time spent – has never been included in the engineers utilization report which has been impacting the individual performance KPIs.

The need for the change has been identified and looking back at was done then, it feels that not only one change model has been used, for examples, the recognition of the issue of having the two geographically separate service centers and the opportunities associated with changing this could be aligned to (Hayes, 2002) & (Iles & Cranfield, 2004) while building the coalition team from the employees involved and their delivery manager could fit the Kotter’s change model’s 2nd step.

The type of innovation needed was “process innovation” as one of the 4 Ps in the types of innovation. As a result of the problem at hand, the process and the delivery of the services provided by the two service centers had to change, While remembering that the proposed change of removing the geographical separation from the two teams, this has come immediately after one of the service delivery managers has been terminated from the company, so his team was very anxious of what to follow and they were very untrusting with the management (William Bridges, 2003) where anxiety rose and motivation has fallen and most of them became less productive and absent more often and that has resulted in a short time in the company becoming vulnerable to competitors as the team’s performance has affected the client’s satisfaction levels.

The corporate executives only looked at the financial benefit out of the change mentioned and to reduce the headcount; this has been pushed back through sharing the facts that this would demoralize the other teams as well as the remaining team members within. Instead, I have proposed an increment to all the team members submitted to them in an even that hosted the whole team and announced the change during it. Coupling the rewards with the change has naturalized the resistance to the change (William Bridges, 2003) adding to that the presentation of the new teams uniforms each with its own logo has given them the sense of being special within the organization and at the end, the change was implemented successfully without any dismissals, financial savings has been acknowledged by the executives as a result and the technical team was happy. The change has been going through evaluation every six months to ensure the continuity and sustainability PDCA (Edwards, Deming, 1986).

Organizational Structuring ChangeIn a company that I worked for few years back, the year-end financial report of the company has indicated that the financial performance of the company has declined dramatically from the previous years, which has created a massive disbelief and a state of denial within the company and a huge blame game started. The Managing Director has organized a workshop to discuss the future of the company, the current status and the plan for next year. During the meeting, the MD has taken the lead and presented an organizational restructuring plan that – according to him – would resolve the issue proposing to change the company from one big unit to three business units with their separate financial P&L (Profit & Loss).

“It is neither easy nor straightforward to improve a company’s performance through a comprehensive program to change the behaviour of employees by changing their mind-sets. No company should try to do so without first exhausting less disruptive alternatives for attaining the business outcome it desires” (Emily Lawson and Colin Price, 2003)

The new structure has been discussed individually with the three managers that would head the BUs, however, there has been no meeting with all three combined and there was no alignment between them. Secrecy was the dominating power in the relationship and an assumption that once the BUs was created everything else will fall in place. Looking back at the situation now, this was a pure power war on who get what, when and how (Morgan G., 1997) or as (Pfeffer, J., 1993) said “Power is defined as the potential ability to influence behaviour, to change the course of events, to overcome resistance, and to get people to do things that they would otherwise not do”

There were no theories backing up the change as it was built as per the COO’s perception and personal decision making skills. The end result was something deformed in shape and function. If we try to align / map the change that has been implemented, Theory E change has a place in the change as the change was done due the need of financial return and its focus is on the creation of economic value which is often the concern of the share-holders. Even though the Theory E change is still driven top to bottom and the change should be systematic and pragmatic (Beer & Noria, 2000), in the example at hand it was build according to the MD’s perception, the systems were not aligned to fit the new organizational structure of business units, and everything was left to “best endeavor” of the people involved. And although theory E has the required purpose of economical return, and it was Top – down leadership approach and the focus was on the structure “And systems” yet the planning and the motivation parts were dismissed completely; if we evaluate the theory O relationship to the change at hand, we can see that the “planning” was emergent as it should be in theory O, the motivation is incentive lagging and the focus was culturally based; while the change at hand has missed the leadership type required in theory O change and the purpose was purely economical as to the developing the organizational capabilities according to theory O. The below table shows the different purposes and means between both theories (Beer & Noria, 2000)

When the change was implemented, it lacked the impact analysis needed to plan the change in a pragmatic fashion nor a study on how to align the systems and the resources to fit with the new changes (Emily Lawson and Colin Price, 2003), this has resulted in change being implemented without the support of any of the enabling functions within the company (Finance, HR and logistics).

There was no buy in from the employees; the systems were not aligned to serve the new change. This has resulted in more resources leaving the company due to frustration. Even when the business units were created, it took the finance team three months to come up with the P&L mechanism which has been challenged by all three business units. The COO addressed the issue by enforcing the P&L logic on all three BU heads and no one was allowed to ask or even recommend. It is understandable that pleasing everyone in a company is almost impossible “You can never please everyone, so just push ahead with reform” (Fullan, M. G., & Miles, M. B., 1992) yet that doesn’t mean to push with the reform without having based lined the requirements or without aligning the supporting systems to the change being implemented.

The Middle Eastern cultural effect is clear in the above change; “do it or leave it” doesn’t really fix the issues and in most of the successful changes in the region: Luck was the biggest player in most of the successful changes but that doesn’t mean all successful changes implemented in the region were a result of luck, some entities used world known consulting companies and managed to do things right.

An internal survey conducted 6 months after the change implementation that included 100 employees with different hierarchy levels. All invitees have replied to the survey. It had the following questions (Results below)

Do you think that the change was necessary?

87% answered (NO)

Have you been informed of the change prior to the decision taking?

90% answered (NO)

Has the change in the company affected your work

o Negatively (67% YES)

o Positively (30% NO)

o Don’t know (3%)

Free text for employees to fill

Below are some samples:

- I am more worried now than before. Looks like they don’t know what to do.

- They hope it will make the company better, we hope so too

- They are the executives, they know better

- I would have done it better if asked

- In line with the market status, I believe that the creation of BUs is better for us

ConclusionA more regionally focused study is required for the Middle East to find new ways convincing the leadership that it takes more than one hand to clap (Unless you are smacking someone on the face). The organization structural changes that were discussed and the causes behind those changes have shown clear evidence that the employee buy-in has not been obtained which has resulted in the failure in most of the changes within the region often related to people issues, ‘managing change is not about managing change; it’s about managing people’ (Holbeche, 2006)

However, organization structural change is faced with resistance from employees. Both individual and group factors resist the organization changes. Some of the important individual factors are habit, security; selective information processing / sharing and economic factors and important group factor include group inertia, power maintenance and inertia. “Opposition or resistance seems to take a more passive form: criticism of specific details of the plan, foot-dragging, and low response to requests, unavailability, or arguments for preferential allocation of scarce time and resources to other pet projects” (Kanter, 1983)

The study represents the current state of management maturity of Middle East organization. Further discussion is needed to include the external factor of working as part of this region which makes such changes difficult, i.e. expatriate population, job insecurity and global political influence.

Leadership & StyleI have done the mother of all mistakes by not communicating the reason for change as the problems and opportunities where identified but were not shared with the mass of the employees, another issue was not really understanding the political power of individuals as this could have helped in passing on the right message to the MD and try to correct the course of actions taken to better align

the change to the reality of the company’s needs. I have mistakenly assumed that the western mentality in adherence to professional opinion exist in the Middle East and tried to build on this fact. “There is an alternative to taking the best practices and globalizing them” (Trompenaars, F., and Woolliams, P., 2003) I didn’t look at the alternatives; instead, I assumed that people have to follow.

More adaptation of the known change theories to the region is a must and I am starting with aligning the 8 steps of Kotter to the region’s initiated changes while considering the addition of cultural effects and the other sources of influence other than the leadership. I am considering a research based approach to get the best of both worlds and integrate the customs and traditions of the Middle East along with the methodologies and theories of Change Management that exist; by doing so, I should be able to practice the theories in line of the current mind set within the region.

Looks like I was using one of many sides of (Amabile, 1997) Motivating creativity in organizations from an Organizational encouragement prospective and assumed that they would be fair, with constructive judgement of my ideas, would be rewarded and recognized for creative work and forgot that another side to the coin was lacking which is the Supervisor’s encouragement , without the good role model and the right goals set and the support by showing confidence within the work group things would not fly, while remembering the political influence of others that caused the mind-set of the MD to shift and the regions mentality to take over the thinking mind over.

I have conducted a personal survey using my LinkedIn acquaintances and had 79 responses to it. The type of leadership personality I possess according to the feedback received is dominantly “Realistic” where I like to get things done, practical, stable, and results-oriented, however, the secondary one is “Enterprising” which is closer to the real me as Competitive, persuasive, energetic and work well outside-the-box. Among many feedback entries and evaluations, I am seriously taking this result and building a personal action plan accordingly. I will have to work on “listening to others” more as this choice brought 21.5% result on the things I can improve upon as well as working on the social skills as it brought 14% result in the same survey. (Appendix 1)

BibliographyAmabile. (1997). Motivating creativity in organizations.

Balogun & Hope Hailey. (2004). Types of Change.

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