Talk:Change management (people)

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[edit] Tidying up

I made some minor changes to make the intro more compelling, and order the content.

It needs some more work, e.g. it should mention Kotter, Bridges etc in the organisational change management section. There is nothing on complexity / tipping point / diffusion of innovations, or approaches such as Appreciative Inquiry. It could at least mention organisational culture in the context of how this impacts change.

Also, FWIW, I think we should mention both the Change Management Toolkit and the Prosci website. IMO they both provide useful resources and have free resources as well as paid ones.

Regards

Lauchlan Mackinnon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.134.48.170 (talk) 06:17, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Total Clean-Up Needed

I have observed the development of this page over the last 2 years (and from time to time tried to contribute) and must confess that it becomes more and more undigestable. Different concepts (such as Change Management in Organisations and Change Management in IT) are mixed without clear distinction, paragraphs that had once been inserted and that were necessary for a clear understanding have been deleted without notice, etc.

Interesting process, indeed!

As somebody who regularly gives training courses on Change Management in international companies, I could easily do a review and write a total new version, but I would prefer to have a consensus on that. So I suggest the installation of an editorial team which takes over responsibility for a new release of this article.


hnauheimer 27 November 2006


Go for it... desperately needed... and I think a reference for differentiating between Organisational Change Management and the project management/IT concept of Change Control (which is often referred to as change management) is appropropriate. Sam 29 November 2006

[edit] Kurt Lewin

As per the article, Kurt Lewin theorized the psychology of change in 1951. However, Lewin died at the age of 57 in 1947.

How could the date 1951 be correct in that case?

Is it possible that the work was published in 1951 after his death? Anon.

The bibliographic record for "Field theory in social science" at my university's library has this note:
"First work originally published: New York : Harper and Row, 1948. 2nd work originally published: New York : Harper, c1951"
so, yes, it would appear that the work was published after Lewin's death. Mamawrites 11:24, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the research. I tried to find an explanation but was unsucessful. mydogategodshat 01:55, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
You're welcome. He's an icon in my field, so it was no trouble. Mamawrites 08:09, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Structure cleanup

I propose that this article together with Organizational development and Managing change be looked at holistically - and then cleaned up. Various disciplines have specific approaches to making technical changes (e.g ITIL Change & Configuration management), but my view is that Change Management is the discipline of changing people (i.e a physchology-based approach).

Your proposal to look holistically is sound. However, the IT (which I have been a party to for 25 years) has used Change Mangement loosely and not in accord with traditional areas where Change Mangement research and development originated - Graduate Schools of Business and Psychology.

ITIL as well as COBIT all have use the term change management, but only tacitly touch on the human aspects of change. When reviewed more closely, change control, not change management, is the focus of these structured frameworks. From a disciplinary perspective the focus of change management is managing human behavior. Specifically, change management is the discipline dealing human behavioral elements associated with change (i.e, awareness, fear, resistance, acceptance, adoption, etc.)

--- A Comment: I am not agree that the Change Mgt is only a "control" in the frame of IT. If you check closely the ITIL model v3 (and even earlier versions), the Service Support for example clearly concerns the business *and* the end-user perpectives. Because if a change is correctly handled by the business (technicians), users can be disagreed with the result, etc. So the point of vue of users has to be taken into account. I suggets however to develop the Change management in the perspective of IT, where it is the most used. I am in that field for a decade but I have no time to write this part. Sorry. But I could correct tthe text is someone has some time lft to write something based on ITIL v3. -For Luxorion

[edit] Change in software projects

I'm removing the following paragraph from The psychology of change section, added by 82.29.71.17 on 17 January 2006:

How is change in software projects implemented? A change request is first of all made by customer. Then this will be reported to the Administrator. The Administrator will then record this change request and let the Item Controller know about it. The Item Controller will do a feasability study on it and pass it on the Assessor........(to be added later on, sorry for half the story)

Sorry but it seems to me that this is out of place in the Psychology of Change section. Perhaps it could go in the section Change management in information technology. However, even there it would be only relevant to one very particular and specific approach, not to change management in general. -- JimR 10:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quantum Physics?

How on earth can Change Management be linked to quantum physics. The attempt to link these seems patently absurd... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.155.33.194 (talk • contribs) 26 May 2006.

Agreed. I've removed the link. -- JimR 10:24, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
There is a couple of leading thinkers on change management who relate change management to quantum physics. I have edited the text to show the relations. Hope itis clearer now. --Hnauheimer 13:17, 16 September 2006 (UTC)


Yes but what about the other blather? Newtonian Mechanics, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Mental Maps? Change management (or the lack there of) killed John Denver? Change management is a clerical activity, much like keeping records, organizing files, agreeing on updates happening on Wednesday? Over half of the article reads like puffery. How does it help someone to understand the concept?

I've been doing this work for about 20 years and have never heard of Hiatt. John Kotter author of a number of well regarded books including Heart of Change and Leading Change is much better known and not even mentioned. I suggest dropping Hiatt and adding Kotter

Quantum physics has nothing to do with anything except quantum physics. It drives physicists up a wall to see quantum physics dragged into New Age, psychology or business discussions. Basically if the physical scale of an object is the size of an atom or bigger, it's governed by Newtonian Physics (and Relativity ... but only if it's enormously massive (>>earth) or traveling near the speed of light). If a physicist ever sees this material expect it "to be edited mercilessly" and a scathing comment left on this talk page. Any physics references here need to go. --A. B. (talk) 22:36, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I totally disagree. Quantum physics has many philosophical implications which relate to fields outside of the physical sciences. Admittedly I think change management is possible pushing the boundaries of useful analogy, but that is no reason to discredit the whole idea Madmedea 12:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
No they don't, quantum physics has no philosophical implications which relate to fields outside of the physical sciences because it does not apply to these fields. This was what the previous comment was trying to say. For larger than atom sized objects quantum physics do not apply to be usefull. You could perhaps say that the human brain uses quantum physics, but as this has not been proven, you should not use quantum physics to explain things about the human condition. First prove that human brain uses quantum physics, then use quantum theories for explaining effects. Not the other way around. If you do it the wrong way around you a) anger physicists, b) do wrong science. The 'whole idea' is based on the wrong understanding of quantum theory. Thankfully it seems to have dissapeared from the article. --Soyweiser (talk) 11:07, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Quantum physics does not necessarily have direct "philosophical implications" for the social sciences or social systems including organisations. However, the metaphor of quantum mechanics has some important analogies and is highly useful as a metaphor. For example economics developed based on the metaphor of 19th century physics (dynamical systems based on Newtonian mechanics). Arguably however economics should be more like quantum mechanics, for example such systems have a feature analogous to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle where the act of assessing or measuring the state of a system (e.g. measuring economic indicators) may effect the state of the system (as people then act differently based on the information published in those indicators). Personally I'm not clear how QM applies to Change Management, but I wouldn't preclude the use of a QM metaphor in an appropriate way. I expect when people say they are applying QM to Change Management they are really arguing for some kind of complexity perspective. 203.134.48.170 (talk) 05:26, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Change Control

How is this article related to Change Control? Hirzel 12:26, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link to Constructivism

The link to constructivism links to a disambiguation page. Can someone knowledgeable make it a direct link? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bvankuik (talk • contribs) 07:56, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

The way I see it, the link refers to either Constructivism (learning theory), or to ""constructivism", an approach to language acquisition in linguistics" (which has no link). As there isn't a link to the later except for the general Linguistics article, I can't (as a layman) determine which it should be. Any thoughts on which one is more appropriate? --AbsolutDan (talk) 14:30, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
Seems gone?--WiseWoman 20:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Buzzword tag

I added the buzzword tag to the article. The article seems to contain many buzzword style slogans, and to be extremely abstract and vague rather than concrete. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:14, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree - there are lots of concepts that are part of change management, you may call them buzzwords if you will, but you can follow the links to hear about the different ways of manageing change. Since there is no one true way to go, we have to point people in the direction of many. I would suggest removing this tag. --WiseWoman 20:36, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merger with Resistance to Change.

The Resistance to change article is completely horrible. I frankly don't think there's much to salvage there; I'm not sure if it should really be a Wikipedia article at all. The psychology definition someone else added is okay, if a dictionary definition, but the management babble is useless. Since when is it the people lower down who are the ones to resist change? What's an OD specialist? Also, I was always under the impression that coercing the client made them very enthusiastic- "Sign the contract, or walk ye the plank! Step tight, lads!"

The links were pretty random, although the PDF was fairly hilarious with its flowchart on how to handle retraining. Anyway, any thoughts? If there is anything of worth in that article, it can probably be moved over here. SnowFire 00:58, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neuroscience and psychology

I have recently (Aug06) added some information on WikiWikiWeb C2Wiki ChangeManagement page , based on a reading of "The Neuroscience of Leadership" at http://www.strategy-business.com/media/file/sb43_06207.pdf. I would like to see comments from interested parties regarding the viewpoint expressed in the source article. And perhaps if there is further interest, the WardsWiki entry can be enhanced by people who have some time.

—Dlwl→龜 20:25, 13 June 2008 Friday (UTC)

Samskc 12:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC) Having read what is on the .pdf file, I am inclined to agree with your approach. Being a consultant myself, I have practiced change for some time now. And each time I have handled clients, the main challenge has been "fear". It is the fear which once dealt with, has given marvellous results. There have been cases where I took the key managers for sessions of meditation and made them deal their personal fears, that they respected this emotion and in consequence respected the fears of their teams. Once done, the communication channels were open and progress was fantastic. The change by itself is complete once the need for it is defined. I do not quite agree that we can "manage" change. We all are humans with a consciousness, and we can at best introduce change once the need for it has been defined. Rest of the work will be completed by the team itself. The social change is a classic example of this. People at large feel the suppression and define their need for change. A leader comes their way and fulfils their desire by converting their need for change into practice. Once the people have used this leader, he may continue to behave like a leader for some more years, but eventually he has lived his purpose. People normally dispose him off and read about him in case studies only. But in Business, the exact inverse is true. Here, if we may call the workers as people, they do not need change as their requirements and expectations are limited. I will not take suppresive managements into account here, since people will always have a choice to change jobs. So it is the management which needs change and thus it becomes a challenge to trigger the need for it. And since change in Business means insecure livelihood, the need has to give a positive feeling. Managing Change is a term which we may use out of our personal egos. We would like to prove to ourselves that we are better and more intelligent humans, but as per me, if the need of change is triggered once, trasformation happens all by itself. Yes, I use tools to monitor this activity and to look for directions. I have not failed even once. And in this manner, I have introduced a culture of accepting change in organizations, leading them to take on competition and nurture and retain talent. Samskc 12:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Total Clean-Up Implemented

I have done a total rewrite of the article. Should we still keep this discussion for historical reasons?

Holger

hnauheimer 20 December 2006

yes, please keep the discussions on the talk page. Great job on the cleanup. --Hu12 11:55, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
the next step is to remove depricated references, and clean the improper cited ones.
<ref name="ref-name"> [http://cited source name of source] by Rick Keene September 05, 2003</ref>.
Ive added the code in the ref section. Hu12 12:02, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
rmv'd change-management-toolbook.com per Wikipedia:External_links#Advertising_and_conflicts_of_interest"I am mainly interested in Change Management and run one of the most frequented webpages on the subject (The Change Management Toolbook)." User:Hnauheimer --Hu12 12:22, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


Hu12 removed a link that I have put to my website, which is http://www.change-management-toolbook.com. This is the most complete list of tools on change management in the web, not a commercial site. It is not advertisement as Hu12 says and it has been here more the last two years without dispute. People who are interested in Change Management look for tools, that is why the link the link should be there. There are other external links (which I have not set), which are much more advertisement, e.g. "podcast on change management".

I have therefore reintroduced the link and would like to have your comments.

hnauheimer 20 December 2006

People who are interested in Change Management can look for tools on the web, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a link farm or resource guide. This is the policy; Wikipedia:External_links#Advertising_and_conflicts_of_interest. quote "Use of Wikipedia to link to a website that you own, maintain or are acting as an agent for is strongly recommended against, even if the guidelines otherwise imply that it should be linked to." You stated "Hu12 removed a link that I have put to my website"... I removed 3 instances of this url since you began editing. More of your sites url's have appeared in this article since that time. see this edit. If neutral and independent Wikipedia editors agree to re-include your website, i have no problem with that. Untill then, it needs to be removed. --Hu12 19:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Removed other commercial links. Waiting for comments of other editors on which references should be there. hnauheimer 21 December 2006

[edit] Rewrite not a step forward

While I was not satisfied with the previous page, I was completed disappointed in the re-write by hnauheimer. This rewrite propagates old mind-sets about change management, uses old models, and disregards current research. As the founder of the Change Management Learning Center, I do not mind contributing to this type of group article, but when one person re-writes and eliminates other peoples contribution, this negates the value of this type of environment for general learning and sharing.

As a research company, we have conducted studies in change management with more than 1000 companies over a nine year period. The contents of this re-write reflect little of the current practice in this field.

I have made minor edits to the front-end of this article, but would like to see the community build this together rather than have any single person lead an edit as was done here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.161.154.237 (talk • contribs) 16:29, 27 December 2006.

Jeff Hiatt Prosci jeff.hiatt@prosci.com

PS I have noted some of the discussion here and find that some commercial links were removed whereas others were put back. I note that the link to the Change Management Learning Center was removed, but the link to the Change managment toolbook was retained.

The Change Management Learning Center is a research and learning center directory, and hosts more than 34000 registered users. Research from this site comprises the most in-depth research in this field with five longitudinal studies beginning in 1997, with the most recent coming our in the spring of 2007. More than 59 countries participate in these studies, and participants receive the study results free of charge.

We are going to need to acknowledge that commercial and academic organizations contribute to this field. Linking to major sites is acceptable to me so long as these are true learning resources and are based on research in this field.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Prosci (talk • contribs) 19:18, 27 December 2006.

Please keep in mind Wikipedia's policy; Wikipedia:External_links#Advertising_and_conflicts_of_interest. quote "Use of Wikipedia to link to a website that you own, maintain or are acting as an agent for is strongly recommended against, even if the guidelines otherwise imply that it should be linked to." --Hu12 21:13, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Note to Hu12: I understand the policy and have inserted an article on the ADKAR model to support the description of the model referenced in the text (in place of the general link to the Change Management Learning Center). Thanks for the note. I was not intending this to be marketing for a website, but to direct these readers to online tutorials that expand on this subject. There are no charges or registration required for use of the tutorials on this site, but I have linked only to the specific article anyway.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.161.154.237 (talk • contribs) 28 December 2006.

Note to Hu12: got your message. Why was link to the article about ADKAR deleted? Prosci 15:54, 28 December 2006 (UTC) Jeff Hiatt, Prosci

For the reason cited above. You're here to improve Wikipedia -- not just to funnel readers off Wikipedia and onto some other site, right? Hu12 16:00, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. If we cannot refer to articles in more depth about a reference in the text, this limits the usability and benefit to the reader. Note that this text already includes external references to sites that are completely commercial in nature. I am puzzled by how some are left in the article and others are removed. The links remaining left are of questionable value in relation to the text of itself compared to many other articles on the web in this topic - they are more like additional reading. Thoughts? 216.17.228.9 17:06, 28 December 2006 (UTC) Jeff Hiatt, Prosci

[edit] External links remain a problem

As noted above and in discussions of this article at WikiProject Spam, many links here do not meet Wikipedia's rather narrow guidelines on external linking. It's not enough that a link points to a website that's "useful" -- it must meet Wikipedia's criteria for encyclopedic sources. See these Wikipedia policies and guidelines:

I deleted some links to interesting, probably useful web pages that were essentially self-published essays. I deleted the pmpedia link -- links to wikis are Ok if they're so high-volume that they can be expected to be self-correcting, however pmpedia has had only 3 edits in the preceding 30 days. It has 180 editors but spot-checking the contributions of the first 10 on the list, only one has ever edited an article -- and it was only twice.

I left one link in the external links section:

I don't know if tutor2u.net meets Wikipedia's requirements to be a reliable source; I left it for now pending further discussion on this page. If it does not meet the requirements of the Reliable Sources Guideline it should be removed.

Many of the inline links in the article text also looked inappropriate and I have tagged this article with a Cleanup-Spam tag to flag the article's remaining links for evaluation and deletion as necessary. --A. B. (talk) 23:20, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I reworked a number of the links and made some footnotes. I have removed the cleanup-spam tag. I am still wondering how high quality the tutor2u.net site is vis-à-vis peer review and editorial supervision. See what you think and delete if inappropriate. --A. B. (talk) 08:17, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
The tutor2u.net site was added by 82.13.202.174 (talk · contribs) who has added this site to other articles. It appears to me to be a case of link spamming. I've removed it. JonHarder talk 18:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
I would recommend that an analyst from the Change Management Learning Center edit the section - Schools and Concepts of Change Management - we can work on this after the holiday. If anyone else would like to contribute, please comment on this discussion page and we can work together. Prosci 03:11, 31 December 2006 (UTC) Jeff Hiatt, Prosci

I agree that the article needs more work. However, there is a bigger purpose here that does not seem to be as well served by the recent debate as it should be - we should be focused on improving the content to the point where it represents an objective best effort.

In this regard, I would like to point out that there are several other commercial change management models out there besides ADKAR - notably including those in use by the large consulting firms. There is also more recent research than the other references cited in the "Theories of Change" section. I trust that the rework in 2007 will provide a more balanced and inclusive view - as it stands, the article will tend to lead the uninformed reader to believe that ADKAR represents the current definitive state of change management theory. Ivan Overton 196.25.255.246 09:23, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Ivan, As a researcher and author in this field, I agree that this article should represent an objective description of the field, of which ADKAR is just one of several models for individual change management. Moreover, models for organizational change management are for the most part not presented well in this article at all. Much of the work in this field to develop effective organizational change management models by Kotter, Conner, Ackerman, Prosci, LaMarsh and others are not presented in this article. I would suggest that this section be divided into two parts: Individual Change Management (models such as Kubler-Ross, Bridges, Lewin, ADKAR, ...) and Organizational Change Management (models such as Kotter, Prosci, Connor, GE Cap, and others). This section can then provide a brief review of each model and provide the reader with a broader and balanced perspective. Edits should also include re-insertion of material from the Change Management Toolbook as well. This research content was removed in previous edits and should revisited. 67.161.154.237 06:03, 1 January 2007 (UTC) Jeff Hiatt.
I have added a two-part structure and provided a foundation for other models and work in both individual and organizational change management to be added to the theories section.Prosci 06:27, 1 January 2007 (UTC) Jeff Hiatt

I have a real problem: it seems whatever we write (Jeff, Ivan, myself, other experts on Change Management), it will not be accepted by others. I wouldn't say that the text I had written before X-mas was the best you can write on CM, but at least it provided a kind of balance and described major threads of the discussion. Then, Jeff added some more information which added to the clarity. But suddenly, somebody disliked the text and added all these tags, such as "This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject.", or "The article might not be clear to some readers". Look at the "original research" tags. There is plenty of literature, such as "Quantum Mind" of Arnold Mindell (a physicist), or "Dialogue" by J. Jaworski, etc. which write about the relations that are described. There are plenty of resources on the relation between complexity theory and organisations. So what

The fundamental problem seems to be that some people have a total different understanding on Change Management than we have. I foresee a constant back and forth of edits - we put in our view, somebody objects. That can go on foreever. How can we create some stability, at least for some months? Maybe some experienced Wiki experts such as Hu12 can advise on that. Those who demand an "objective" article on Change Management neglect that there is no objectivity on that subject. I am ready to cooperate with Jeff on the rewrite, but I fear that somebody will screw it up again, and I have other things to do then to engage in such a silly game. 4 January hnauheimer

Recent additions that added the O'Donovan reference to the Management role section lean away from change management and toward cultural transformation, which is just one type of change and seemed to move the article in a slightly different direction. However, I did not make any adjustments or edits since one could argue that a few of the other references in this article are focused on disciplines other than change management as well, so removing this one may not be consistent. Since culture change is itself a change, one could see the logic. However, if we begin to add all the different types of changes from Six Sigma to organization restructuring, the article may become diluted from the basic focus on managing the people side of change. This goes back to the difficulty that change management is defined differently by the contributors. Thoughts? 31 Jan Prosci