1. 2012 ARC Conference
2012 “Lightening the Admin Burden”
Development Session on
“Change Management”
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2. Irene’s approach
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© copyright R Hurlmeier: “Zebrastreifen”

3. Some issues in [Change] Management – plus
the jargon
• Does change management work?
• Types of change
• Towards a knowledge-based view of the organisation,
implications for Registry/Student Experience services
• Strategic Insight (sense making) and Strategic Execution
– “Awareness is only the beginning, of course. ........... But you shouldn’t expect immediate results”
(Bloom, Sadun and Van Reenen, 2012)
– The first question a data-driven organization asks itself is not “What do we think?” but “what
do we know”? ... It requires organisations to break a habit : pretending to be more data-driven
than they actually are. (McAfee & Brynjolffsen, 2012)
• Leadership implications: developing a ”second operating system” (Kotter, 2012)
• Communities of practice and the art of strategic conversation: driving strategy
into action
– Dynamic capabilities at IBM (Harreld et al, 2007)
• ‘It’s big data and analytics stupid’
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4. What the experts are saying
• “We can’t keep up with the pace of change, let alone
get ahead of it.” (Kotter, HBR, November 2012)
• “Change is not only dynamic, emergent and non-
linear, but also frustrating and daunting” (Balogun, 2006)
• “Poor management is rampant and most leaders of
poorly managed institutions are unaware of the
deficiencies”. (Bloom, Sadun and Van Reenen, 2012)
• Failure rates of up to 70% on change initiatives in
organisations (Kotter, 2012, Balogun, 2006; Beer and Nohria, 2000)
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5. Types of change
Extent of Change
Transformation Re-alignment
Incremental Evolution Adaptation
transformational change
less fundamental change
implemented gradually through
implemented slowly through
different stages and inter-
staged initiatives
related initiatives
Speed of
Change
Revolution Re-Construction
Big Bang transformational change that change undertaken to re-align
occurs via simultaneous the way the organization
initiatives on many fronts, and operates, but in a more
often in a relatively short dramatic manner than
space of time re-alignment. Often forced and
re-active
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(Adapted from Hope Hailey and Balogun, 2002)

6. Why do change management
initiatives so often fail?
• There remains an assumption that carefully developed plans will deliver
the expected results – and that the solution to unanticipated outcomes is
more and better planning.
– “This study is significant because it shows change to be an interpretive process.
Unanticipated outcomes cannot be accounted for purely in terms of in sufficient planning
and project management, as they arise from the way individuals “make sense” of
change interventions. Similarly, anticipated outcomes occur when individuals make
sense of interventions in a way that is consistent with those who designed them. Senior
managers therefore cease to be in direct control of the outcomes of change. Some
level of compliance can be forced through new structures, systems and roles, but
recipients still edit senior manager plans through their interpretations and their resulting
actions. Indeed, many sensemaking processes that shape individuals’ interpretations
occur out of the presence and control of senior managers. While change results from the
interaction between vertical (from senior managers to recipients) and lateral (inter-
recipient) sensemaking and sensegiving processes, most sense is made between
recipients through lateral and largely informal everyday conversational and social
practices, such as the behaviour of others, and storytelling and gossip” (Balogun, 2006)
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7. Exploring ‘long-term dilemmas’
Importance
High Low
High
SHORT-TERM
PRIORITIES
DILEMMAS
Urgency
TIME
STRATEGIC WASTERS
Low
(Adapted from Nigel Piercy, 1994, 2009)
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8. Typology of problems, power and authority
Increasing uncertainty
about solution to
problem
Wicked
LEADERSHIP
Ask Questions
Tame
MANAGEMENT
Organise Process
Increasing
Critical COMMAND requirement for
collaborative
Provide Answer compliance
Coercion Calculative Normative
Physical Rational Emotional
Irene Roele (Adapted from Grint, 2005) 8

9. The Full Thinking/Learning Board Model
Policy Review Cycle
Governance Business
Strategy
Review Brain
Review Cycle
Cycle
Supervising Management Strategic Thinking
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Operations Review Cycle
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(Adapted from Garrat 2003 & 2005)

10. So what’s the fuss about ‘Big Data’ ?
• “The big data of this revolution is far more powerful than
the analytics that were used in the past” ... What we’re
seeing is not just flashy examples but a more fundamental
transformation of the economy. We’ve become convinced
that almost no sphere of business activity will remain
untouched by this movement.” (McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 2012)
• “If your organization stores multiple petabytes of data, if
the information most critical to your business resides in
forms other than rows and columns of numbers, or if
answering your biggest question would involve a
“mashup” of several analytical efforts, you’ve got a big
data opportunity.” (Davenport and Patil, 2012)
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11. So what’s fuss about ‘Big Data’ ?
• What’s different this time?
– Volume
– Velocity
– Variety
• “The structured databases that stored most corporate information until
recently are ill suited to storing processing big data. At the same time, the
steadily declining costs of all the elements of computing – storage, memory,
processing, bandwidth and so on – mean that previously expensive data-
intensive approaches are quickly becoming economical.”
(McAfee and Brynjolfsson, 2012)
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12. Big data: the managerial challenges
• Organisational structure and culture implications – “starting with the role of
the senior executive team.”
– ‘muting the HiPPOS’ (highest-paid person’s opinion relying too much on experience and
intuition and not enough on data). Knowing what questions to ask becomes even more critical
– “What do the data say?”
– “Where did that data come from?”
• Leadership
• Talent Management
– ‘Data Scientists: The Sexieist Job of the 21st Century’
– ‘Knowledge Orchestrators’ – a key source of competitive advantage
• Technology
• Decision making
• Company culture
(adapted from McAfee and Brynjolfsson, 2012; Davenport and Patil, 2012, Mc Gee, 2003 and 2007)
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13. Two comments on change by ‘the guru’s guru’
1. Do not wait for others in the business to start
changing things. Go and do it yourself.
2. Never forget that everyone in the business is
interconnected, that they are all operating as
part of a system, that tinkering with one part
of the company is never really enough, and
may even make things worse. You need to see
the business as a whole, as a complete system,
if you want to make lasting improvements to it
Irene Roele (Russ Ackoff 2006) 13

14. Recommended reading
• Ackoff R, Addison H and Bibb S (2006), Management f-Laws
• Balogun J, 2006, Managing Change: Steering a Course between Intended Strategies and Unanticipated
Outcomes, Long Range Planning
• Bloom N, Sadun R and Van Reenen J, 2012, Does Management Really Work?, Harvard Business Review
• Brynjolfsson E and McAfee A (2011), Race against the machine – How the Digital Revolution is
Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the
Economy
• Brynjolfsson E and McAfee A, 2012, Winning the Race With Ever-Smarter Machines, Sloan
Management Review
• Davenport T H and Patil D J, 2012, Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century, Harvard Business
Review
• Grint K, 2010, The cuckoo clock syndrome: addicted to command, allergic to leadership, European
Management Journal
• Harreld J B, O’Reilly C A and Tushman M L, 2007, Dynamic Capabilities at IBM: Driving Strategy into
Action, California Management Review
• Kotter J, 2012, Accelerate: How the Most Innovative Companies Capitalize on Today’s Rapid-Fire
Strategic Challenges – And Still Make Their Numbers, Harvard Business Review
• McAfee A and Brynjolfsson E, 2012, Big Data: The Management Revolution, Harvard Business Review
• Mintzberg H (2009), Managing, FT Prentice Hall
• Rumelt R, 2011, “Good Strategy/Bad Strategy – and Why it Matters”, Profile Books
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