QUOTATION 57

GARY HAMEL ON WHY CHANGE SHOULD BE FROM THE BOTTOM UP

Use this to remind you that front-line staff are a vital source of ideas and information.

Gary P. Hamel (b. 1954) is an American academic, management consultant and founder of Strategos, an international management consulting firm based in Chicago. He has written extensively on a range of management issues, including change management. Like Tom Peters and others, he laments the lack of use that managers make of the knowledge and skills of front-line staff:

This extraordinary arrogance that change must start at the top is a way of guaranteeing that change will not happen in most organisations.

Gary P. Hamel

The major reason that change fails is that in many organisations management decide on a change, call together a small team to plan and implement the change and, when they are ready to roll it out, they expect staff to implement it without question. They seem to believe that their every whim, idea and detail will be implemented without any trouble. What delusional rubbish.

WHAT TO DO

  • Recognise that staff are intelligent adults with a great deal of expert knowledge about the job they do. They have the detail about the firm’s operations that few, if any, manager has and certainly more than any business or IT consultant will ever discover through research (see Quotation 84). You would be mad not to use that expertise when planning a change.
  • Encourage staff to come forward with ideas for how to improve the organisational performance. Don’t limit staff to just making recommendations about their team or section. If someone makes a suggestion that requires additional work, invite the person to work up the idea with you and, when you present it to management, recognise the part they played in it. Reward them for their efforts (see Quotation 45).
  • Use management by walking about as an opportunity to pick up suggestions for improvements from staff (see Quotation 54).
  • If the change idea originates from the top, insist on having representatives of those staff who are most directly affected by the change on your planning and implementation team. Use their expert knowledge to identify what’s feasible, potential bottlenecks and the likely reaction to the changes from staff and junior managers.
  • Train a selection of front-line staff to act as change agents and change champions. An agent is always on the look-out for possible ways to improve processes, procedures and services. Champions act as cheer leaders for the change before and during the implementation phase of the project. Often the same person will be both an agent and champion. Change agents and champions work side by side with staff on a daily basis. This gives them a credibility that few managers can ever achieve. It also enables them to squash rumours at birth, act as a two-way channel of communication between staff and management and identify problems early and warn management of potential problems.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

  • How much credence do I give to the ideas of junior staff? Do I ignore them or try to show why they won’t work or do I work with the person to see whether it has legs?
  • To what extent do I announce decisions and expect staff to implement them without question?
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