Change Management
Change Management Experience by James Gehrke
Change Management Experience
The largest change project in which I have participated was an effort to increase the productivity of a Pharmaceutical sales force in Europe. As described by Anderson and Anderson, the drive for this effort was a change in the environment in which the company operated (Anderson and Anderson, p. 17). Governmental restrictions on the activities of pharmaceutical sales representatives were becoming more restrictive, making it more difficult for representatives to gain access to physicians. In addition, governments were forcing the use of generic competitors and forcing companies to reduce their prices. These changes were forcing pharmaceutical companies to reevaluate their strategies. Hence, Sr. Management sponsored a project to improve field force effectiveness.
This change effort was designed following the classic change organization consisting of a sponsor, a steering team, and several design teams, existing in parallel to the traditional organization (Axelrod, p. 16). As the head of learning and development, I was a member of the steering team and the head of the design team responsible for training. As Axelrod explains, this organization was to draw upon the “best and brightest” employees from various departments and countries to represent the whole organization in order to come up with high quality solutions (Axelrod, p. 17). These teams were also heavily supported by consultants who were to assist the team manage the change and discover solutions.
Our goal was to transform the field force culture, helping the organization be more competitive in a new, more hostile environment. We were also to make savings by reducing the duplication of efforts from one country to another by centralizing some functions performed by IT and Sales Operations in each country. This meant that behaviors and technologies to support the sales forces would be standardized across Europe. This would be a transformational change for the organization since they would no longer be working individually in each market, but would have to agree to common practices across borders for the very first time.
In the end this project was a failure. Few of the recommendations of the team were ever implemented consistently from market to market, there was major resistance from countries to standardizing IT solutions, and the cost of the entire project (over $35 million after 3 years) far outpaced any projected savings. Still, the parallel organization eventually became institutionalized in the organization and continues today as part of the formal structure (Axelrod, p. 20).
There are many reasons why the project was not successful. First, the sponsor and the steering committee never built a sense of urgency around the need for change, nor did they regularly and compellingly communicate the need to the organization (Kotter, p. 4). In addition, the Steering committee and consultants worked in isolation from the majority of the organization. “Instead of working together to bring their combined knowledge to bear on an issue” the committees and the leaders of the formal organization often had distinct and separate motives and agendas. “In time, the parallel organization became another layer of management, isolating themselves from the workforce and adopting the authoritarian behaviors of the leadership when dealing with the organization” (Axelrod, p. 20). The team assumed that since they were the best and the brightest, sponsored by senior management, and supported by excellent consultants, that their ideas were the best and must be implemented. The sales leaders in each market who had little to do with the development of the solutions, perceived that they were loosing power and influence of their own organizations and resisted implementation of the plan. (Axelrod, p. 21).
This was an enormously complex project, affecting the work of tens of thousands of employees. However, there were a maximum of only one hundred people involved in the steering committee and design teams, and most of that work was done by consultants gathering information for the teams. Success would have improved by involving hundreds or thousands more in the development of the vision and solutions of the project and by improving team leader’s skill in leading change at a grass roots level.
References:
Anderson D. and Anderson L. (2001). Beyond change management. San Francisco: Jossey – Bass/Pfeiffer.
Axelrod, R. (2002). Terms of engagement: Changing the way we change organizations. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Beer, M., Eisenstat, R., and Spector, B. (1990). Why change programs don’t produce change. Harvard Business Review. November – December.
Kotter, J.P. & Cohen, D.S. (2002). The heart of change: Real-life stories of how people change their organizations. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
About the Author
James Gehrke is the founder and President of Magnify Leadership and Development. He founded the company with the belief that the seeds of greatness lie within each of us. Magnify Leadership and Development, LLC, is a global training company whose facilitators have worked to magnify those seeds in leaders on almost every continent.
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