Managing Staff Morale during Organisational Change

Managing change is always a tricky challenge for a leader, whether you are considering a small change to specific processes within the organisation, or an organisation-wide change involving restructuring. It is common for staff and managers to feel insecure and intimidated by any change, no matter how clearly this is articulated by the leadership. If change processes get protracted, this leads loss of staff morale.

Communicating a vision for change is much more than articulating the rationale for it. Logical explanations and fancy PowerPoint presentations do not reassure people’s feelings of insecurity, nor uplift their poor morale. Many organisations, during such periods of change, design incentives and rewards – like tangible rewards for certain achievements, family events for staff, special ‘thank you’ cards – for staff. Good leaders know that even these tangible incentives do not change matters when morale is low, and uncertainty is on the horizon.

Morale is to do with what is called state, i.e., how people feel internally. Think of it like this: some mornings we get up from bed and feel very low - if you ask yourself the reason, there probably isn’t any rational one behind it. The same goes with collective feelings - although consciously people may be 'going along' with the organisation's flow, there may be something that puts people in a 'low state', feeling low in confidence, low energy and low in enthusiasm. To deal with this, you need leaders to understand and acknowledge that low morale is to do with 'state' -- not material benefits -- and this can be addressed by only two things:

(a) showing (not just telling them) people a future state, with illustration and examples and vivid stories of how good or great things will be once the changes happen, stories they can connect to; and

(b) making people visualise what great contribution /role each of the staff will make to move the organisation forward.

Does this mean that each staff need to be reassured that their jobs will not change (or disappear), or that it will be business as usual? Absolutely not. What people value in a change process is that they are not disempowered, personally and professionally. Successful change processes, even when they require painful readjustment, put emphasis on personal growth and learning for staff which strengthens their self-confidence and self-esteem.

In brief, low or high morale is to do with how people feel their life /work is of value to others. Good leaders know how to positively contribute towards making people feel valued and empowered.

When Change Fails, Change again. And again!

All of us are familiar with this phenomenon of never-ending changes in organisations. As a concept, change is fine, and shows signs of an organisation adapting to its changing environment. Except that, the type of changes I am referring to are primarily about changes in structures, or more appropriately, organogram. Some organisations have this unbounded faith in the powers of structural change to bring about magical changes in the organisation that before the dust has settled on the last round of musical chairs, another round of changes to the organogram has already begun.

In my consulting career, I have seen organisations who play around with their structures so much and so frequently that it is not unusual to see them come back to what they had moved away from five years ago. Every ‘big idea’ of change usually comes with a proclamation from leaders about how wonderful the future will look like, and yet they end up looking pretty much the same! The staff have by now seen this ritual year after year, and the ‘survivors’ among them have learned to live with these, and the rest live from one day of uncertainty to another.

There is another type of organisation where structures are not the focus, but they systems and procedures keep changing continuously, at a pace where no one is quite sure what the current regime is. Manuals and procedures are churned out at such regularity that managers who have the responsibility to operationalise these spend most of their working lives trying to figure out what the latest commandments are. Everybody in the organisation complains about the heavy bureaucracy and ‘red tape’ that results from heaps of manuals and procedures laid on top of each other. Yet with every new situation or challenge the organisation confronts, the default is to go into the print room and bring out another set of guidelines and procedures, hoping against hope that from some of those pages will emerge a solution. And everybody will live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, the ‘ever after’ moment never arrives, and the leaders complain of staff’s inability to adapt, and the staff walk around like zombies lost in the labyrinths of the organisation.

A fundamental element missing in most change processes is a lack of focus on the culture and style – i.e., corporate culture, shared values, work ethic and leadership styles.

Let me share with you an example, which is not uncommon in many organisations:

Some years ago, I was involved in helping a large international humanitarian organisation to put in place a systematic performance management system. We undertook extensive consultation at all levels of the organisation and introduced something which was developed through months of iterative exercises. This had buy-in from all managers and senior leaders of the organisation. A detailed roll-out strategy involving briefings and training for all managers and staff was implemented over a six-month period. The system was as good as one could get, and the commitment, so we thought, of the organisation was clearly there to use it to bring about fundamental changes in the ways of staff development and performance management.

Some months ago, I was back again in this organisation to assist with a review of their humanitarian work. This gave me an opportunity to see for myself how the staff appraisal system actually worked in practice after three years it was introduced.

The system on paper, the forms, the guidelines and the instructions are all up-to-date, and couldn’t be better. However, in its actual use, things were different: although managers were trained, it is not integrated into the development of managers, and many managers do not believe that it (staff appraisal) is actually important to do and may be actively discouraged by more senior managers from using it as this was not valued by the management.

This, coupled with the fact that the performance appraisal was not linked to any management decision-making processes (training, promotion, sanction), influences the collective belief about its (ir)relevance. Staff and managers now engage in a game of going through the motions of conducting the appraisals which are now reduced to the task of filling in forms once a year.

Work ethic, collective beliefs and values demonstrated by the management didn’t quite nurture the appraisal system in the organisation.

Three important things to remember in any organisational change process:

1.     Most often leadership is preoccupied with changing structures or systems (procedures, policies, etc), and ignore a key element in organisational systems – the culture which embody and reflect the values, beliefs and work ethic within the organisation.

2.     Leaders need to live the organisational values by bringing to life and demonstrating what it values most in its day-to-day work.

3.     Good leaders know that structures and systems can take you only this far, but if issues of culture are not addressed, business practices don’t change.

Game Theory, Somali warlords, Change Management, and all that ..........

Last month, I have had a chance to revisit Somalia, a country which has been at war with itself for nearly two decades now. I first visited this country about six years ago, just when for the first time in nearly fifteen years, a federal government was formed. For those of you who have forgotten the recent history of Somalia, here is a brief recap: a Federal government which existed collapsed in 1991, and since then the country has been ruled by warring groups (called warlords) lording over different territories of the country, all trying to wrest control of the rest of the territory from the other groups; everyone printing their own currency, and issuing even passports to the ‘people’ under their control, and claiming to be the ‘legitimate’ authority in control!

To the outsiders like me, it has always been a puzzling scenario as to why all initiatives to bring the warring factions together for greater good of everyone have failed time and again, when the ongoing impasse is actually harming the mutual interests of all warlords and the people they rule.

During this visit, I travelled to a few remote areas accompanied by two local youths who run a social organisation which supports some of the communities in resolving local conflicts. The discussions I have had with them gave me an entirely different insight into the situation in the country. Over the years, I have read a lot and spoken to scores of researchers and so-called Somali-watchers who have given their own interpretation of what has been happening in the country. I don’t think I had ever understood any rationale behind the crisis that has protracted this long.

How can you call it a perfectly rational behaviour when the warring groups have brought such wanton destruction of life and property in the country for nearly twenty years? Yet there is a rationale behind what’s happening out there.

Put yourself in the shoes of a Somali, and consider the dilemma here:

Let’ say there are only two warlords. If one warlord (A) lays down arms and B doesn’t, then the latter will overrun the entire territory of A and grab all the arms A has, and A (and his group) will end up with nothing. If warlord A keeps his arms and B surrenders, the reverse will be true. If however, both A and B keep their arms and troops, each one can protect himself and his army. It is another matter that both would be better off by laying down their arms and getting into nation-building activities. But that does not happen, and each one tries to expand its territory or arms, regardless of what the other does.

Sounds familiar?

Well, not so long ago, for nearly five decades the civilised world witnessed exactly this prisoners’ dilemma in the form of the cold war and nuclear stockpiling.

A non-violent version of this dilemma often can be seen in organisations too. Some years ago, I was involved in helping a large international humanitarian organisation to put in place a systematic performance management system. We undertook extensive consultation at all levels of the organisation and introduced something which was developed through months of iterative exercises. This had buy-in from all managers and senior leaders of the organisation. A detailed roll-out strategy involving briefings and training for all managers and staff was implemented over a six-month period.

The system was as good as one could get, and the commitment, so we thought, of the organisation was clearly there to use it to bring about fundamental changes in the ways of staff development and performance management.

Earlier this year, I was back again in this organisation to assist with a review of their humanitarian work. This gave me an opportunity to see for myself how the staff appraisal system was actually working in practice after three years it was introduced.

The system on paper, the forms, the guidelines and the instructions are all up-to-date, and couldn’t be better. However, in its actual use, things were different: although managers were trained, it is not integrated into the development of managers, and many managers do not believe that it (staff appraisal) is actually important to do and may be actively discouraged by more senior managers from using it as this was not valued by the management.

This, coupled with the fact that the performance appraisal was not linked to any management decision-making processes (training, promotion, sanction), influences the collective belief about its (ir)relevance. Staff and managers now engage in a game of going through the motions of conducting the appraisals which are now reduced to the task of filling in forms once a year.

This is again a classic case of the prisoners’ dilemma where although collective interests would be served by an effective appraisal system, individuals work against their own interests, and against the effective implementation of this system.

Collective beliefs and values demonstrated by the management didn’t quite nurture the appraisal system in the organisation.

But this is a topic that has to wait for the next story.