Management of change experience in my organization

Mohammed Asif
PGPEX 23/8

Change is the only constant in life. Things and situations around us change every
day and we have to adapt to them. But ironically, change is the hardest thing to
bring about in a person or an organization. Resistance to change among employees
is the biggest challenge a management faces when trying to effect a change. So,
why should an organization change?
Any business in today's fast-moving environment that is looking for the pace of
change to slow down will surely be disappointed. In fact, businesses should
embrace change. Change is important for any organization because, without
change, businesses would likely lose their competitive edge and fail to meet the
changing needs of ever changing customers.
Change that results from the adoption of new technology is common in most
organizations and while it can be disruptive at first, ultimately the change tends to
increase productivity and service. Technology also has affected how we
communicate. No longer do business people have to laboriously contact people, in
person, to find out about other people who might be useful resources - they can
search for experts online through search engines as well as through social media
sites like Linkedin. Today's improving communication technology represents
changes that allow organizations to learn more, more quickly, than ever before.

As the world evolves, customer needs change and grow, creating new demand for
new types of products and services -- and opening up new areas of opportunity for
companies to meet those needs. Change management has become crucial in
todays organizations.
Effecting a change in my team at CA Technologies
I worked as a scrum master in a product development team at CA Technologies. 2
years ago, the company adopted the Agile methodology and started following the
scrum model. A team of not more than 9 engineers made a commitment to develop
certain features from the product list (known as product backlog) in a stipulated
time frame. Usually, commitments are made for a sprint (2 to 4 week time period.
The time period is chosen by the company) and a release has typically 5 to 10
sprints. Team sits together before every sprint and carefully plans as to what all
items to be taken up during this sprint. Team as a unit tries to complete all the
items taken up during the sprint. A sprint retrospective happens after the sprint
where every member gives his opinions on what went well and what can be
improved for further sprints.

In this development model, everyone volunteers for work and goes on to complete
his/her own work. In case someone fails to complete, another team member steps

in for him. This kind of model which lays more emphasis on team work
necessitates that there are no laggards in the team. The team targets for some
features in a sprint and the team velocity is determined by the number of features it
could actually complete. It is a self-correcting model wherein team understands its
own ideal velocity by trying and failing/accomplishing. As you can see, the role of
retrospective and feedback is very prominent in this kind of a model. Every person
should be willing to volunteer for more work, to challenge his abilities and know
what his ideal potential is. Hence, feedback from peers to peers becomes very
important for this model to succeed.

Pain points of the model

I was the Scrum Master of the team and was responsible for ensuring that team
plans the sprints well and is successful in meeting the commitments more often
than not. Removing obstacles, if any, of the team was also my day to day job. After
a couple of sprints, I realized that though few engineers were meeting their
commitments, there were problems that need to be addressed. There were
engineers who were very eager to learn and challenge themselves. They were
volunteering for the toughest tasks and stretching themselves to meet the
aggressive targets. They failed at times to meet the target but the volume of the
work done in a sprint was remarkable and I felt it was doing injustice to both them

and the brilliant scrum model if we just labelled their effort as Did not meet the
commitments. A crucial performance metric set for the engineers in their appraisal
form was number of times they failed to meet scrum commitments. This brought
the morale down of the enthusiastic engineers too and they started to commit for
less work and also added buffer to their estimates.
However, my real problem was those engineers who just wanted to scrape through
the development process. They would volunteer for easy tasks, give very high
estimates and complete the work just in time. So, in essence, they would be
meeting the sprint commitments without a hiccup and they would also get a better
appraisal rating when compared to their other hard working counterparts. I wanted
to address this problem at the root because this was undermining all the good that
could happen because of the widely acclaimed scrum model.
360 Degree Feedback
The days when people can be rated purely on the basis of job done/not done
criterion were gone. In a complex team environment, how aggressively did the
engineer go after seemingly tough tasks in the backlog, how difficult was it to
complete a task, what were the obstacles that he surmounted in the process, how
willing was he to help the team with its tasks and how hard did he try to meet the
commitments in the stipulated time frame are all very important to determine

whether an engineer did a good job in a development cycle. The performance

metrics were getting complex and they were also getting very subjective. I
contemplated a lot, had discussions with my manager and decided to introduce 360
degree feedback in the team. Though I was a developer myself and could judge the
complexity and toughness of any task with reasonable certainty, I didnt want my
judgment to have an effect on someones appraisal. I wanted to know what
everyone felt about everyone else in the team. This was in line with the Law of
Averages. I may be biased against someone but the whole team will never have
the same bias.
Merits and demerits of 360 Degree Feedback
There are many merits of the 360 degree feedback process. The performance
appraisal process was highly subjective and prone to biases when a manager used
to rate his sub-ordinates. Getting the views of peers and sub-ordinates into the
process evens out the error margin. Though our organization didnt yet link 360
degrees feedback to the performance appraisal system, I wanted my report about
my team members to have a 360 degree feedback page. My recommendation
would be to give equal weightage to each persons views but how much weightage
my manager would actually give was left to him.

This feedback process helps us in identifying those star performers who dont blow
a trumpet about their accomplishments and also those to whom results were not in
favor despite a great effort. They might not have left any stone unturned but still
failed to meet the commitments owing to external
uncertainties/dependencies/delays. The feedback sheet also mandated engineers to
point out 3 positives and areas of improvement in every other engineer. I and my
manager thought that this would help engineers identify their blind spots and they
could work on them. To allay initial fears, we also announced that the areas of
improvement given by team members for only for development purposes and
wouldnt be used as a yard stick to measure performance.
I knew that this process was going to be hated by those engineers who were
complacent about the work they were doing and did not want any change. The
engineers had to do some serious introspection and retrospection before coming up
with a list of positives and negatives in themselves and also the team. From
experience, I know that high performers are more forth coming about their
negatives. They seek to know areas of improvement voluntarily, make a note of
them and show considerable improvement on those areas over time. On the other
hand, people who are happy with their mediocre performance never do a good
introspection and they have certain insecurities which never let them accept their
areas of improvement.

Initial Resistance
I sent out an excel sheet to my team mates asking them to do a thorough selfevaluation and teams evaluation. As expected, there was high resistance from the
team especially from the supposedly low performers. I had a low performers
label for them in my mind and I was trying hard to get rid of it in order to be free
of all prejudices and biases. The arguments that were given against the change
were:
Why change the time tested and proven age old system?
Whats the guarantee that team mates wont be biased against me?
How can you ensure that this wont affect my managers impression about me?
All the while, I cared only about my performance. Now, I also need to care about
how team perceives my work
There were many such arguments. I addressed most of them and my manager also
had meetings with teammates to help allay fears and doubts. I asked people to give
it a shot. I told them that we will try it for a few months and then look back and
decide whether it has done some good or bad. But, few of the engineers were very
reluctant and were not willing to accept this line of argument. I asked them to
come to me with a list of demerits of the process and I tried to convince them.

Most of them gave in and were willing to try it out. There were still a couple of
dissenters but we thought we should effect the change.
Engineers were not filling the feedback sheet despite several reminders. I set a
final deadline and thankfully few of them sent in their responses. I declared that I
would take the team out for a lunch after the first round of feedback process was
completed. This incentive motivated a few of them and the rest were pressurized
by others because they didnt want to miss the lunch. Finally, I got all the
responses and I started analyzing them.
Few engineers played a safe game and wrote very benign negatives about others.
But, a few of them were very honest about themselves and others too. I talked to
my manager and her opinion was that we should tell the engineers about their
negatives and also tell them the names of the persons who pointed them out. I was
a little taken aback by this suggestion. I strongly felt that this would lead to tiffs in
the team and would affect the harmony in the team. My manager opined that such
pain has to be borne initially in order to have an open feedback culture later on.
After a great deal of contemplation and deliberation, I agreed to her request. This
was a change I was not ready for. It gave me a feeling that I was encouraging the
team mates to enter the boxing ring and have a fight. But, I saw that there was a
profound meaning behind what my manager wanted to implement. It is only when
deep rooted beliefs about yourself are challenged that you come out of your

comfort zone. It is only when you are unsettled that you the zeal to fight is ignited
and invigorated. However, I was worried that not every team mate would take it in
a positive way and the process may lead to low team morale eventually.
The Ifs and the Tiffs
Though everyone was very happy to take the positive feedback, very few of them
took the negative feedback well. They immediately came up with excuses and
explanations. There were many ifs and buts. They were disheartened to know that a
person whom they trusted the most gave negative feedback about them. As the
next step, I coordinated meetings between team mates so that they properly
understand what was in the mind of the feedback giver when he mentioned an area
of improvement. People ended up blaming each other in these meetings. I didnt
know how to handle these meetings. My manager suggested that I should remain
quiet and interfere only if things went out of control. I could feel that relations in
the team hit an all time low. There was discord and mistrust. I could only wish that
the storm end and an era of harmony make a comeback.
I could see that few people accepted their areas of improvement and were taking
suggestions on how to improve them. It felt great to see improvements in a couple
of team members. They thanked me and my manager for helping them identif y the
improvement areas.

Changed attitude
People became careful when we rolled out the 2nd feedback cycle. The general
opinion was that why get into trouble by writing something negative about
someone and get into uncomfortable conversations. I noticed this change and
talked to people. I told them that this mistake of theirs will undo all the great work
done so far and all the pain borne by the team will be a sheer waste.
There was considerable improvement in the performance of the usual low
performers too. They became conscious of their weaknesses after peers pointed
them out and they started working hard. I could see an upsurge in their motivation
levels. Probably, they didnt want to give others a chance to write about the same
area of improvement again. Few people were openly complimenting each other on
the improvement they were showing. It was heartening to see team moving
towards an open feedback culture. When we started, the culture where everyone
openly critiqued anyone elses work seemed like a utopia to me. Though, we didnt
yet reach there, it felt as if we will get to a near perfect utopia in a couple of years.

My conclusions from the experience

Bringing about change in a person/team/organization is very difficult. Preparing
stakeholders for the change is the first step that anyone should take before making

the change happen. There is bound to be resistance. Talking to people and making
them understand the reason why change is important is a crucial step. We need to
get the buy-in of all the people involved so that the change process happens
smoothly. Every organization should try to bring in changes frequently so that
people dont get change resistant. This brings us to an important question about
why should organizations change at all and what is the change management
process that needs to be followed.

Why is Change Important in Organizations

Change is important in organizations to allow employees to learn new skills,
explore new opportunities and exercise their creativity in ways that ultimately
benefit the organization through new ideas and increased commitment. Preparing
employees to deal with these changes involves an analysis of the tools and training
required to help them learn new skills. Training can be provided through traditional
classroom settings or, increasingly, through online learning opportunities.
Importantly, organizations need to do a good job of evaluating employees'
capabilities and then taking steps to fill the gaps between current skills and the
skills required to respond to growth.
Simply asking the question "Why?" can lead to new ideas and new innovations that
can directly impact the bottom line. Organizations benefit from change that results

in new ways of looking at customer needs, new ways of delivering customer

service, new ways of strengthening customer interactions and new products that
might attract new markets. New employees joining an organization are especially
valuable because they can often point to areas of opportunity for improvement that
those who have been long involved in the company might have overlooked. But
even existing employees should be encouraged to question why things are done a
certain way and look for new ways to get work done faster, better and with higher
levels of quality and service.

Change Management Process

Every company that is trying to bring in a change needs to follow a change
management process. The processes can be different for different companies and
cultures. But broadly, the processes need to cover these three stages:
Preparing for Change
Managing Change
Reinforcing Change
Preparing for change : The management strategy for change needs to be defined
here. The change management team needs to be prepared. The change management
team must develop a plan for sponsor activities and help key business leaders carry
out these plans. Sponsorship should be viewed as the most important success

factor. The CEO of the company may support your project, but that is not the same
as sponsoring your initiative.
Sponsorship involves active and visible participation by senior business leaders
throughout the process. A change agent's or project leader's role includes helping
senior executives do the right things to sponsor the project.
Readiness assessments need to be taken to assess if the company is ready for a
change. Things like how big is the scope of the change and how many employees
are affected also need to be considered. Communication to employees is very
important. Effective communicators carefully consider three components: the
audience, what is said and when it is said. In fact, messages need to be repeated 6
to 7 times before they are cemented into the minds of employees.

Conclusion
Managing change is tough. Visionary and transformational leadership, preparing
for change, managing and reinforcing change are all important for transformation
initiatives to succeed. From the little experience that I had about change
management, I learnt a lot and I expect to learn a great deal from my future
encounters with transforming initiatives.