Theory that effective process re-engineering and bringing about positive change is the result of:
1.1. Effective leadership
Bass (1960) said that “leadership involves a reordering or organizing of new ways of acting, as well as the need to overcome resistance to change” (pg 83). Leadership is nothing else than getting a group of people or individuals to follow instructions and re-directions. Bass (1960) suggested that positive change is the result of effective leadership: “Leadership has been defined as influence. More specifically, it has been equated with any positive influence act; with behavior required to direct a group and with behavior making a difference among groups.” (pg89).
Bass (1960) also stated that recognition is used to motivate leadership to change (pg 97). This suggests that leadership is directly related to the quality of change, and/or whether people resist or follow, and how willingly they follow. To the other hand, although incentives or rewards are offered, it is not always sufficient to motivate an action. Bass (1960) introduced the idea that people can have an inability to change. He also said: “Many group situations exist where the basic difficulties or resistances to change are due to members’ inabilities to change rather than to lack of incentive” (p101).
Collaboration, the coordinated or managed and organized effort of two or more individuals, as described by Bass (1960), as interaction between people or co-workers or departments (which is the building of relationships), “produces change results sooner than through isolated acting” (p129). This can be interpreted that two people or more can get better results than one working alone. The idea of collaboration supports leadership need and the need for forming relationships between people, which is also the result initiated by leadership.
Then, when asking the question, how leadership relates to change, Bass (1960) explained that leadership takes place through changing behavior, people, and performance attitudes. It is the leader’s task to formulate and create an environment in which his/her followers make the behavioral changes that will best support the ability to adapt to any redirection or strategic change. Therefore, if relationships and behavior attitudes are based on them, are contributing factors in change quality, then change takes place better through interaction of these people that collaborate or are supposed to collaborate (p135).
Leadership, as is explained in the later sections, can be interpreted as situational (Goleman et al, 2002). When change is required in an organization, it is often initiated without regards to human needs. Leaders may just dictate the switch from one system to another. But, as Davenport (1993) warned: “…because the human aspects of change are managed as afterthoughts, [they] lead to significant human resource problems” (p96). Leadership and the change outcome can go apparently into both directions; it results in success or in failure. The critical mass is the people that are affected by the change.
As additional argument that change or process-reengineering results are the direct outcome of leadership qualities and implementation, Davenport (1993) discussed that failure in process change management is due to lack of the “human side of change”(96).
In addition, to justify Davenport (1993) and Bass (1960), Kotter (1995) said that Leading change is about inspiring followers of a vision that grabs hold of their desires to want something else or even better. A leader of change affixes a vision onto his followers (the stakeholders) that creates a sense of urgency among them. Kotter (1995) added, “…successful transformation is 70 to 90 percent leadership and only 10 to 30 percent management” (p26). When change takes place more effectively because of people being led rather than being managed by their leaders, it suggests that the quality of leadership is based on the level of relationship among employees and their leaders. It also suggests that the quality of heart-engagement to the task will yield in greater performance, all being part of the leadership quality application (Goleman et al, 2002).
Kotter (1995) proposed that creating the sense of urgency is the most important environment to be created among the participants (p22). To the other hand, as they are important steps in leading process reengineering, and the first and most important one is to create the awareness of its urgent needs, improvements, and changes to be made, Kotter (1995) said: “…because he mostly skipped the earlier steps, he ran into a wall of resistance” (p22).
Resistance to change or new comfort zones can arise from different situations. According to Kotter (1995), however, they come from skipping important steps in the process stages. For instance, why would a stakeholder buy-into the importance of a vision if he/she does not believe a change is necessary? Establishing a sense of urgency is the most important step, therefore, that will drive motivation or support for the change initiative, thus requiring leadership.
Theory that effective process re-engineering and bringing about positive change is the result of:
1.2. Based on relationship levels
In process reengineering, or leading change, a project needs to be managed. There is however a human side that needs to be addressed in every project. This is how well the participating humans perform in the project since project tasks do not complete themselves. The participants or project task applicators require motivation, vision reflection, participation, and communication clarity. The one thing, the authors suggested, that improves these project requisites, is the relationship between the project participants. When the relationships between them are positive and strong, they will work together better and when errors occur, they will be more forgiving to each other (Meredith and Mantel Jr., 2003).
Processes are responsible of how well people collaborate. Collaboration equals relationship. This is because when relations are strong, they create an environment in which collaboration functions well, or when they are bad, these collaborations function badly. The better people collaborate the better the information travels between them that is required to achieve one common goal, all according to the leader’s objective (Hammer, M., and Champy, J.,2001, p28).
Theory that effective process re-engineering and bringing about positive change is the result of:
1.3.Communication clarity between stakeholders and participants
Kotter (1995) said that without a clear vision communicated or understanding among participants, the direction to change could possibly lead to confusion, poor or no success (failure), or to resistance, and arguments (p8). When arguments between participants arise, their work collaboration will result in ineffectiveness. It was also found that
“…ineffective communication [is] common, all driven by habits developed in more stable times”. This suggests that when reengineering takes place, the change-affected people, already in disarray, will communicate even less effectively during unstable times.
Kotter (1995) pointed out reasons for failure of change reengineering projects. These are:
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Reasons for failure of process reengineering projects by Kotter (1995) p9. |
Obviously the opposite; reasons for success in process reengineering |
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1. Clear vision and task understanding |
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2. Full participation of stakeholders in process change (participants are interacting) |
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3. Full leadership support (subordinates can see and feel their leaders’ support in the change project) |
Table 1, Comparison of failure or success reasons in process re-engineering
The better the relationship because of already a higher degree of trust between the colleagues, the more likely their communication level is raised and therefore a communicated vision is understood with much more clarity (Kotter, 1995, p67). Why is a clear communication important in process engineering? Kotter (1995) proposed a clear vision between colleagues to aid to increased collaboration and task effectiveness in the change initiative. In theory, the better the relationship and the clearer the vision is conveyed equally and well understood, the smaller are the arguments among the stakeholder teams. Arguments easily arise when one understands the vision or instructions for change differently than another (p67).
In addition, to underline the importance of clear communication in process reengineering, Kotter (1995) said that “…the real power of a vision is unleashed only when most of those involved in an enterprise or activity have a common understanding of its goals and direction”. “Managers under-communicate, and often not by a small amount” (p85). When under-communication takes place, then how can visions clearly enough be communicated in order to be accurate with completing exactly that, which the customer wants the stakeholders to achieve in the process reengineering project?
In summary and conclusion, effective process reengineering and bringing about positive change, is the direct result of effective leadership, the relationship level between leaders, their subordinates, and the leadership among employee teams, and the communication clarity between stakeholders and participants. It can also be suggested that communication clarity aids to improved relationship levels, and when relationships are stronger, people communicate clearer.