Driving Organizational Readiness for Change through Strategic Workshops

Abstract

Change initiatives in organizations often fail because people are neither committed to nor convinced they can implement the change successfully. The change challenge is a practical problem for most leaders. The vast literature on change management offers insights into obstacles to change and how to overcome them, and the emerging literature on readiness for change offers a plethora of instruments for how to assess it, though primarily in health care settings. However, there is limited advice about how to design workshops around new initiatives in organizations to increase readiness for change. To address this problem, we developed a model of the drivers of change readiness, based on survey data from 374 participants in 69 independently facilitated workshops to test hypotheses. The findings show which constructs have the most predictive power. These results have important implications for how to design and facilitate workshops that increase participants’ readiness for change. The study makes several contributions to the theory and practice of creating shared readiness for change.

Digital organisational readiness: experiences from manufacturing companies

“…On the second day, the group met without the researchers' presence and divided into their specific subject areas of specialisation, reflected on the answers provided during the first day. The group also compiled feedback regarding the feasibility and validity of the questionnaire and insights on how the workshops could be replicated within their local teams, following Roos and Nilsson's (2020) recommendations about workshops' design, structure, function and applicability.…”

“…(1) Identify the needs and strategic benefits of digital transformation (Weiner, 2009;Machado et al, 2019b;Roos and Nilsson, 2020).…”

“…The PMI uses a set of questions for assessment of capacity, commitment and culture that can be adapted to the needs of the project or program, implemented via interviews and workshops for assessment activities (Combe, 2014). Roos and Nilsson (2020) defend that the organisational readiness for change depends on the content (what needs to be changed), the processes (phases or steps), the context (the environment) and the attributes (people). The authors found that "motivation" for change is positively related with beliefs; "psychological safety" to how skills and competencies have been valued and applied; "cohesion" with a focused team; "knowledge creation" with innovation; "engagement" with clear roadmaps and goals; and finally, "readiness for change" is supported by a strong motivation for implementing the change processes.…”

Issues and Implications of Readiness to Change

“…The informational role of a leader requires control of information in the organization through acting as spokespersons, disseminators, and monitors of the full readiness of the organization to change. Leaders ' decision-making roles encompass taking responsibility in decision making, innovative practices, handling disturbances, negotiation roles, and resource allocators (Roos and Nilsson 2020). Therefore, it is clear that a close relationship exists between the leader's responsibility and the overall success in the readiness for change implementation in an organization.…”

Supporting innovation processes using material artefacts: Comparing the use of LEGO bricks and moderation cards as boundary objects

“…The use of LEGO bricks enables a metaphorical representation of such ideas that can better express implicit knowledge and the first fragile ideas than single words written on cards. Thus, according to the current literature, LEGO bricks, as a three‐dimensional and tactile material, seem to contribute to a better understanding of one another's tacit knowledge compared to two‐dimensional and text‐based materials such as documents (Geithner & Menzel, 2016; Roos & Nilsson, 2020; Wengel et al, 2021). Therefore, in the current study, it is hypothesized that the use of LEGO bricks will lead to better mutual understanding in the first phase of innovation processes than will the use of moderation cards.H2 The perceived mutual understanding of group members is higher in the condition with LEGO bricks than in the condition with moderation cards.…”