Developing strategic processes for change in top management teams

Abstract

Over the last five years we have been working as change consultants and management development practitioners in the public sector with senior and middle managers. This article describes the non-prescriptive approach that we have adopted in helping these managers to face up to and work on change issues. We do not have a set of solutions to offer, but rather a framework that enables the managers to make sense of their experience and to plan effectively for action and change. We have been working at a time when the pressures for change in public sector organizations have never been greater. The requirement is for top management to develop an effective strategic process to manage what is nothing less than an organizational transformation. At all organizational levels there is at a minimum the need to be more cost-effective, to be more responsive to customers, and to use fewer resources. It appears that this UK public-sector experience resonates with that of European private sector managers. In a recent Ashridge Management College survey[1] of 150 companies, over 60 per cent of senior managers identified managing major organizational and culture change as their main priority.