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Executive Interviews: Interview with Michael Roberto on Change Management
June 2007
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By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary
Thank you Professor for sharing
your profound ideas with us. Also
congratulations for being an oftencited
author in change management.
What were the antecedents for
embarking on this topic? Was there
any powerful trigger?
This project began with our desire to
study a turnaround process in realtime,
as it actually unfolded. Most
studies of change are conducted after
the transformation has taken place.
The problem with such studies is that
they are susceptible to a great deal of
biases and rationalizations as people
recall the process. In this case, we
found a
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leader (Paul Levy) willing to
allow us to study the turnaround from
the very beginning. Our first Interview
with Paul was conducted just a week
into his tenure as CEO. We then
conducted an Interview with him
every 3 weeks, on video, for the first six
months of his tenure. Therefore, we
could hear Paul explaining what he
had just done, as well as what he was
about to do in the coming week. He had
no idea whether he would succeed or
not—he was simply describing his
thought process at the time. This realtime
study of a turnaround is very
unique and we were fortunate that Mr.
Levy was willing to cooperate in this
effort.
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Unlike other subjects, wasn't
Change Management an abstract one?
How difficult was it to theorize and
put the research findings in an
understandable and applicable
manner?
Change management is an abstract
topic. However, my co-author (David
Garvin) and I are both very practically
oriented scholars. We care a great deal
about developing ideas that have
relevance for practitioners, not simply
for other scholars. Therefore, we tried
to make this very concrete by focusing
on the day-to-day activities of Mr.
Levy and his team. We didn't stay at a
high level, but instead, investigated a
whole series of actions, events and
decisions that were tactical in
nature… rather than simply focusing
on the high-level strategic choices that
occur much less frequently in the life
of an organization. -
Why do people resist change?
What's the psychology of resistance?
This is a very complex question and I
would need hours to do it justice. To
summarize, though, I would say that
humans naturally fear the unknown.
We want to be in control. Change
efforts often create a loss of a sense of
control, and therefore, they cause
fear —which leads to resistance to
change. Moreover, if we have been
the people responsible for the
current course of action, then it
becomes difficult for us to change
course. We experience what is called
the sunk cost effect—i.e., because we
have committed a large amount of
time, energy and money to the
current course of action, we have a
hard time cutting our losses. Instead,
we escalate our commitment to the
current course of action, even if it is
failing. -
You have remarked in Change
Through Persuasion (HBR, February
2005), "And when an organization
has had a succession of leaders,
resistance to change is even
stronger". Why is it so?
David Garvin and I have described
this as "this too shall pass"
phenomenon. Lower level
employees simply come to believe
that, if they wait long enough, the
current leaders of the organization
will leave and the change effort will
fade away. People become jaded.
Their skepticism about change
efforts builds when one
transformation after another seems
to just fall apart. In some firms, we
see this as a "flavor of the month"
approach. In other words, senior
leaders seem to offer bold initiatives,
but then they don't stick with them
for a long period of time. Each year, a
new "fad" or "flavor of the month"
seems to be launched. Employees
realize that they can simply wait and
a new initiative will come along.
They recognize that senior leaders
simply aren't going to persist in
tough change efforts. Thus,
employees become emboldened to
resist change initiatives. -
How do you rate the turnaround
efforts of Lee Iacoca at Chrysler, Louis
Gerstner at IBM and Carlos Ghosn at
Nissan Motors?
Well, the results speak for
themselves. Each saved a company
on the brink of collapse. Each, of
course, had a very different
leadership style. However, they had
a few things in common. First, they
were willing to make the tough
choices required to improve
performance. Nothing was off-limits.
Second, they inspired and motivated
well. Third, they had what Welch
would call a "bias for speed." They
didn't stretch out major decisions
over a long period of time. They
made choices about what had to be
done and moved quickly. They
recognized that they didn't have the
luxury of staging the change process
over long periods of time. The
situation required a sense of urgency.
1.
Change Management Case Studies
2. ICMR
Case Collection
3.
Case Study Volumes
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