16A. Back to the Opening Case
Where would you plot Brabeck's approach to change on Figure 16.1? Explain. What are the major positives and negatives of this approach?

For further information about the interactive annotations in this chapter, visit our Web site /business/kreitner/management/9e/students/annotations.

Author Notes 16-A: Back to the Opening Case Brabeck uses the Tuning approach to organizational change. For a company like Nestlé, a food company with a well-known brand and established markets, this is a good approach--as Brabeck says--pragmatic. The primary positive is that a company that is not being rattled by changes can accomplish more. The only possible negative is if the market changes dramatically, the people at Nestlé are not experienced at dealing with radical changes. Frankly, I think Nestlé's approach makes sense for them. (Don't mess with my Crunch bar!)

16B. CEO Jeff Bezos Cheers for Amazon.com
Whenever the company needs a new dose of optimism, he reminds his staff of Amazon's constantly rising overall customer counts: 14 million in 1999, 20 million in 2000, 25 million in 2001.

Those numbers are, in a sense, proof to Bezos that throughout the ups and downs, "the company continued to do the right thing"--day after day, quarter after quarter, year after year. It's Amazon's secret formula for continued survival.

Chip Bayers, "The Last Laugh," Business 2.0, 3 (September 2002); 93.

Questions: How much does executive cheerleading help employees deal with constant change? Explain.

Author Notes 16-B: CEO Jeff Bezos Cheers for Amazon.com Change can be very overwhelming and disheartening. It's hard to keep doing different things differently. There's also a sense of loss with a change, as well as failure, because if you were doing things right there should be no need to change. Enthusiastic "cheerleading" techniques can help keep the spirits of employees up, and encourage their support of the changes. A reminder that you are doing things right in spite of the need for change can provide a real boost.

16C. Confessions of a Change Agent
Hi. My name is Seth, and I have a problem: I'm a change junkie. If the world around me isn't changing, I get bored and become inefficient.

On second thought, that's not really my problem. My problem is that while I'm busy advocating change, insisting on change, and teaching change, deep down inside, I hate change. Change is inconvenient, painful, and frightening.

Seth Godin, "Change Agent," Fast Company, no. 29 (November 1999): 356.

Questions: How often are you caught in this revolving door of loving and hating change? Explain the circumstances. How do you deal with such mixed emotions about change in yourself and in others?

Author Notes 16-C: Confessions of a Change Agent Children with abusive parents will often lie about the abuse, because they fear possible changes more than they fear the parents. People will stay in noxious jobs that they hate for years rather than make a change to another company or position. Some people hate change, no matter what. Change thresholds vary. An old friend of mine would put his house on the market every time he was in a stable romantic relationship. When he and the current girlfriend broke up, he'd take the house off the market. I told him I thought he had to have some potential for change in his life at all times--either in romance or living quarters. (Someone finally bought the house in one of those fluctuations, and he has missed it ever since.) I am extremely change resistant. Oh, I change, but sometimes I have to drag myself kicking and screaming. The main reason? I like to have control over my world, and change means abdicating at least some of that control. How about you? Why do you resist change? Why do you embrace it?

16D. Afraid of the Dark?
Consultant Peter Guiliano:

People don't resist change, they resist the unknown.

As quoted in Stephanie Armour, "Failure to Communicate Costly for Companies," USA Today (September 30, 1998): 1B.

Question: What key lessons does this statement teach us about avoiding and managing resistance to change? Explain.

Author Notes 16-D: Afraid of the Dark? One key to overcoming resistance to change is to make it a more comfortable and familiar process--get to know the change, invite it over to dinner. During my college years and for several years after that, it seemed as though I was moving two or three times a year--and I was! I developed a routine for moving into a new place. I set up my stereo first and always played the same record while I was unpacking. I had certain things that were always arranged a certain way. I also gave myself permission to be uncomfortable in the new place for a while. I had a "three week rule"--I discovered that it took me three weeks to get comfortable with the change. Later, I learned that experts estimate that it takes 21 days to make or break a habit. Looks like my guesstimate was accurate.

16E. America's Secret Weapon?
If there's one essential quality that underpins success in a world of stupefying change, it's resilience--the capacity to adapt to radically new circumstances and emerge from a crisis not merely unbroken but substantially stronger. As a country, the United States is history's most convincing case study of resilience in action....

America's resilience is based on a series of seemingly irreconcilable opposites, tensions that America holds in perpetual creative balance: coherence and diversity, community and activism, strength and compassion, bravery and prudence, the spiritual and the material. America is nearly unique among the world's nations in its capacity to absorb--and channel--contradictions that would tear other countries apart.

Gary Hamel, "What CEOs Can Learn from America," Fortune (November 12, 2001): 139.

Question: What OD lessons can managers learn from this national portrait?

Author Notes 16-E: America's Secret Weapon? On a business trip to Japan during the heyday of their economic boom and the glowing descriptions of "Japanese management," I remember thinking that the secret to Japan was being in the right place at the right time with the right culture. Although there is no denying the Japanese approach to business is amazing, it's also limited by their culture. I felt pretty sure that as the world economy continued to evolve, Japan would start having problems, and they have. The main reason I was sure of that is their lack of flexibility. The main reason that the United States has survived so many permutations is its natural bent for flexibility. I mean, think about it. Every four years--or eight years at the longest--we start off with a new head of our government. More often than that we change members of Congress and other political leaders. We expect change; it's built into our system. Even our constitution has a built-in method for changing it. Managers in the United States can take heart from the fact that we are already used to change. If handled well, most of us are flexible enough to make changes work.

16F. Celebrating the Unexpected
Legendary management writer and consultant Peter F. Drucker:

If you start out by looking at change as threats, you will never innovate. Don't dismiss something simply because this is not what you had planned. The unexpected is often the best source of innovation.

As quoted in James Daly, "Sage Advice," Business 2.0, 1 (August 22, 2000): 142.

Question: What does this perspective teach us about dealing with tempered radicals?

Author Notes 16-F: Celebrating the Unexpected We tend to go through our lives living with assumptions and relying on short-cuts. Part of this tendency involves rejecting anything that is different or new. Because of this, we may have a tendency to automatically reject tempered radicals and their change ideas. Instead, maybe we should see them as a valuable source of new perspectives--the "unexpected" that we're lucky to have in our organizations.

16G. Greenpeace Disagrees Without Being Disagreeable
Rick Hind, legislative director, Greenpeace Toxics Campaign:

At Greenpeace, we are often in conflict with PVC manufacturers. The big users of plastics don't need to use PVC--but they don't know that yet. We start out by being reasonable. For example, we met with the whole toy industry before we made a public campaign against vinyl toys. When two meetings resulted in foot-dragging and stonewalling, we began to publicize toy additives. After two years of such publicity, companies became interested in talking with us privately.

As quoted in "Disagree--Without Being Disagreeable," Fast Company, no. 29 (November 1999): 58.

Questions: Why is it so difficult for people to avoid competitive and destructive conflict? Why is it important for environmentalists at Greenpeace to engage in cooperative conflict?

Author Notes 16-G: Greenpeace Disagrees Without Being Disagreeable Greenpeace has separated the problem from the problem-creators. Greenpeace activists' goal is not to destroy those who don't approach environmental issues the way they do; instead, they hope to foster change first through education and other reasonable approaches. Only when those approaches don't work do they move to the more confrontational approach. However, throughout the process, the goal is to change the usage, not damage the users. This approach allows a group with fairly radical ideas to continue to survive and be heard. These people are suggesting things that seem far-fetched to many in the mainstream, but they are not terrorists. By using a reasonable approach, their goals look more reasonable also.

16H. Please, Let's Be More Respectful. Thank You.
We are not, sad to say, born kind and tolerant. Survival instincts still push us to fight or flee, dominate or submit. Just watch children at play. The good news is we're trainable. We learn our behaviors. We can develop different ways of interacting. We can be taught to play nice....

Learning to develop respectful relationships at work is perhaps the most important work-related skill we can develop. Our successes will be a measure of how far we've come as a society. Our failures will end up as headlines in the morning newspaper.

Robert Rosell, "The Respectful Workplace," Training, 38 (November 2001): 80.

Questions: Do you think standards of social conduct have declined in recent years? Examples? Are disrespect and incivility conflict triggers in the workplace? Explain. What can managers (and you) do to improve the situation?

Author Notes 16-H: Please, Let's Be More Respectful. Thank You. Every time I go to a popular movie these days, there is invariably someone in the audience talking in a normal tone of voice to someone else in the theater. I finally realized that these people are part of a TV generation where they're used to watching movies in their living rooms, and a movie theater doesn't seem any different, so they talk without considering the people around them. Appropriate social conduct is not a product of money, region of the country, education, or any demographic characteristic. Social conduct is learned in the home and modeled by our parents or caregivers. If you were raised from a child to consider others and behave with respect, you will continue to do so as an adult. However, I've seen too many parents behaving like spoiled children around their own progeny, leading me to be pretty sure that the boorish behavior will continue for another generation or more. Disrespect and incivility are never positive behaviors. They cause conflict, escalate conflict, and always make things worse in any situation. What can a manager do? How about setting standards for behavior, not tolerating rudeness or inconsiderate behavior from employees, suppliers or customers, and role-modeling the expectations on a daily basis. This will help others deal with those people who were "born in a barn and raised by wolves," as my grandmother used to say.

16I. Negotiating a Pay Raise
Negotiate your position, not your paycheck. Most bosses don't like to talk about money any more than you do. No matter how much you think you're being underpaid, don't kvetch about it. Instead, talk about what you've achieved for the company and offer to slay even bigger dragons in the future. Says [employment lawyer Lee] Miller: "There's no free lunch. You're unlikely to get a big raise unless you take on more responsibility."

Ronald Henkoff, "Are You (More than) Ready for a Pay Raise?" Fortune (December 8, 1997): 236.

Questions: Do you dislike asking for a pay raise? Why? How well would this negotiating tactic work for you? Explain.

Author Notes 16-I: Negotiating a Pay Raise From a purely financial perspective, if you're not worth more than your company is paying you, you're not worth keeping. You can't just be "earning your keep" to get ahead, you need to be adding value to the company. Pay raises aren't about fairness, no matter how hard compensation specialists try to make that true. Often, a raise has to be asked for, and substantiated. Those people who wait for someone to hand them a raise need to realize that no successful organization is going to voluntarily hand someone more money who doesn't seem to want it. Take two steps when asking for a raise: show how much more you're doing than was originally asked of you, and show what else you plan to do. Then--most important--say what you expect in return. It's a basic rule in sales, but often neglected anyway--ask for the order.