Bringing Practitioner-Focused Research to People Management Practitioners
March 2017
In This Issue…
FREE E-BOOK: The Easy, Hard & Tough Work of Managing Change
Successfully Changing Workplace Culture with the Boundary Theory
Flashback Feature:
Labour Unions in Canada Today: A Conversation with Bob White
FREE E-BOOK: The Easy, Hard & Tough Work of Managing Change
Dr. Carol A Beatty, Queen’s University IRC, 2016
Change success rates have remained stubbornly low. I believe that part of the reason for this is an over-emphasis on high-level change planning and an under-emphasis on implementation. In this book I deal with the easy, the hard but especially the tough work of change management. I take the complex concepts and make them as simple as possible for the reader without robbing them of their inherent value. I boil down a wealth of research to its essence, and illustrate the important concepts and points with case studies and examples to enable the reader to comprehend these concepts and apply them to their own change initiatives.
The book is based on more than twenty years of my research, teaching and consulting practice in both public and private sectors. In that time I have trained over 1,500 organizational leaders and managers, given countless seminars, researched the topic in approximately 350 organizations and facilitated change initiatives in more than 25 organizations. This book is the distillation of what I have learned and experienced. Highlights include:
Choosing the right people with the right skills to plan and implement a successful change project
Creating a sense of urgency for the change throughout the organization
Crafting an inspiring change vision that will truly motivate people
Creating a complete roadmap for implementing your change successfully
Successfully Changing Workplace Culture with the Boundary Theory A Team’s Journey to Manage Culture More Effectively in a Unionized Environment
Neil Culp, Business Consultant, Niagara Region, 2015
Organizational culture isn’t like a sports car. It cannot instantly change directions and make a hairpin turn. Instead, it’s more like a tanker ship that takes time and planning to put on the right course. If you think about how your organization or team arrived at the culture it currently has, it’s unlikely you can point to a single event, or even a few moments, that explain your current culture. Instead, it is the slow changes that happen, unnoticed at the time, which better explain how most organizational cultures develop. Not actively managing your culture doesn’t cause it to quickly turn off course, but instead allows it to drift slowly astray until one day you wonder how you got to Baffin Island when you thought you were headed for Halifax.
This reality came into clear focus about two years ago within the Social Assistance and Employment Opportunities (SAEO) division at the Niagara Region. At that time, I was the Human Resources Consultant (HRC) supporting the Community Service Department (which includes the SAEO Division) of the Niagara Region. As an HRC, I acted as the lead contact and strategic resource for the management team of my client group. Since that time, we have been on an exciting and interesting path characterized by thinking differently about what boundaries mean and how to use them to keep culture on course.
SAEO, one of three operating divisions within the Community Services Department of the Regional Municipality of Niagara, administers the Ontario Works program to approximately 10,500 households within the Niagara region who are experiencing significant financial hardship (Niagara Region, 2014). The SAEO team includes over 220 employees comprised mainly of unionized (CUPE) staff.
Our Situation
In 2005, senior management began examining the work culture and responded by implementing tools and training that would align the day to day operations with a culture that reflected the corporate values of respect, honesty, partnership, choice and service.
Flashback Feature: Labour Unions in Canada Today
A Conversation with Bob White
Pradeep Kumar and Bryan Downie, 1995
Canadian labour leader Bob White, who was instrumental in creating the Canadian Auto Workers union, died last month at the age of 81.
In spring 1995, Bob White met with Pradeep Kumar and Bryan Downie of the School of Industrial Relations at Queen's University for a conversation on the labour movement in Canada, where it is and where it is going, and on Bob White's vision of the role and future of the movement.
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Call 1-888-858-7838 | Email IRC@QueensU.ca | Visit us online at irc.queensu.ca
