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Change Management

Organizational Transformation: Why it’s So Hard, Why it Matters, and Why You Should Start Now

Organizational Transformation: Why it’s So Hard, Why it Matters, and Why You Should Start Now!

Organization Development / By

If there is one thing we’ve re-learned over the past few years, it’s that change is constant, whether we like it or not. The COVID-19 pandemic has often been credited for being the catalyst of changing the way we work, but it was only a reminder of how quickly people can adapt when they need to—and how resilient they can be. Today, adaptability and resilience are required on a regular basis. Market volatility has made strategic transformations essential for some industries to survive. Critical and topical initiatives like equity and inclusion, digital transformation and building a future-proof workforce represent massive shifts, particularly for organizations where culture has remained unchanged in decades. Here is where organizational transformation comes in.

Leaders and Change: Imperatives in the ‘New Normal’

Leaders and Change: Imperatives in the ‘New Normal’

Change Management / By

The pandemic experience, while incredibly challenging for leaders and teams, also provided important learnings. We came to recognize the greater impact and influence of such attributes as resilience, agility, humility, curiosity, self-care, compassion and caring and attention to growing self-awareness as central to the leader role in guiding teams and ensuring that organization priorities are realized. These are foundational and increasingly expected of the most effective leaders.

Key Learnings for Building our Future

Canada’s Pandemic Response: Key Learnings for Building our Future

Organization Development / By

What if the entire population becomes vulnerable due a pandemic? COVID-19 took the world by surprise, then by storm, compelling us to adapt to new realities which considerably impact our individual, social and professional lives. The Canadian Federal Government, responsible for leading the pandemic crisis response, had to take effective and swift action in a rapidly shifting environment, driven by a new and mysterious threat. Implementing a multitude of effective responses across the country during COVID-19 posed a significant challenge for the Federal Government with regards to speed, agility and performance, and they proved up to the task, using an action learning, collaborative and iterative approach.

Facing the Storm

Leveraging Pandemic Learnings (Part 1)

Organization Development / By

Emergencies and crises often create the perfect storm for transformation, as change is primarily driven by the powerful winds of Pain and/or Gain. Not surprisingly, up to 80% of change is propelled by Pain, a wake up call that pushes us out of complacency, providing opportunities to raise the bar, innovate, shift paradigms, modernize, and make systems work better for more people.

Strategy or Culture? What’s Your Leadership Challenge?

Strategy or Culture? What’s Your Leadership Challenge?

Human Resources / By

Change was in the wind. As is true for many industries, the insurance industry was facing significant change. Making the shift from a regulated to a deregulated industry seemed a daunting challenge for the 100 year old RockSolid Insurance Company. The question for the executive team was how to craft a strategy and initiate change in ways that would enable the company to compete successfully into the future.

Are You in a Communication Rut? Shift the Pattern, Get Different Results

Are You in a Communication Rut? Shift the Pattern, Get Different Results

Change Management / By

Imagine that you are in a conversation when you suddenly realize that you have had this exact same disagreement with a co-worker, or a family member, many times before. In the moment, you can predict what you will say and do and what the other person will too. You feel compelled to act in a certain way, even when you know that what you will say or do next is unwise or unproductive. You cannot seem to help yourself. Or the other person! After the conversation has gone from bad to worse, you may find yourself attributing it to the other person’s incompetence, character flaws, or bad motive.

Is the Sponsor for Your Change Project Missing in Action?

Ghost Sponsors: Is the Sponsor for Your Change Project Missing in Action?

Change Management / By

George was sitting quietly at the back of the room when he suddenly came to life. “But you don’t understand. All this talk about getting ‘sponsors’ on board is all well and good, but what do you do when your sponsor is basically invisible?” A roomful of participants nodded in agreement as George continued. “We can’t get sponsors to show up at meetings, they won’t make decisions that affect the project, they don’t allocate the resources we need. They might as well be ghosts!”

The Critical Role of Orientation for New Employees to Your Organization’s Culture

Top 5 Queen’s IRC Articles from 2016

News / By

Each year, Queen’s IRC releases a number of new articles and papers written by our facilitators, staff and experts in the community. In 2016, we also released a change management book, written by Dr. Carol Beatty. These are the five most popular articles Queen’s IRC released in 2016.

Peter Edwards

A Futurist’s Look at IR/HR – Why it’s Time to Start Over

Change Management / By

The 2015 Don Wood Lecture was delivered by Peter Edwards, Vice-President Human Resources and Labour Relations at Canadian Pacific. In the lecture, Peter spoke about the future of work, including the changes that are taking place in organizations as new technology emerges, how these changes affect workers and how the HR and labour relations processes, like collective bargaining, need to evolve.

Stephanie Noel, Queen's IRC Director

Introducing a Complimentary Change Management E-Book: The Easy, Hard & Tough Work of Managing Change by Dr. Carol A. Beatty

News / By

When I first started as an MBA student, I attended the Managing Change MBA course taught by Dr. Carol A. Beatty at Queen’s. During that time Dr. Beatty’s research was focused on collecting data from organizations about successful and unsuccessful change management projects. I am pleased to introduce Carol’s e-book The Easy, Hard & Tough Work of Managing Change.

The Easy, Hard & Tough Work Of Managing Change

FREE E-BOOK: The Easy, Hard & Tough Work of Managing Change

Change Management / By

This free e-book walks you through the change management process, from start to finish. It's based on more than 20 years of Dr. Carol A. Beatty’s research, and identifies not only the easy and hard work in change management, but also the tough work that is often neglected by change leaders, who place too much emphasis on high-level change planning and not enough emphasis on implementation.

Participation or Pseudo-Participation? Change Agent Challenges in Implementing Organizational Change

Participation or Pseudo-Participation? Change Agent Challenges in Implementing Organizational Change

Change Management / By

Creating energy, engagement, and commitment to change initiatives is one of many challenges we face as change agents. Increasingly, organizations, managers, and change practitioners espouse a belief that involving people in the change initiative is important. Many of us would agree in principle with this philosophy: Participation is essential to successful change implementation. However, the practical dimension of how to actually accomplish employee participation in change initiatives poses a challenge to change implementers.

Breaking Bad News about Organizational Change

Breaking Bad News About Organizational Change

Change Management / By

Getting the news out about an upcoming restructuring, merger or acquisition, layoff, or other major organizational change can be a challenge. No one wants to experience having their name ‘pop up’ in a new organization chart that is widely distributed online before receiving any direct personal communication from their boss.

Workplace In Motion Summit Proceedings

Queen’s University IRC 2015 Workplace in Motion Summit Proceedings

Organization Development / By

The world of work is changing, and the most successful organizations and practitioners are those that understand how these changes impact the way they do business. To help them do so, and to foster further dialogue, Queen’s IRC hosted the Workplace in Motion Summit. This report elaborates on the most important questions, issues, and themes identified by Summit participants going forward.

Managing Emotional Reactions to Organizational Change

Top 5 Queen’s IRC Articles from 2015

News / By

Here are the most popular articles Queen's IRC released in 2015. 1. Managing Emotional Reactions to Organizational Change. 2. Workplace Bullying and Harassment: Costly Conduct. 3. An Inquiry into the State of HR in Canada in 2013: Executive Summary. 4. The Tough Work of Managing Change. 5. Human Rights and Human Wrongs: Our Continuing Need to Teach

Stephanie Noel, Queen's IRC Director

Looking Back on 2015…

News / By

As the year draws to a close, I would like to reflect on some of the highlights for Queen’s IRC and recap the articles we released this year. This year, we introduced an advanced change management course called Designing Change, which provides the tools and skills needed to map out and lead a transformational culture shift in an organization.

Peter Edwards

Peter Edwards Delivers 2015 W. D. Wood Lecture

News / By

Peter Edwards, Vice-President Human Resources and Labour Relations at Canadian Pacific, delivered the 2015 W. D. Wood Lecture on November 6, 2015 at Queen’s University. Peter spoke about the future of work, the future of the labour movement and how technology will impact jobs. Peter urged the audience to think about how things like controlling trains remotely, driverless cars, and completely automated factories are going to profoundly change the world.

Managing Emotional Reactions to Organizational Change

Managing Emotional Reactions to Organizational Change

Change Management / By

Can you recall a time when you experienced a major change in your organization?  Perhaps like others around you, you experienced a roller coaster of emotions: excitement that at long last something was going to happen to change the status quo, confusion about the specifics of the intended changes, and anxiety about what it could mean for you, your team, and even your family.  Change can be disruptive, both professionally and personally. 

A Case Study About the ‘Made in Cogeco’ Change Model

The Importance of Communication for Effective Change Management: A Case Study About the ‘Made in Cogeco’ Change Model

Change Management / By

Working in the telecommunications industry, people assume that we are ahead of the curve in terms of change initiatives and communication practises.  But similar to other companies, we are challenged to come up with our own change management processes within our organization.  Our industry is changing rapidly, and that means we need to change too. In this article, I will share how Cogeco developed a new change model quite quickly to respond rapidly and succinctly to the transformational trends in our industry. 

Communicating During an Organizational Change

Communicating During an Organizational Change

Change Management / By

Most experts would agree that communication is a vital ingredient in successful change initiatives, and there is much research to support this assertion. My own research revealed a very high correlation between change success and communications efforts (Pearson correlation r = 0.567, significant at the 0.01 level). Furthermore, it has also been shown that ineffective internal communication is a major contributor to the failure of change initiatives.

A Team’s Journey to Manage Culture More Effectively in a Unionized Environment

Successfully Changing Workplace Culture with the Boundary Theory

Human Resources / By

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.

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