Organizational change

Tareq al-Suwaidan distils the principles of organizational change into a thirty-question exercise he composed from the conclusions of more than thirty leading management scholars — human estimates that prevail today, not absolutes ^{1 2}. The key difference between planning and change: planning asks where we are, where we want to go and how to get there; change adds a fourth — what is the expected resistance and how do we overcome it, 'resisting the resistance' — so planning is a part of change ^{3 4}.

Change is required even in a successful organisation meeting its goals, because no organisation lives in a vacuum while its competitors move ⁵. Change has two drivers, not one: treating and pre-empting dangers, and developing advantages; his example is Sony releasing a replacement for its own product about every three weeks before it 'burns out' in the market — change with no visible danger, to preserve the gap over competitors ^{6 7 8}. The prevailing opinion he relays: change everything at once rather than axis by axis, because the parts of the work are interlinked; and a big, sudden change is more effective than a gradual one because two thirds of change efforts fail through internal resistance, and gradualness lets the resistance organise (needs_source: the figure as he gave it) ^{2 9 10}. Any major error in a step of change may destroy the whole process, so it is planned deeply ^{11 12}.

In diagnosing an organisation before change, al-Suwaidan gives the eight questions consultants put — in interviews with fifteen to twenty-five of the leadership tiers, not the staff: What are your most important problems? Who caused them? Who are their parties? Why did they begin? What are your proposals for solution? How could you develop beyond solving problems? What are the main services or products you could add? And what can you learn from your competitors? — saying the science of consulting lies in how and when to ask and how to rephrase ^{13 14}.

Early results are announced even when small — a two per cent gain declared breaks the resistance's argument ^{15 16}. Change is not an end in itself regardless of cost: unless it yields clearer output, impact and profit in the end, it serves nothing ^{17 18}. Having made a big change does not bar another months later if an unusual opportunity or technology arrives — he recounts that his academy changed its structure six times in three years as results outgrew the plan ^{19 20}. Most failure comes from the leadership, not the ranks: when change is serious, the senior leaders are re-evaluated, not the small sections ^{21 22}. The only effective change is the one focused on changing people — by replacement or by changing mindsets and skills; anything else is short-lived ^{23 24}. Changing mindsets is the biggest obstacle to change, and he faults training courses for drilling information and skills rather than mindsets ^{25 26}.

He states constants he holds unchangeable, to be built on rather than against: employees measure change by the leaders' words and deeds, not the plans — citing that even the Ansar resented the division of the spoils of Hunayn though raised by the Prophet ﷺ, when Sa'd ibn Ubadah said 'I am but a man among my people' — and that most people put their own interest before the common good, so 'what is in it for me' is computed for everyone affected ^{27 28 29}. Change is painful by nature — losses, tension, jobs shed — and no change-minded leader has gone unharmed ^{30 25}. The feelings of those affected are honoured to soften resistance — a senior is let go in two steps, adviser then out — and he attributes to senior scholars the criticism that Ali ibn Abi Talib (may God be pleased with him) dismissed all of Uthman's governors at once, provoking a total resistance (transmitted from scholars, labelled) ^{31 23}. A heterogeneous group is better at proposing a change project since it yields varied views, while a homogeneous one is better at execution — the best shura council is diverse, the best government homogeneous (his view) ^{32 33}. The elderly are usually an obstacle to change — he estimates only two per cent of them stay creative (needs_source) — and an organisation that grew big fails if it keeps the methods of its smallness ^{34 35}. The easiest route to radical change is replacing the first person with one of a different management philosophy — for better or worse — though he does not call it the best ^{36 37}. He faults the Arab mindset for awaiting a 'saving hero' — describing a cartoon of an army ready to the horizon led by a riderless horse captioned 'when will Saladin come?' — a nation that is ready produces its hero; the problem is not a missing person (rant) ^{38 39}.

Through the 'pharmaceuticals company' exercise he distinguishes two situations: when the new manager must show results within a year or be dismissed, fast-acting fixes take precedence over deep slow ones — restructuring before quality, price-inelastic expensive products, new markets free of competition, spending more rather than cutting, changing the top leaders, the operational plan not the strategic, and reliance on the current second tier of leaders — who know the work best and had been suppressed by the dismissed manager — over outside consultants; when there is no pressure, the long effective-change route is taken ^{40 41 42}. He excepts actual collapse: when the company is losing and its reputation is hurt, recruiting from outside beats promoting from inside ⁴³. He states that the maximum feasible cost cut without hitting people, quality or marketing is ten per cent, which lifts profits by no more than three per cent, while revenue growth has no ceiling; and he tells of a company down eighty per cent of its capital that a new manager turned around in a year — borrowing to raise salaries and tripling the marketing budget — to a three-hundred-per-cent profit (the speaker's eyewitness account, needs_source) ^{44 45 46}.