By : Seow Mei Ling

EVERY organisation has a set of values and its own culture that
reflects these values. Noel Tichy expounds that successful
organisations understand the significance of how "ideas and
values provide people with a common purpose and a clear
understanding of their mission that allows them to work
independently towards achieving it.

"Values enable people to design their own actions by defining
the rules and behaviour and establishing the forms of conduct
that will be rewarded or not tolerated. Winning leaders reflect
on values and work on establishing them, just as serious as they
do ideas."

The Malaysian banking industry has just undergone a vigorous
consolidation process through a series of mergers and
acquisitions. This is to enable local banks to compete
effectively in today's globalised economy.

It is common knowledge that the human aspect receives less
attention than, say, the financial or business strategic factor
in a merger and acquisition exercise. The success or failure of
any merger or acquisition integration hinges on the human
factor. In the process of integration, different sets of values
or corporate culture are brought together that often clash
rather than harmonise.

Similarly, organisations with established values or corporate
culture face cultural clashes.

This is apparent when top leaders of the organisation have plans
to implement change. Different levels within the organisation
may not be able to identify with top management's plans on
change. They can pose two problems to top management: staff's
ignorance of the organisation's competitive position within its
market and staff's resistance to the change process.

How should leaders deal with the clash of values or corporate
culture, be it in the merger process or the introduction of a
change process? Do leaders have to deal with it alone or can
they develop leaders at every level of the organisation to deal
with these issues together?

Noel Tichy believes that the latter is possible and even
encouraged in organisations today.

A successful merger story is described in Noel Tichy's book, The
Leadership Engine, which illustrates how top leaders of the
company were able to smoothen the transformation process by
developing leaders at all levels of the organisation.

When French company Thomas-CGR and Japanese Yokogowa Medical
Systems were merged with General Electric (GE) Medical Systems,
the leaders of GE Medical Systems had anticipated the reality of
culture clashes.

They believed that the solution to smoothening out the cultural
clash was in bringing people together, and so they set up teams
to discuss ideas and strategy and the development of a new set
of values and operating rules based on the strengths of each
entity.

After identifying a new unified set of values, each new value
was further discussed in relation to specific day-to-day
application. Possible conflicts that might arise from these new
values were also examined.

Through this exercise, executives were forced to deal with the
problems that characterised the transformation process
themselves.

In turn, they became the change agent to assist the rest of
their staff in handling similar problems that cropped up on a
daily basis at the workplace as a result of the merger.

As much as change can be identified and acknowledged, the change
process is never easily implemented without resistance.

To illustrate success in handling resistance to change, Tichy
used the story of Ameritech, a telecommunication company.

Top leaders at Ameritech were faced with twin challenges of
staff ignorance and complacency of their company's performance
in the industry, and staff resistance to the change process.

Notebaert, CEO and chairman of Ameritech, together with his lead
team realised the necessity to change in order to survive.

Based on existing sentiments that prevailed within the company,
the lead team understood that "the only way people could
seriously change their attitudes and values was when individuals
clearly understood what those old attitudes and values were".

The following three-tier strategy was adopted in a change
programme:

1. Ignorance was dealt with respect, by providing explanations
and encouragement to work through and see what happened.

2. Resistance was treated similarly, but support was given by
cajoling staff to join in the transformation process.

3. Those who continued to resist would have their services
terminated.

The implementation of the development programme met with strong
resistance, particularly from Bob Knowling, the general manager
of Indiana Bell branch. His fierce resistance unsettled the lead
team to the point of reconsidering the entire transformation
plan.

After a discussion among the lead team, Notebaert, a member of
the team, himself confronted Knowling, saying, "Look, I'm not
sure this will be good either. I, like you, have never done it
before. But the difference between you and me is that I'm going
to try it. If I don't like it, I won't do it again, but I am
going to try."

After the confrontation, Knowling realised his role as a change
agent required him to assist the rest of the staff within the
company in the transformation process.

This was Ameritech's first successful step in the three-pronged
transformation strategy they had set out to achieve. Ameritech
is still doing well. The determination and commitment of their
leaders in breaking down ignorance and resistance to the change
process seem to have paid off.

According to Tichy, "Winning leaders use ideas and values to
promote leadership at all levels of their organisations. Ideas
and values unify people and allow them to act independently in
ways that effectively move the organisation toward a common
goal."
 
Dr Noel Tichy will be in Malaysia for the first time to speak on
"The Leadership Engine: Building Leaders at Every Level" on Aug
3 at the Palace of the Golden Horses, Selangor. For details,
call MIM Customer Service at 03-21654611, e-mail:
enquiries@mim.edu or visit www.mim.edu