- Gina Fontér

I have chosen to read the book “The heart of change” by Jonh P Kotter and Dan S Cohen. Kotter is a professor from Harvard Business School with several international best sellers such as “Leading change” and Dan S cohen is a Principal with Deloitte consulting.

The core message of the book is very clear as the authors state in the first page:

People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.

The book itself is very well written and easy to understand. The author’s core concept of changing is also easy to follow. As the world is changing ever faster, companies are facing large scale changes more often. Kotter and Cohen claim what distinguish the more successful companies is that they have the capable knowledge of handling these changes than those who don’t. Some frustrated companies are even trying to convincing themselves that they don’t need to implement large scale changes.

As a result, the authors have come to an 8-steps changes implementation, obtained from interviews with over 130 organizations and 400 people. The flow is this : push urgency up, put together a guiding team, create the vision and strategies, efficiently communicate the vision and the strategies, remove barriers to action, accomplish short term wins, keep pushing for wave after wave of change until the work is done and, finally, create a culture to make new behavior stick.

Continuously through the 8 steps process, the biggest challenge has not been on company culture, strategy or structures. According to the authors, effective changes don’t take place due to these factors, but rather how to change people’s behavior, and this has been the main challenge. The companies are putting too much time on analysis writing, data gathering instead of a more creative approach that catches the feelings of motivation. People are engaged in changes when their feelings are involved, they are moved into changes when they realized the need of a change and how the change could benefit themselves and the company. Instead of giving people analysis that would only influence their thoughts, changing behaviors would influence their feelings.

What Kotter and Cohen suggest in the book is more sophisticated and modern way of management, in strong contrast with the classical approaches of management from Taylor and Fayol. The management approaches from Taylor and Fayol is precisely what Kotter and Cohen is trying to avoid, to inject “how-to’s” into people based on analysis and data’s. This “analysis, think and change” approach could attack a certain problem by sharing these analyzed data’s with workers, and then somehow, expect the workers to make a change in order to handle this particular problem. As a result, this change is not sustainable and only applicable to this specific problem. Meanwhile, the “see, feel and change” approach suggest by Kotter and Cohen could change act as a way leading management approach, engaging people’s emotions in new direction and show the employees the need for a change, capturing the feelings in the issue at hand and motivates the workers to act based on these feelings.

Throughout the book, real life cases are given to concretize each of the 8-steps. One of the examples is how a manager captured his angry customer’s reaction against a product using video tapes and later showed this to his workers. I found this particular example useful for elucidate the statement I just made. The customer reflected that he has, more than several times, told the workers his needs, but they just don’t listen. After the video viewing session the manager had with his workers, many of them felt emotionally engaged into this problem and people started to throwing out ideas about a solution. As an alternative of keep repeating the words of his customer to his workers and expect for a change, the manager looked for a change by engaging the problem into people’s emotion.

What conclusion can be drawn from this? Taylor and Fayol have often been regarded as the founder of our modern time management theories during the 20 – century. Their management theories have helped to increase the efficiency and development of the companies during 20 – century. But as the time passes, things have been undergoing major changes. So have the companies. What Taylor and Fayol suggested roughly few decades ago is no longer applicable on today’s dynamic changing industry. Companies today are constantly in need of facing new threats and challenges, constantly changing; therefore new creative management approaches are needed. One such is proposed from Kotter and Cohen in “The heart of Change”, where engagement and involvement of people’s emotions and feelings should be integrated throughout the organization of the company. The more people engage themselves personally in it, the bigger chances of success are the changes.

-Wang

During these 15 years Ohdae was being locked up, he was constantly observed through cameras installed in the room. Unable of going anywhere, his life is studied in details through the cameras by Woojin, whose treatment of Ohdae can be seen, according to me, as a clear example of successful management. As seen for a management perspective, by in-prison Ohdae, Woojin could study Ohdaes living pattern, his reactions to the news and programmers sent on TV, using a scientific approach. Just as Taylorism, the scientific approach of management, by studying, analyzing and synthesizing how the work is processed, an optimal way of management could be found, measured in increased productivity and effectiveness. As Taylor would find an optimal way of the workflow process, Woojin would find an optimal strategy for further control and manage Ohdae as he gets released.

The taylorism itself is, seen from me, an “old fashion” way of management and has restrictions. The most notable one is when taylorism stressed the workers to hard and caused events such as strikes, something that reflected the umbrage of the workers and damaged the productivity and the efficiency. In the same spirit, Ohdae was injected with hatred and the desire for revenge, but perhaps the most, curiosity. Curiosity of who did this to him and why. In contrast from taylorism, this is actually something that Woojin has been participating as part of his plan. He would use Ohdaes thirst for revenge and the curiosity as a management tool, to further develop Ohdae, keep him as a subordinate.

This is the essence of Woojins management, turning the undesired and negative factor associated with taylorism to key ingredients to his favor, hence aiding him for further management strategy he has been cooking up. He would later, by using all the ingredients he subjectively injected into Ohdae, heat things up during the ultimate showdown. According to Drucker as he states in “the practice of management”, a manager is someone that sets objectives, organizes, motivates, communicates, measures and develops people

Woojin had an objective, namely to revenge Ohdae for a tragedy he caused long time ago. With this as motivation, Woojin smoothly organized professionals to kidnap Ohdae and keep him in a room for 15 years. During the time, Woojin studied and measured the performance of his strategy by the overall development of Ohdae curiosity and hatred against himself.

Behind the above factors, Woojin had a fundamental assumption. He assumed that to have Ohdae admits for his fault, brute forces wouldn’t be enough; according to Drucker’s “The theory of business”, assumptions are what shapes an organization. Woojin created his strategy based on this simple assumption. By just having Ohdae locked up and controlled wouldn’t be enough. He needed to further empowering Ohdae once he is released, by equipping him with money and a phone, and communicates with him, tease his curiosity. To empowering and communicates with subordinate is what Nelson and Economy call as “new functions of management” in “The Management Bible”. As in this case, only using brute force wouldn’t make Ohdae to realize his fault; by creating an environment that encourages Ohdae to find out the truth is essential.

I believe the insight of management in this movie is built on the idea that successful management is not how to manage directly and tell subordinate what is right and wrong, but rather the way you make them to realize what they have done for right and wrong; successful management doesn’t tell people how they should do their work but rather to motivate them about what they are doing, so that they can do their best. This theory is in line with the idea behind “The Management Bible”, which is why the new management functions are introduced. We have also seen how taylorism, a management approach that controlled people how their work should be done, could have negative effects of management, hence damage certain effective measure. In this movie, Woojin management succeed in the sense that he didn’t inform Ohdae that he was the guilty one but rather made him to realize and confess he was guilty for what he did. As John P Kotter and Dan S Cohen states in their book “The heart of Changes”, “People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings”.

-Wang

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Gina Fontér

Beträffande själva intervjuklippet så har jag och Jocke strukturerat upp filmen samt valt ut och omdisponerat godbitarna; det är en lång väg kvar men vi har nu åtminstone ramverket och byggstenarna klara.

Tack Fredrik för att du ställde upp på intervjun, sjukdom och stress till trots.

- Magnus

vore bra om vi träffas idag innan intervjun för att planera lite. Vi måste välja ut vilka frågor vi vill använda mm. Vad sägs om efter lunch?

-Maria och Gina