10. CONSULTANT AS CHANGE FACILITATOR. The consultant's role is to serve as an agent of purposeful or planned change. This challenge became more compelling and the necessary professional skills more relevant in recent years because, as Toffler (1971) commented, "There is nothing new about change for it has always been a part of man's history. What characterizes the modern era, however, is the increasing intensity, complexity, and pace of change. What once took years to transpire, now takes place in weeks. And significantly more people are affected." If the consultant is to effectively facilitate change, what types of pitfalls should he or she avoid. Lippitt & Lippitt (1986) described six facilitative strategies that are helpful in all types of improvement or change efforts and identified common pitfalls that can block successful efforts when using each of these strategies. The reader may consider these strategies as a check list of change-agent skills. STRATEGY 1: INVOLVING THE WORK FORCE Generally, consultants meet and deal only with top management and are only involved with the work force in minor ways. One of the signs of the development of participative management is the use of innovative ways to engage the work force in providing input and reacting to plans for change. Some pitfalls associated with involving the work force are the following: 1. Providing no opportunities to "buy into" plans for change. When employees who will be affected by a change are not brought into the process of analyzing the need and the rationale for that change, successful implementation will be difficult, if not impossible. 2. Assuming a reactive rather than proactive posture toward developing change goals. Most organizations that are trying to effect change begin with an analysis of "problems" and "present pain" rather than with an attitude of creating images of desired outcomes. 3. Failing to create plans for a trial effort and revisions. A change should not be implemented without first setting up tentative plans, testing those plans through trial effort, and then revising the plans in accordance with the results. 4. Projecting a limited time perspective. Most change requires a significant amount of time to plan and implement. 5. Failing to include the participation of credible leadership figures. Either formal or informal leadership figures can be helpful in presenting the need for a contemplated change in providing a flow a information about planning the change effort (p. 186). STRATEGY 2: DEALING WITH AMBIVALENCE ABOUT CHANGE. When people are confronted with change, they are sometimes ambivalent. They may be anxious about the time and the risk involved in undergoing the necessary change process. They may also feel exhilarated by the challenge and excited by the potential payoffs. If this ambivalence is not legitimized as normal and expected, there are likely to be periods of blocks and hesitation during the change process. Management should use various means of communicating the legitimacy of ambivalence as well as techniques that allow for the use of resistance as a positive resources in working out a creative change effort. The common pitfalls in dealing with ambivalence are as follows: 1. Labeling normal reality testing as "resistance." Reality testing comments are often erroneously labeled as negative resistance: * "I wonder if this change will require that we give up some traditions and values that most of us feel are important." * "I already feel overloaded. This sounds like some more time pressure and additional demands." * "What kind of help are they going to give us in making the shift?" 2. Assuming that everyone should be ready to start at the same time. Lippitt and Lippitt (1986) projected that it takes three waves of involvement to generate readiness throughout the organizational population. In the first wave, the members of one department or unit may try a new procedure or technology. The other members in the organization become ready to participate in the second wave when they see the success and rewards achieved by those who started in the first. After the results of the second wave become ready for the third wave. Managing these waves of involvement is one of the most important strategic skills of any change agent. STRATEGY 3: ASSEMBLING TASK FORCES FOR TEMPORARY PROBLEM SOLVING Due to the increasing complexity of society and problems within organizations, temporary problem solving teams or task forces are beginning to be used more frequently. This approach requires that the leadership of the system involved have available data about who is good at what as well as established norms of readiness and reward for temporary problem-solving assignments. Some of the pitfalls that develop in assembling task forces are as follows: 1. Using political rather than resource criteria in creating task forces. There is a tendency to ask who needs to be represented rather than what types of resources are needed for the task and who meets these resource criteria. 2. Neglecting to identify and use unused competencies and informal leadership skills. What is required is the development of a resource inventory stating which people are good at what, what kind of experiences these people have had in other job situations, and what aspects of their current assignments can be temporarily relinquished so that they can work part-time on temporary problem-solving assignments. 3. Assuming that the people who are chosen to work together are ready and able to do so. Typically, different people are brought together to form a problem-solving team. They often represent different disciplines, experiences, and personalities. It is crucial to provide them with consultation and training so that they can hold effective meetings and can be aware of the process issues they need to cope with to make their task force effective. 4. Permitting alienation to develop between the temporary problem solvers and the formal leaders of the organization. Supervisors often become frustrated and irritated over the unexpected and unclear use of their personnel for problem-solving purposes. This alienation can be prevented by involving supervisors in the planning of problem-solving efforts, explaining the potential importance of the task-force work. STRATEGY 4: ESTABLISHING STEPS TOWARD PROGRESS One of the discouraging aspects of many change efforts is that the way organizations want things to be seems to be so far removed from the way things are. The idea of achieving a successful change seems like an impossible task. To overcome this debilitating feeling, it is important for the consultant to assist the client to overcome these feelings by helping him or her to plan the entire project step by step that represent progress toward the goal desired. The common pitfalls involved in establishing steps toward progress are the following: 1. Establishing steps that are too big and too long term. If the leaders of the change effort are too idealistic or enthusiastic, they will focus on large steps and distant goals rather than on small accomplishments. This focus often results in the leaders developing a sense of unreality and doubt about the importance of current activities. 2. Neglecting documentation. What is being accomplished needs to be documented so that it can be reviewed all along the change process. This creates a sense that things are actually taking place. 3. Failing to identify early warning signals. It is important to search for early evidence that the change effort is not going as planned. When such signals are discovered, immediate plans can be made to revise the overall plan to correct the problem. 4. Neglecting celebrations and rewards. The consultant should ensure that the client establishes a process for celebrating and for rewarding those involved when each step is successfully completed. It may be necessary to "sell" the client on the idea of celebrating and paying attention to interim rewards rather than concentrating solely on payoffs at the end of the total effort. STRATEGY 5: SUPPORTING QUALITY ACTION There is a tendency in change efforts to focus on what to do and this often clouds the parallel importance of focusing on how the action is implemented. Frequently, an action design is created, but procedures for ensuring that the action will be of high quality are neglected. It is very damaging to a change effort that actions fail or that achieve a low level of success as compared with expectations. Here are some of the pitfalls connected with supporting quality action: 1. Neglecting rehearsal before risk taking. Many times during the change process participants are faced with such risk-taking activities as reporting progress, making recommendations to management, and designing and leading meetings for problem-solving purposes. The consultant must help the risk takers rehearse their presentations or activities before they attempt the actual thing. 2. Failing to plan pilot tests before involving a larger part of the system. It is possible to reduce the risk of failure by planning and implementing pilot tests in small parts of the system in order to work out any difficulties in the design and to demonstrate to others the feasibility of the proposed effort. 3. Failing to obtain support for task forces. Task forces need nurturing if they are to be productive. Support may be in terms of assisting with conducting effective meetings, locating resource materials and people, planning, making presentations to management, and identifying and celebrating progress. 4. Expecting and pushing for independence of action instead of interdependence. Many individuals prefer to function alone. The fact is that asking for help is a sign of strength and not weakness. Knowing how and when to ask for help is a major skill in successful problem solving. 5. Neglecting to review the process of work. One of the most successful ways to improve the quality of work is to use procedures for periodically reviewing how the work is being done and how it might be done better. Every consultant needs to be able to help a task force avoid the trap of focusing only on tasks and ignoring process. STRATEGY 6: MAINTAINING CHANGE MOMENTUM AND ACHIEVING CHANGEABILITY Consultants often spend a significant amount of time and energy working on preventing "entropy" or the loss of momentum, loss of commitment, and loss of leadership for maintaining what has been initiated as a change effort. Developing the attitudes, skills, and resources of changeablity in the client system is critical if a consultant's efforts as a change agent are to be internalized so that successive change efforts can be addressed. A consultant's abilities can best be judged best by the degree to which he or she has left behind the values and skills necessary to continue in his or her absence. Some of the pitfalls connected with this strategy are as follows: 1. Failing to create procedures for progress review and performance feedback. Establishing criteria and procedures for identifying and celebrating progress is a crucial aspect of maintaining motivated effort. If the effort involved developing plans for individual development, then procedures for performance feedback must also be established. 2. Failing to support documentation and evaluation efforts. Supporting and reporting the significant payoffs of continuing change efforts is one of the responsibilities of the consultant and the internal change agents. The team responsible for evaluation and documentation has low visibility. Instead its members should be regarded as among the most important participants in the change process. 3. Failing to connect with external sources of support. In most planned change efforts, external sources of support are essential in maintaining excitement about what is happening. 4. Not using external resources as needed. Sometimes an external consultant has worked vigorously on developing the internal resource team and then discovers that this team is thought to have all the resources needed to address any problem that might emerge. The reality is that no team can be expected to be capable of solving all problems totally on its own. The use of external resources when needed should be assumed. 5. Failing to make plans for the professional development of internal change agents. The consultant should help the members of client teams to plan their own professional growth. Ultimately, these members should be able to take the initiative for selling management on their needs for other kinds of learning opportunities outside the system. What frequently happens as a result of rewarding and significant change experiences is that the team members and the organizational leadership begin to regard the present level of skill and competence of the internal resources as adequate indefinitely (Lippitt & Lippitt, 1986, pp. 190-195).