Change Management: Leading by Example as a Crucial Factor to OverCome Internal Resistance

Change Management: Leading by example as a crucial factor to overcome internal resistance

„People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.“ (Senge, P. (2000)) According to Peter Senge, changing a company requires a change in employee attitudes and behaviors. Especially in a large-scale change, employees need to understand the project’s vision and their individual role before they can help make it happen.

The following paper is going to discuss the organizational change Thomas, CEO of Whitbread, carried out after he transformed the corporate strategy by changing the portfolio through selling the brewing, off-license and pub business. Looking at the historical low of Whitbread’s stock price in 2001 it becomes clear that the present company crisis can be seen as the trigger point for change and therefore an overall company change had to be faced.

Concentrating on Whitbread’s change process from a socio-/ psychological point of view, four perspectives of internal resistance can be identified: An institutional, social, political and individual perspective.

In the past, management errors such as wrong investments were made and as a result of a consequential change in the corporate strategy, half of the workforce was laid off but none of the executives involved were penalized for their actions. A reason for resistance in the institutional perspective is therefore dissatisfaction with a non performance oriented reward system which is calling for a redefinition of the management system.

A promising step in order to identify barriers in the organization which might prevent a successful implementation of the new direction was the execution of the Strategic Fitness Process (SFP). As a result of the interviews as part of the SFP it can be said that Whitbread’s employees are open to change and are motivated but they do not believe that the company and the executives are able to carry out the change process. From a social perspective Whitbread has a need for a change of shared values throughout the whole company.

A missing action of Thomas was the use of a bottom up approach in generating the vision statement or statement of intent in order to get everybody involved and to make sure everybody will understand and emotionally accept the new values and direction. Instead he used a top down approach.

Taking the political perspective it can be said that Whitbread is missing a willingness of corporation between the different divisions which might arise from managers