How can you build support for change?

That was the question asked by Stanford researcher Charles O'Reilly earlier this year in his paper How Leadership Matters: The Effects of Leadership Alignment on Strategic Execution

Managing change is arguably the foremost role of the modern leader.  To study the effect of leadership on change, O'Reilly and his fellow researchers investigated a change management initiative at Californian healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente. 

In 2002 the companies new CEO decided to change the focus of the company from a pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap approach to a more personal and higher quality service.  To underpin this new strategy large-scale changes were required to the call centres, back office systems and communication links between doctors and patients.  The success of this change program was put down to the commitment of of the companies leaders, and not just from those in the boardroom!

How did they test this?

The research team received surveys from approximately 50,000 patients and over 300 doctors, requesting their feedback on how successful the new plan was.  These surveys investigated how well the leaders at the company articulated the vision, set measurable goals, rewarded progress, dealt with organizational hurdles, and motivated employees.

From the doctors perspective, if they perceived their manager to be capable they then supported the change in strategy.  There was also correlation between the service given to patients and this perception of the capability of the managers leading the doctors.

However, when physicians felt that their bosses were less than adept, their performance on patient satisfaction surveys was markedly lower. Although the CEO imparted the same call for transformation in responding to patients throughout the organisation, physicians who lacked respect for their managers tended to interpret this change agenda more negatively.

So if you want to significantly change an organisational culture it is essential that managers at all levels are competent and respected by the people they are leading, as it is only when leaders' effectiveness at different levels is considered in the aggregate that significant performance improvement occurs.