CHANGE AGENT

CHANGE AGENT
Facilitator of change
Outsider or insider
External change agents are more effective than
internal
Reasons-managers are usually not familiar what sort of
change is required in the company, lack of expertise,
cannot be single handedly done by manager
Change agent qualities- must have analytical and
diagnostic skills, experience and good personality(
empathetic and sensitive)
Change Agent/consultant job
OD consultants are experts on organisational change,
organisational dynamics and on structuring learning
situations for problem solving and decision making.
They structure activities to help member organisation
how to solve their own problem and learn to do it
better overtime.
Rather than giving solutions they aim at creating
learning situations in which problems are identified
and solutions are developed.
Benefits of consultant
A consultant can see the problem as outsider.so his
opinion is free from internal biasness or limitations.
He sees the problem at micro level then at industry
level and then globally
With consultant the horizon of knowledge increases
and it becomes easier to solve problems

Nature Of Client Consultant
Relationship
The client as a buyer of knowledge
The consultant as problem solver or as change agent
The consultant shares all relevant information of the
firm
The consultant has the resources of the firm at his
disposal













Case Study
Avaya (Cultural transformation through alignment )

Introduction:
Avaya is a global leader in enterprise
communication systems providing unified
communications, contact centers, data solutions and
related services directly and through its global channel
partners to leading businesses around the world.

Its main aim is to provide best communication solutions.

Over the last decade, Avaya has dramatically repositioned
itself in the marketplace going from a communications
provider of phone and voice hardware to a full business
collaboration provider offering integrated voice, video,
web, multi-media and more .

Numerous acquisitions have helped them accelerate their
technology offerings in contact centers, unified
communication, conferencing and collaboration markets,
and to expand geographic reach


They have had enormous success repositioning
themselves in the market place, however, that
repositioning did not translate within the
organization.
We were driving the technology to the outside world
but not driving the changes needed within the
company, and thus a great need for a culture
transformation became apparent to us, comments
Roger Gaston, Senior Vice President of Human
Resources
So in 2007 the HR managers Roger Gaston and Steve
fitzgerald began their journey to change the behaviour
and to improve the effectiveness of orgnisation.
To identify the problem they used Denison
Organizational Culture Survey to assess their baseline
culture in 2008.
Through the survey, feedback sessions and
observations coming from all levels, functions and
geographies of the organization, they learned some
very important things about their culture.
Positive aspect in culture:
1. Loyalty
2. Integrity
3. Trust
Negative aspect in culture :
1. Extended belongingness to parent company (AT&T)
2. Employees Averse to take risk
3. No ownership of task
4. With loads of restructuring people felt victimized




Values identified and needed to be reinforced:
EVERYTHING starts and ends with the customer
Corporate priorities = individual and team priorities
Poor performance is no longer tolerated
Everyone knows the competition and our strategy to win
Transparency is the rule, especially when it comes to
results
Competitive energy of employees is focused on
competitors, not internally
Teams are our building block
Building blocks or expectations for
performance
B-FACETs
B - Bold
F - Fact-based
A - Agile
C - Cross-functionally effective
E - Empowered
T - Transparent
Measures undertaken to change culture:
Improved corporate governance
Formal monthly reviews and restructured their goal
setting
Rewarded expected behaviour
Performance review ,promotion evaluation were
revised to incorporate the desired behaviour

Five conversations concept: whereby supervisors and
employees interacted throughout the year :
1. Talking strategy
2.Talking results: performance as organization team,
individual.
3.Talking rewards
4. Talking capability
5. Talking talent
These conversations helped to build alignment,
engagement, retention and satisfaction in employees.

Measuring progress
Improvement in culture led to increase in
organizations effectiveness.
Steady growth in total revenue and margin
Cost saving
Rate of innovation increased

Change is an ongoing process and it still continues at
Avaya