How can we handle resistance to change that blocks essential competive advantages?
Managers may prevent beneficial business change that is against their vested interest
We all know stories about managers who resist change to protect their own power and authority. How do we prevent damage from vested interests in the enterprise? Is it just up to the Board and CEO to know what is going on? How does the Board or CEO find out? Whom does the CEO listen to? Is there a way to support those with change ideas that are widely considered as good and to counteract those widely considered as bad? Whose head is on the line if profits suffer because beneficial change is delayed? Is it the lower-level manager responsible or the CEO?
Good corporate management and governance requires more than one reporting line
20th century management methods provide only one reporting line. Responsibility for performance includes responsibility for capital invested, responsibility for utilization of capital as solutions, and responsibility for output results produced. As a consequence, capital investments, capital utilization in performance, and results produced are not precisely managed. Nobody is responsible for managing capital as capital to achieve the return on investment in each solution. Nobody is responsible for the performance of the solution in actual utilization. Nobody is responsible for the production of most results to reach result goals.
We need to manage each of these areas separately and support management with multiple perspectives for understanding how the enterprise operates and the needs for business change. This provides professional understanding of each aspect of a proposed change, and counteracts those vested interests that block enterprise progress or push detrimental change.
The solution is Result-performance Management (R-pM) to separately manage specific capital, revenue, and investment results across the business and to manage to performance of capital solutions utilized to produce results. Every part of the business has result management to manage results produced and performance management to manage capital utilized as solutions across results.
Business change requires agreement by result management at all levels and performance management for all capital utilized. A manager resisting change or pushing detrimental change is counteracted by other managers. All proposed business change must be justified by added result value-added for each new capital solution and substantiated by accepted result goals to achieve the value-added.
The last major change decision is to organize the business with R-pM for 21st Century Management
Result-performance Management (R-pM) is the last major change for the enterprise. Once R-pm is utilized the business changes continually with each change to capital invested in solutions of worth, utilization of a solution to produce a result, or the result produced.
The problem is that the solution to resistance to change and detrimental change due to personal or vested interest is R-pM. But R-pM requires a decision in the face of resistance to change and vested interests. Many managers will resist the change to R-pM because it requires a change in thinking and discontinuance of familiar, but wasteful and obsolete, practices they use today.
Board-level management must represent their shareholders by utilizing the best business management methods available. There is no better business management method than actually managing the business with R-pM. The easy way out for managers at all levels is to ignore R-pM, until the enterprise is ambushed by competitors who use R-pM for significant competitive advantage.
Shareholders and board-level management must ensure that the enterprise investigates and tests R-pM at a minimum. It is a very low-cost insurance policy. A business structure is developed and laid over part of the business to test and prove that R-pM can replace all structures laid over the business and capture and report actual business data. Then the enterprise can decide to use R-pM to gain advantage on competitors still burdened with 20th century management problems, or to fend off competitors who use R-pM.
Those who read this article must initiate investigation into R-pM in their enterprise. They can be the hero that puts the enterprise on the path to success in the 21st century.
Learn about R-pM at Result-performance Management.com
Result-performance management enables you to organize and manage your business properly and make continual management improvements. R-pM documentation, procedures, and 21st Century Management descriptions are available in the R-pM Toolkit. Go to Result-performance-Management.com to download information on R-pM.
