The changes continue to be occupations and concerns of numerous businessmen and specialists in managerial matters in the world. The Lewin Three-Stage Model, the different versions of the General Change Model, and many tools for the design, facilitation, and monitoring of change processes are still useful.
Resistance to change continues to be true, errors remain in the conduct of change processes and a privileged place is allocated to preparing for change; But it also continues to be true that the different aspects involved in the processes of organizational change have not been properly integrated.
Only when this is achieved can it be affirmed that the planned change has been successfully crowned, which, in order to be synonymous with sustainability, must have achieved that the company has acquired its own capacity for change.
What does it mean that the company has acquired its own capacity for change?
For the author of this work, it means that the company has acquired the required competence to be consistently relevant to itself and to all stakeholders, that is, it has achieved sustainability in its performance, which makes it enduring. Therefore, the following concept is signed:
“The enduring company is identified with a consistent management of consistency, showing an achievable internal sustainability, which means the ability to continuously reveal and take advantage of its reserves of efficiency and effectiveness, to simultaneously preserve and enhance its progress and to undertake the necessary organizational changes, confirming on a daily basis a proactive internal management that translates into an increasing social contribution ”.
Consulting processes should foster preparation to the point that the company acquires its own capacity for change. This happens when the organization has successfully passed from knowing to being able to do.
The creation of competences proceeds as shown in the following graph:
These elements are defined as follows:
"Know: A set of knowledge related to the behaviors involved in competition. They can be technical (oriented to the performance of tasks) and social (oriented to interpersonal relationships) ”.
"Know How: A set of skills that allow you to put into practice the knowledge you have. You can talk about technical skills…, social skills…, cognitive skills, etc ”.
"Saber Estar: A set of attitudes in accordance with the main characteristics of the organizational and / or social environment (culture, norms, etc.)".
"Wanting to Do: Set of motivational aspects responsible for whether or not the person wants to perform the behaviors of the competition."
"Power to Do: Set of factors related to personal capacity and the degree of" favorability "of the environment".
The union of the previous elements leads to Doing, that is, to Competition.
For its part, Kurt Lewin's three-stage Model of Change states, in summary:
Stage 1.- Thawing: It consists of creating the motivation and the disposition to change.
Stage 2.- The change: It consists of helping the client to see the situations, to judge them, to feel them and to react to them in a different way, based on a new point of view.
Stage 3.- The new freeze: It consists of helping the client to incorporate the new point of view.
These three stages include:
Stage 1.- Recognize the need for change, plan it and start preparing for change.
Stage 2.- Continue and complete the preparation for the planned change and arrive at the desired state.
Stage 3.- Consolidate the change achieved and acquire the capacity for change itself.
It is convenient to consider that, although companies generally go through these three stages, the organizational culture determines the specificities of the change processes in each one of them.
On the other hand, the concrete form shown in a graph does not behave as exactly in practice, in which the limits are not precise. This means that, in reality, one stage does not completely end before the other begins, so the classification considers the essential aspects that take place in each of them.
Based on the Kurt Lewin Three-Stage Model and the concept of competition that has been cited, the process of change, oriented towards sustainability, can be represented as shown in the following graph:
CHANGE PROCESS
Source: Prepared by the author of this work.
This process has to go from the individual, to the group, to the organization, which indicates that over time it becomes more complex; but equally the chances of success are greater.
The speed of the transformations in the internal and external demands to which an organization is subject, makes it impossible to pretend to take a long time for the facilitation, development and happy outcome of organizational changes. On the other hand, many of them need to make several changes at the same time to solve their problems. So the situation that is presented to them is to carry out simultaneous changes, which requires them to see these in an integral way and execute them in an integrated way.
However, companies often do not have the time and (or) the required skills, which is why they turn to consulting services.
In the stages, situations are presented that can delay or impede the fulfillment of the objectives of the change process, which must be taken into account by those who facilitate said process, since this knowledge allows us to provide solutions to problems in a timely manner.
In the practice of developing the consultancies carried out by consultants from the Center for Studies of the Cuban Economy of the University of Havana, in the period 1987-2007 it has been possible to identify the main limitations, as well as the determining aspects of the successes achieved, in 289 consultancy processes in entities throughout the country, both productive and services, and which cover an important space in the universe of activities carried out by companies at the national level.
MAIN LIMITATIONS
Concepts
Poor consulting planning
Insufficient sponsorship
Delays in meeting the schedule by the company
Expectations too high by the Consulting Team and the company
Deficiencies in the training process for managers and workers
Insufficient participation in the implementation by managers and workers
Interruption of the consulting process due to the departure of the company from the main manager, for various reasons
Source: Prepared by the author of this work
MAIN DETERMINING ASPECTS OF SUCCESS
Concepts
Compliance with the schedule both by the company and by the Consulting Team
Sponsorship achievement
Good development of the training process for managers and workers
Good consulting planning
Good preparation of the consulting team
Good participation in the implementation by managers and workers
Source: Own elaboration by the author of this work.
Although the precise measurement to define business sustainability (own ability to change by companies) is a task to be carried out, some results associated with the consulting processes developed can be highlighted:
- Winning entities of provincial, national and international awards in recognition of quality. Better functioning of management teams for the development, among others, of skills for working in groups and designing strategies. Improvement of the processes of preparation, implementation and control of the Management by Objectives and Strategic Planning. Gradual incorporation of the values into the processes of Strategic Design. In these entities an incipient capacity for redesign and speed of adaptation to new needs and challenges has been gradually established. The best recognized comprehensive results of companies recipients of consulting interventions and, in particular, those who have developed business improvement processes.
SOME CONSIDERATIONS
- The lack of sponsorship continues to constitute a relevant limitation in the consulting processes, as well as being a solid pillar when this sponsorship is available as an essential requirement to aspire to success. The preparation of the Consulting Team became a key factor of success in the As the professional level and experience of its members increased, the request for consultancies in the field of quality increases, which is influenced by the appearance of quality awards from 1998, the demands on companies and the process Business Improvement. Interest in consulting on strategy increases, which is influenced by national demands in this regard.The consultancies on the subject of Business Improvement, either for diagnosis or record, appear with great force from the promulgation of Decree Law 187 of August 1998.
The information provided supports the idea that consulting processes have an important influence on the achievement of business sustainability objectives and reveals that important contributions have been made to the development of the Cuban business system in these 20 years; But there are opportunities for improvement, especially associated with preparing for change and achieving sponsorship, which need to be strengthened in order to expand and continue consolidating the benefits of consulting to Cuban organizations.
The planning of the consultancies and the preparation of the consulting team are strengths that must be maintained and consolidated. To materialize these purposes, they will have to consider that the environment in which the companies are inserted will continue to make demands on them and many entities will continue to request consulting services, for this reason the facilitators of change processes will have to maintain a proactive approach, to continue promoting business sustainability objectives.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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