Enseignants-Chercheurs: la difficulté à mettre en place une culture de performance

J'ai pu entendre ce week-end un excellent exemple de résistance à la mise en place d'une culture de performance, exprimé par 2 philosophes universitaires invités de l'émission de Pierre-Louis Basse sur Europe1 (podcast ici).

L'évaluation des enseignants-chercheurs est l'un des points qui suscitent le plus de résistances à la réforme des universités. Les 2 invités l'ont parfaitement illustré par leurs propos, dénonçant ce qu'ils appellent la volonté de vouloir transposer des méthodes issues de l'entreprise, au monde de la recherche et de l'université qui serait un environnement inapproprié pour cela. Les critiques sont dures, passionnées, notamment sur des exemples d'indicateurs de performance qu'il est prévu de mettre en place. Bref, la résistance au changement est à son apogée, les enseignants-chercheurs ayant une peur terrible de sortir de leur zone de confort.

En réalité, le cas des universitaires n'est pas unique, il est même parfaitement conforme aux réactions de salariés de nimporte quelle entreprise qui met en place un système de pilotage de performance. En effet, la mise en place d'un tel système peut rapidement capoter si quelques principes ne sont pas respectés:

- Présenter le système de pilotage comme un mécanisme permettant une prise de décisions efficaces, par les bonnes personnes, basées sur des information correctes et mises à jour. Il ne s'agit pas principalement d'un outil d'évaluation individuelle, même si cela peut en faire partie.

- Toute organisation, qu'elle soit publique, privée ou encore associative a forcément un but. Ce but est déclinable en objectifs, eux-même déclinables à tous les niveaux de l'organisation et dont on peut assurer le suivi par des indicateurs, communément appelés KPI ou indicateurs de performance. Ceci étant, on peut aussi choisir de les nommer autrement, le principal étant qu'ils fournissent une information viable et pertinente pour chacun, à court terme ou à plus long terme.

- Le système ne s'arrête pas aux seuls indicateurs; c'est là une insuffisance souvent rencontrée dans les organisations. Ils doivent ensuite être reportés, analysés et discutés par les principaux intéressés. Cette analyse et discussion doit ensuite déboucher sur des décisions, traduites en actions d'amélioration dont l'efficacité sera ensuite montrée par les indicateurs, et la boucle est bouclée.

- Le système doit être élaborée avec les principaux intéressés. Sinon on court le risque d'impertinence et de non-acceptation de l'outil, situation que l'on semble rencontrer dans notre exemple.

- Les "utilisateurs" du système doivent y être pleinement formés.

Implication, communication (dans les 2 sens), formation, responsabilisation: somme toute des principes de base de tout processus de changement.

Decoding Resistance to Change

From my experience and learning, resistance to change comes from lack of skill or lack of will and to determine which of the two is the starting point for neutralizing resistance. I read this interesting article from HBR (and the idea in brief here) which focuses more on how managers can positively use resistance to change. While a proper change management plan will normally identify and adress upfront potential issues (see here how you can assess upfront your change capacity) brought by the change for each stakeholder group, this is also the demonstration that confronted with resistance, it is never too late to turn things around.

How to avoid death by Powerpoint

If really powerful, a presentation can have a huge impact in a change process and contribute very clearly to change people's behaviour. Yet, we all know the difficulty of not falling into the trap of doing indigestive powerpoint slides with lots of bullet points, complex charts etc. In fact you could say it is quite simple to make complex slides and very complex to make simple slides.

Most people have also attended some sort of training on the subject and have learnt the ground rules like one message per slide, limited number of bullet points, visual aid, clear storyline etc.

For something that goes much more beyond those basic rules, www.vizthink.com offered last June an excellent webinar on powerful presentations by Nancy Duarte who actually advised Al Gore on his Inconvenient Truth presentation.

Link to the webinar: http://www.vizthink.com/blog/2008/06/18/webinar-creating-powerful-presentations-with-nancy-duarte/

Major Change Case at the CGIAR

The CGIAR is the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. It is described as a strategic alliance of members, partners and international agricultural research centers, which mission is "To achieve sustainable food security and reduce poverty in developing countries through scientific research and research-related activities in the fields of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, policy, and environment."

This organisation has started a major change initiative aiming at adopting a new reform model, redifining its vision, strategic goals and organisation in a context that has become challenging. The case for change is described as follow:

"The world of agricultural research has shifted dramatically. With the rapid growth of the national agricultural systems in Brazil, China and India the space that international research centers occupy has altered. Some national institutions challenge the ability of the CGIAR to partner equitably or meet their needs. The entry of strong new actors into the field of agricultural research is further challenging the role of the CGIAR as a major player in the world of international agricultural research.

The CGIAR may no longer be perceived as the critical provider of solutions for agricultural productivity, natural resource management or policy advice. As a result, CGIAR Center funding is not increasing in proportion to client needs.

If these trends continue, and the CGIAR does not adapt, the CGIAR will rapidly become irrelevant.

It is for these reasons that the CGIAR has launched a major change initiative.

The good news is that the CGIAR has never been more open to change."

As part of the initiative, the CGIAR change management blog has been created, enabling everyone to follow the initiative and, as the editor puts it, to open a dialogue engaging all stakeholders in the process. A remarkable initiative as long, of course, as it doesn't become the tree hiding a forest of poor stakeholder engagement.

A brief look at their reform model document gives reassurance that key stakeholder groups seem to have been represented in the definition of the new model. Of course, the main challenge in these workshops is to find the right balance between sharp but insufficiently shared output and non-value added group consensus.

With this in mind, I find the strategic objectives to be brilliantly formulated (Food for people, Environment for People, Policies for People). The vision ("To reduce poverty and hunger, improve human health and nutritionand enhance ecosystem resilience through high-quality international agricultural research, partnership and leadership") could, I think, have been a little more compelling and engaging, if a little shorter.

An interesting change initiative we'll be following...

Be a little Machiavellian

Not much scared Niccolo Machiavelli, but one thing that did was change. "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things," he wrote 400 years ago.

John Oesch, assistant professor of organizational behaviour at the Rotman School of Management in Toronto, says a huge percentage of change programs fail. "Change management," he says, "is one of the most written about, but least understood, aspects of leadership. While many change leaders follow existing models and perform requisite rituals, too many continue to rely on hope as a strategy for success."

In case hope isn't enough, Oesch offered an audience of business leaders at a recent Rotman seminar some help. He proffered "five unusual ideas about change.":

Idea 1

Rather than emphasize the benefits of the proposed change, highlight the potential losses that will accrue without changing.

Idea 2

Be explicit about "what's in it for me" (i.e., you). If you stand to gain personally from the successful implementation of a change program, Oesch wants you to show your hand.

Idea 3

Recognize the bias toward the status quo. Most people believe inaction is safer than action.

Idea 4

"Pull" can be more powerful than push.

Idea 5

The basic tool of management is data. Companies demand evidence-based approaches to most organizational challenges, except when it comes to change.

Full article from the Calgary Herald here

Logica Study Shows Consequences of Lack of Change Management

A new study commissioned by Logica Management Consulting identifies winners and losers in business process change and outlines best practice guide

• Companies surveyed in the UK losing £1.7 billion a year
• One third of business process changes fall short of expected benefits
• One fifth of businesses do not measure change management performance

A key finding from the report is that winners tend to be more ambitious when planning change projects. Winners are much more likely to run cross-regional, cross-departmental projects than losers. They are also more proactive when planning change projects, don’t wait for problems to arise such as customer complaints or lost market share before implementing change reactively, but plan for change in order to improve business performance and involve customers and partners in that planning.

High performers also put more emphasis on treating change as a distinct project with its own budget, instead of attempting to manage change as part of day to day business. Such a simple step serves to counterbalance the key obstacles to successful change, namely pressure from everyday business (42%) and lack of resources (41%).

Editor P.S: The report also highlights the main barriers to effective business improvement. The majority of these barriers are directly or indirectly related to change management issues, such as lack of dedicated resources, lack of alignment between functions, relevant indicators and level of employee buy-in. Interesting also, are the country analysis charts highlighting substantial cultural differences in the way executives perceive barriers and critical success factors for change. For example, Belgium and Sweden mention lack of senior management support in their top 3 barriers while Germany and Spain feture lack of acceptance and buy-in of employees in their top 5.

More here

Change Management Open Source Project

Rick Maurer, change management expert and best-selling business author, announces the launch of a new online Open Source Project, which includes the e-book Introduction to Change without Migraines, where he explains his proven approach to leading change.

The Open Source project provides leaders and consultants free tools so that they can build support for change in their organizations. But, more important, it allows people to "get under the hood" and tinker with the theory. Maurer said, "I want people to improve my theory and practice of change management."

Click here for Rick Maurer's Open Source Project. full article
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