Idea chamioning and readiness to change

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

Welcome to read the article about leaders’ idea championing and followers readiness to change, just published in Journal of Change Management by dr. Antonio Sadarić and myself.

Change agents influence employee attitudes in order for organizations to change. In an effort to unravel this influence mechanism, we examined the change leader-recipient relationship. More specifically, how change leaders’ championing (independent variable) relates to recipients’ readiness to change (dependent variable). Our conceptual model of change leaders’ prosocial sensegiving is based on adult attachment theory operationalized through storytelling. To test our model, we surveyed 164 change recipients undergoing organizational change in various industries. Results confirm the first part of our model: psychological need satisfaction partially mediates the relation between change leaders’ championing and recipients’ readiness to change. In other words, prosocial change leaders act as attachment figures alleviating anxiety caused by ambiguity addressing change recipients’ proximity-seeking behaviour. Despite what has been described in scholarly works, change leaders’ methods of persuasion seem to be a more accurate indicator of recipients’ readiness for change. Part two of our hypothesized model could not be confirmed: moderation effects of leader influence and narrative intelligence could not be confirmed. We conclude that prosocial change leaders’ who demonstrate narrative intelligence use stories to elicit an emotional response from change recipients, effectively increasing their perceived psychological need satisfaction, ultimately affecting their readiness to change.

Giving Sense to Change Leadership

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

Welcome to read the paper dr. Antonio Sadarić and myself wrote about sensemaking and change leadership. Recent studies on change agency and organizational change failure have signicantly broadened the organizational behavior perspective on individual change experiences, however, the underlying mechanism for change leaders’ infuential behavior remains a relatively underspecied area. Our central theoretical contribution focuses on the ways in which linking the finndings from different research areas that deal with storytelling and persuasive communication can contribute to understanding the underlying mechanism of change leaders’ influential behavior. We examine the various strands of research in management concerned with change leadership and persuasive communication, and propose a multidisciplinary perspective from a variety of perspectives. Our approach draws on the key theoretical perspectives from the social cognitive theory and commensurable interdisciplinary findings as the basis for a narrative-based process model of change leaders’ in uential behavior. Our model includes propositions about the change leader’s interpretation of ideological change as well as the change leader’s process of sensemaking and sensegiving. We argue that the change leader’s persuasive communication efforts are based on the leader’s narrative intelligence and in uence, which promote the change recipient’s attachment formation.

Keywords: Change leadership, Persuasive communication, Narrative-based process model, Social cognitive theory

Talking Tom has a case study (Outfit7)

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

In less than a decade, Talking Tom and friends have become a household name around the world with number of downloads exceeding the global population. A fascinating story of how Outfit7, the company behind the scenes of Talking Tom has been started up, scaled up, how founders exited and how it is developing recently as one of rare entrepreneurial unicorns under the new ownership. Many thanks to my co-authors Spencer Harrison (INSEAD) and Žiga Vavpotič (Outfit7 member of the board), all the contributing interviewees including Iza Login (the founder of Outfit7), Xinyu Qian (CEO), all the participating leaders and employees from Outfit7 as well as dedicated staff from the INSEAD to get the story out in the open. Three-part case study is now available from the INSEAD case publishing, the Case centre and now also from the Harvard business school publishing. Our greatest hope is that it will spark fruitful discussions and learning in the educational institutions around the world.

Abstract:
 Outfit7 is a digital entertainment firm that develops and publishes animated video games for mobile phones, tablets and desktops. It’s flagship product is a series of mobile apps called “Talking Tom and Friends”, with close to 8 billion downloads globally. Outfit7 is one of only 46 European unicorns, i.e., privately held companies valued above $1 billion, topping the global ranks of most downloaded mobile games. In 2017, according to App Annie, a leading app-ranking platform, Outfit7 was the sixth most downloaded mobile publisher, and My Talking Tom was the second most downloaded mobile game globally, putting it in the company of tech giants like Facebook, Google, Tencent and Alibaba. Part A describes the growth stage from 2009 to 2014, along with the story of founders Samo and Iza Login. The focus is on setting up the startup and developing a unique organizational culture, leaving the hiring decision (fit or misfit) to students. In Part B, from 2014 to 2017, the start-up moves into scale-up phase after the founders’ exit/appointment of a new management team, the focus is on entrepreneurial leadership. In Part C, as tensions emerge from scaling up a unicorn, students must decide what to keep and what to change (how to balance continuity and renewal) as expectations for growth soar.

Pedagogical Objectives:
To facilitate discussion of entrepreneurship, leadership, human resource management, change through growth, and organizational culture.

Keywords:
Start-Up, Scale-Up, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Human Resource Management, Organizational Culture, Unicorn, Founders’ Exit, Change Management, Family Entertainment, Growth, Learning from Failure, Organizational Values, Teamwork

Book to celebrate 75th anniversary of BI Norwegian Business School

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

BI Norwegian Business School is celebrating 75th anniversary. Many of our colleagues have therefore contributed to the book At the forefront, looking ahead to link our recent research hoping to address the challenges of the present and future.  The whole book is available for free as open access, my five cents From Creativity to Innovation: Four Leadership Lessons about Capitalizing on High-potential Ideas in Chapter 11. Below is the chapter abstract:

Creative ideas fuel modern organizations and are increasingly salient in times of change. However, novelty—one defining characteristic of creative ideas—is associated with risk. That being said, highly creative ideas tend to represent the most potential, relative to the value they add to organizations and their members. How can leaders increase the odds of successfully transforming high-potential creative ideas into innovative realities? This chapter reviews the most current research findings on optimizing high-potential creative ideas to render the innovation advances they promise. It summarizes and exemplifies the following four leadership lessons: 1) change agents, 2) supportive leadership, 3) integrating multiple perspectives from assorted stakeholders, and 4) facilitating creative employee behavior in the workplace. Research suggests that effectively capitalizing on high-potential ideas in organizational settings requires active leadership that involves a mastery of the competencies of relevant change agents, as the development of new ideas requires rigorous in-context management of the change process. Leaders need to show two-dimensional support of tasks and individuals, not only to provide resources and assistance as needed, but also to facilitate proactive behaviors by challenging employees to depart from the status quo. The successful leader, above all, recognizes that capitalizing on creativity is a social process that requires contributions from multiple viewpoints, and that various stakeholders need to be involved.

 

 

MKWCI TV2: Student creativity at its best!

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

mkwci-tv2-logoMSc students at BI Norwegian Business School have been working hard over the semester at our course Managing knowledge work, creativity and innovation to come up with 13 innovation stories under the umbrella of MKWCI TV2. These are stories about success, growth and scaling-up, they are also stories about learning from failure. Narratives about technological, process and service innovations, about innovation process, change agency, prosocial motivation, startup cultures, challenges of scaling up, as well as about the innovation outcome itself. Video testimonials come from private and public sector, from healthcare and social care, shipping, transport, green economy, municipalities, IT sector, sports, dealing with technological distractions and behavioral change through gamification, and shared economy. Lessons learnt? Good innovation stories are all around! And it is remarkably engaging to learn about them as innovation journalists. Enjoy the show!

Global HR Forum 2009

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

logoGHRM

Just came back from a marvellous event called Global HR Forum 2009, held in Seoul, Republic of Korea (Nov 3 – Nov 5 2009) where I was invited to give a speech on the role of learning -oriented and innovative culture as a tool for managing change. I have to say that I was amazed by impecable organization and genuine warmth of our Korean hosts. In addition to this, the largest award for every speaker is to experience such a true eagerness to learn as I have from the large audience of Korean CEOs, HR professionals, policy makers and consultants. There were also a plethora of excellent talks from great practitioneers, scholars, consultants and global decision makers. Everybody is kindly invited to have a look at the Global HR Forum You Tube Channel, where all the talks will be made available in few weeks time.

Invited speech @ Global HR Forum 2009, Korea

Posted on by Miha Škerlavaj

I am honoured to announce my invited talk at the Global HR Forum 2009, November 3-5, Seoul, Korea.  This is the major South Korean HR conference, with expected 4,ooo decision-makers from global corporations, educational institutions and government. In prevoius years, it hosted renowed speakers such as Bill Clinton (Former President of USA), Lee Myung-Bak (President of the Republic of Korea), Bill Gates (Chairman  of Microsoft), Jack Welch (Former CEO, General Electric) … to name just a few of them. Indeed, a privilige, honour and great responsibility. My speech will be on The role of innovative and learning-oriented culture for managing organizational change. logo GHRF Korea 2009Here is the abstract:

General introduction:

Organizational change is a ubiquitous phenomenon in business environments. It is part of (human) nature and can be managed. Changes however differ in terms of amplitude, frequency, level, and scope at which they occur. Within the context of current economic downturn, managing high-amplitude, frequent, organizational changes is crucial for survival and future growth of practically any kind of organization. I argue that the most effective approach to manage omnipresent organizational changes is to develop a strong and adaptive organizational culture that values learning and innovation.

Theoretical background:

The array of available change management theories and models is wide and goes back to classical ‘unfreeze-change-freeze’ model (Lewin, 1951), ‘formula for changes’ (Beckhardt & Gleicher, 1969), famous model ‘8S’ (Koter, 1995), theory ‘E&O’ (Beer & Nohria, 2000), metaphorical and practical model of ‘wind, sailboat, captain & the crew’ and ‘orchestrating vs. improvising change’ (Kassarjian, 1997), and learning organization (Senge, 1990). Their common denominator is that they all seek the best way to adapt, respond, or maybe even to induce organizational changes. In doing so, most of the authors mentioned either directly or indirectly stresses the importance of appropriate set of values organizational members share. Recent empirical research shows that organizational learning culture (Škerlavaj et al., 2007) and innovative culture (Škerlavaj, Song, & Lee, In press) improve organizational performance of modern enterprises.

Practical impact, applications and expected outcomes:

Hence, if we know that organizational culture that values learning and innovation leads to improved organizational performance by better managing change, question for modern managers is how to develop and/or reinforce such culture. This session will: (1) show managers several examples of best practices in developing learning-oriented and innovative organizational cultures (contingent upon industry, size etc.); and (2) provide them with a toolbox of metaphors, stories, innovation contests, leadership approaches, row models, mottos, etc. in order to overcome resistance to change, introduce and reinforce innovative and learning-oriented set of values among organizational members.