Hi, I'm Kenneth Bettenhausen,
professor of management at the University of Colorado, Denver.
In the previous lessons,
you learned what's involved in leading and managing change initiative,
and how the two functions complement one another.
You need to do both.
And we learned about Kurt Lewin's three state organizational change model.
In this lesson, we'll use
Lewin's model to better understand two changes that a member of CU,
Denver is managing for sustainability advisory council implemented.
Once she made in her first job out of college,
the second she made after several years and after several promotions.
Much more complex, required significant resources,
involved people from several different departments,
but Lewin's framework works for both.
Lewin's force field model highlights that at any one time,
the current status quo,
the current state is besieged by multiple pressures that he termed forces.
Some forces exert pressure to change things in one direction,
others to move things in a different direction,
and yet other forces are at play to resist change,
to keep things as they are.
I want you to keep Lewin's model in mind as you listen to
how Brenna Simmons St. Ogne approached changed.
As you watch the following video and listen to Brenna
describe a change she implemented early in her career and
another more complex change she implemented a few years later at
a different location and from a position of much greater formal authority,
think about and try to identify
Lewin's three states and the driving and resisting forces at play.
Imagine how things existed prior to making the change.
How did she unfreeze her workplace from its current state?
What are the driving forces that were
tapped to justify the change and make it acceptable?
How did Brenna introduce,
amplify, and enhance the driving forces?
What were the resisting forces that she anticipated or encountered?
What does she do to address and reduce these resisting forces?
And keep an eye peeled for examples of things Brenna
did the fit out description of leading the change initiative,
and things she did to manage the changes she introduced.
Again, make notes of what you see so you can
refer to them when taking the quiz that follows the video.
I want you to really pay attention because
we'll be coming back to the changes Brenna describes here in
future lessons as we look at some of the other things that a change agent
needs to do to successfully plan for and implement change.
So tell us a little bit about some of the changes you've
made early in career, later in your career.
Some of the things that you learned along the way.
There's lots of learning along the way every time you make change.
I think if you don't learn,
then you're going to have your head in the sand.
But early in my career,
I worked right out of college for a four property complex in
Hawaii and it was multiple brands under a major hotel brand or hotel chain.
And one of the first things I implemented
there early on in my career was in room recycling program.
And at that point it was before
many hotels were doing that and it's pretty low hanging fruit.
But it's very expensive for hotels to get
the infrastructure in place and the the staff training.
So initially, I knew that I
had to have many different approaches as I'm doing this change.
One was going to be with the staff,
the housekeepers who are already so busy every day cleaning rooms.
How are we going to convince them to care and to actually start recycling?
And so that was really pulling on the heartstrings of their children and grandchildren.
And Hawaii has a very- I
think tangible place to talk about trash because the islands are so small.
Trash really never goes away and that's true wherever you are,
but Hawaii was very easy to illustrate that with the staff and get their buy in.
So that started before the change was ever implemented.
Starting to get buy in of this staff months before
it was even announced that we are going to be doing this change.
And then also selling up the ladder to my superiors,
to the boss, to the general manager of the hotel.
And Hawaii had a unique situation that we don't have
here in Colorado which was a five cents bottle tax.
And so it was actually a profit driven motivation I was able to share with
the upper management that for every single aluminum can or bottle that we recycled,
the hotel would then get five cents back.
So it actually became a revenue stream for the hotel and was
able to put together some cost benefit models to show
the hotel at what point would we break-even
from the initial investment of getting the recycle bins,
getting the trucks set up, getting the contract with the waste hauler set up,
and actually able to turn it into a profit model.
What was the decision to say let's go with the company- keeping the revenue in order to
make it cover the expenses versus an incentive for the staff?
We actually did a blended model.
So initially we did not let the staff take
it home because we needed to figure out what that break-even point is.
But after about six months of doing it,
we ended up letting the staff that wanted to
take it home and redeem that money themselves.
And so it wasn't huge amounts because, you know,
if you have 100 a bottles at five cents,
it doesn't end up to be that much for what
you can actually physically carry home with you.
But the room attendants did actually
jump in on that benefit and some started taking it home.
So that was a really fun evolution of the change that wasn't an initial intended outcome,
but that ended up being a really fun evolution of it.
John ByrdSenior Instructor
Kenneth BettenhausenProfessor
