C2: The Dream Team
How to choose the people to manage and execute change
How to WIN: Failure to report SH harms Africa media
African media has a sexual harassment problem, research by WIN has found. But many cases of physical and verbal sexual harassment go unreported because of fear of further victimisation and a lack of confidence in management systems and interventions. When action is taken, results are often underwhelming.
WIN’s latest research, the first phase of a multi-region study, set out to collect credible information about the scale of harassment in news outlets in Africa and to establish what was being done to provide safer newsrooms.
INTRODUCTION: C2 The Dream Team
2
What is covered�in this lesson?
3
SECTION 1: Roles, responsibilities and purpose
SECTION 2: Putting people first
STOP & THINK: Can you think of someone who is open to change in your workplace? Will they help support you in a change project?
SECTION 3: Continuous training
INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT: Carry out an analysis of either your team or a team you know well
INTRODUCTION: C2 The Dream Team
Section 1: Roles and responsibilities
Driving change
SECTION 1: C2 Roles and responsibilities
The ultimate goal of change management is to drive organisational results by engaging staff to adopt new ways of working, according to Prosci.
Processes, systems and structures may have to change as well as roles. It is likely to mean that individuals will have to change their behaviour if the transformation project is to succeed.
For this to happen, key staff, including people managers, project managers and employees, will have to engage with the change programme and co-ordinate their efforts.
Those media companies that have been most successful at smoother transformations had in place a management support system such as a network or forum where change agents could liaise about challenges and the way ahead.
A structured, organised approach to change with clearly defined roles can help support employees through transition.
You can read more about Prosci’s approach here: Prosci’s change management methodology.
5
And others play their part too
A structured organised approach to change management with clearly defined roles can help support employees through a period of transition.
Change agent networks may be needed to support your project
SECTION 1: C2 Roles and responsibilities
6
You are likely to need a mixture of other roles such as:
They will help extend support for change throughout the organisation.
These people can help to apply their knowledge and expertise to the situation.
They typically help to design, develop and deliver a solution to a problem or engage, adopt and use the solution.
Image from: Unsplash
Stop & Think
Let’s stop and think for a moment:
7
SECTION 1: C2 Roles and responsibilities
Section 2: Putting people first
Picking the team
If you are putting a team together or considering how your team is reacting to change, you will need to identify the employees and stakeholders who are likely to support and help you.
Start by assessing the skill sets you have in the team.
Ask yourself:
His theory can help teams to adapt to changing goals by highlighting collective strengths and reducing weaknesses. This helps the team to deal with change.
His model looks at how people behave in the workplace and which roles best suit them.
It is widely used across business sectors to build effective teams. Read more about it here if it is of interest to you.
You may also need to think about redefining some of the roles to recruit wider, broader perspectives.
In Going Digital, Lyndsey Jones and Balvinder Singh Powar look at several methodologies that can help you build highly performing teams.
Meredith Belbin’s methodology is one tool you can use to ensure everyone is working towards the same goal.
9
Section 2: Putting people first
Belbin’s team
According to www.Belbin.com, the roles in any given team are made up of the following and include “allowable” weaknesses:
10
Group | Role | Strengths | Weaknesses | Don’t be surprised to find… | Who is this in your team? |
Action | Shaper | Dynamic | May trample on feelings | Risk of aggression to get things done | |
| Implementer | Practical and reliable | Can be inflexible | Slow to relinquish their plans | |
| Complete Finisher | Perfects and polishes | Reluctant to delegate | Could take perfectionism to extreme | |
People | Co-ordinator | Clarifies goals. Identifies talent | Can offload their work | Might over-delegate | |
| Team worker | Listens and averts friction. Diplomatic | Tends to avoid confrontation | Hesitant to make unpopular decisions | |
| Resource investigator | Explores opportunities and develops contacts | Over-optimistic. Can lose interest | May forget to follow up on lead | |
Thought | Plant | Creative, generates ideas and solves problems | Might ignore incidentals | Can be forgetful | |
| Monitor-evaluator | Strategic, logical and discerning | May fail to inspire others | Slow decision-maker | |
| Specialist | Single-minded and dedicated | Tends to contribute on narrow front | Can overload you with information | |
SECTION 2: C2 Putting people first
Stop & Think
Let’s stop and think for a moment:
11
SECTION 2: C2 Putting people first
The value of early adopters
He identified five personality traits:
12
While some people are wary of change, others can be drawn to it and embrace it early on. These people can help you to drive a project.
“Early adopters” is a term that comes from Everett M Rogers’ change theory.
He used the adoption curve, based on the mathematical Bell curve, to classify people by their willingness to take up new ideas, technologies or trends.
SECTION 2: C2 Putting people first
His five categories are based on standard deviations on a normal distribution so the innovators and early adopters are the fastest to take up a change management programme and are likely to help you not only deliver it but persuade and influence their colleagues - the majority - to buy into it in the long term.
13
Rogers adoption curve
SECTION 2: C2 Putting people first
Image source: rogers adoption curve image - Bing images
2.5%
13.5%
34%
34%
16%
Early
Adopters
Innovators
Early
Majority
Late
Majority
Laggards
Adopters v laggards
In some settings they can be useful if there are roles they can do using their skills.
But to win them over, it is likely you will need to persuade them individually - and this will take a long time.
14
You will need early adopters to help you get a change project off the ground.
They are likely to be people who:
But beware! The enthusiasm of early adopters and their quick adoption of change can grate on the wider team and annoy those who are slower to adapt.
At the other end of the curve, the laggards can hold up a change programme. They can even be deceptive: while appearing to accept the change, they actually work to undermine it.
SECTION 2: C2 Putting people first
Image from: CNET
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity.”
AMELIA EARHART
First woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
15
SECTION 2: C2 Putting people first
Image from: Get Archive
Listen and Learn: Kotter on dealing with resistance
16
SECTION 2: C2 Putting people first
John Kotter’s top tip on people who resist change: get them out of the way not matter who they are because they will undermine the process.
What do you think about his views?
Pitfalls: blockers and disruptors
You will need to mitigate the risk of lack of buy-in and even conflict in the workplace.
You are likely to need a mixture of tactics to resolve any one situation as there is no one-size fits all solution.
You may encounter people who will seek to stop or delay the transformation.
“Blockers” oppose change on purpose and they can be anyone in an organisation - young or old, junior or senior.
Disruptors, on the other hand, tend to fundamentally challenge the business model.
For example, Amazon started by challenging the bookshop model and Netflix is upending television scheduling models - and cinema film releases - with streaming.
The problem with disruptors is that you rarely see them coming. According to Forbes, disruptors share a common purpose: they “create businesses, products and services that are better - less expensive and more creative, useful and impactful - and scalable”.
They may argue against changing the way they work, saying for example that by bringing deadlines forward for digital publishing, you are undermining the print operation.
They may try to derail the change programme by non-compliance with deadlines, working slowly on purpose to bust deadlines or just not comply with sending page proofs on time.
If there is a lack of senior leadership support for transformation, the risk of conflict and political backlash in a newsroom is high where blockers will argue against change.
17
SECTION 2: C2 Putting people first
Section 3: Continuous training
Reminder: Make training a regular part of company life
19
Training is critical to achieve digital maturity and manage change in any company, but is often not done or done with little budget
There are many ways to achieve digital skills uplift with little budget, such as:
Rotations: moving staff to other roles is a cheap and effective way of training, and also brings empathy and understanding of pressures beyond one’s own job eg swap a news editor with a digital editor
In-house training: ask your colleagues to share their knowledge with lunchtime learning sessions: everybody can bring their lunch to a boardroom, or do it online via Zoom or Teams - and a colleague can teach for 30 minutes on how to do something useful: write good headlines, publish a web story.
Bring in guest speakers: most people would be delighted to come into a news org and speak to the staff, so invite them!
There are literally thousands of free online training courses, and training facilitators. You can learn to code, edit, do social media or manage a team in a matter of hours - and for free! See You Tube, Udemy and Coursera for free training, or certificated courses that start at $10 and upwards. For a comparison of Udemy and Coursera, see this article.
SECTION 3: C2 Continuous training
The World Economic Forums’ Future of Jobs report in 2020 found that automation is happening faster than expected, with 85 million jobs expected to be lost worldwide by 2025. Routine tasks are likely to be automated. But 97 million new roles are forecast to emerge in industries like content creation.
The type of skills that are likely to be needed in the future:
Provide training support at desk level as well to ensure skill usage.
Training can increase the rate of management success in delivering transformation. It will also help to stop the rumour mill and negative feedback while promoting employee engagement.
Support networks should be in place for managers who have to deliver change. Companies that have this organisational structure in place, such as forums, are more likely to succeed at changing the business.
In this climate, retraining should become the norm. This approach has been taken by Singapore with its SkillsFuture scheme, which brings together representatives from industry, government, unions and educational institutions to help upskill its workforce.
The idea of continuous learning is not new. Pearson, the former owner of the Financial Times, had a slogan of “always learning”, for example.
If you are trained you are more likely to be able to deal with a changing work environment and more likely to perform better.
But you will need to tie in any training to a rollout of new ways of working so that people can use their skills immediately.
20
‘Always learning’ is a way of life
SECTION 3: C2 Continuous training
Case study: Financial Times
The Financial Times saw the appetite for training among its 600 or so journalists worldwide grow during 2020, when the newsroom ran 60 courses and had in total 1,800 attendees.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the FT moved its learning online which meant all staff could dial in worldwide. Now, the news organisation not only holds classes at a more convenient time for all staff in Europe, Asia and the US east coast but also stores videos of the sessions on the intranet for anyone who missed out.
“The newsroom is always evolving so you always need new skills,” says Scheherazade Daneshkhu, director of editorial talent at the FT.
21
Scheherazade Daneshkhu, Director of FT Editorial Talent. Photo: Charlie Bibby
SECTION 3: C2 Continuous training
Case study: Financial Times
22
SECTION 3: C2 Continuous training
In 2021, sessions were held on:
Case study: Financial Times
In-house masterclasses are a way that knowledge is transferred and disinimated around the newsroom - and are the main way that training is carried out in editorial.
Skills in data journalism and data visualisation are also sought-after, and sessions on these topics include how to read a spreadsheet to the vocabulary that data journalists use.
The FT newsroom has evolved from being a print-only operation to one that is now digital-first with audience engagement and data visualisation journalists, as well as audio, podcasts, newsletters and video.
Because of this evolution, it is important for all journalists to continue to be trained over their careers to broaden their horizons and keep up with emerging trends.
For the Paul McClean graduate scheme, a full week is devoted to data training - something which is likely to be rolled out to the wider newsroom.
“You really want to get to a situation where data journalists and writing journalists become one so the data journalists can write and the writing journalists know all about data and can use it for scoops,” says Ms Daneshkhu.
23
SECTION 3: C2 Continuous training
Building buy-in
Once you have built your team you can look at what motivates them to succeed.
If team members can work to their strengths and understand what’s expected of them, they are more likely to make change management work.
If they are given a sense of purpose where perhaps they can pursue personal goals, such as learning a language, they are also more likely to buy in.
At the FT, training was ongoing with masterclasses run by senior editors and external speakers from institutes such as Reuters Institute for the study of Journalism frequently brought in to discuss industry trends
This helped to build confidence across the workforce which in turn promoted buy in to change.
24
SECTION 3: C2 Continuous training
Image from: Unsplash
Quiz Assignment
25
SECTION 3: C2 Continuous training
End of Lesson Two
MODULE C: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Assignment part 2
MODULE C: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
28
Assignment part 2