Managing Change: How Companies Can Help Employees Embrace New Ideas by Ben DiPietro wsj.com When ConnectOne Bancorp was looking to upgrade its customer interaction systems, its chief executive faced an issue that can permeate any company: resistance to change among employees. Frank Sorrentino III, CEO of the operator of community banks in New York and New Jersey, examined upgrade options and decided the right choice was nCino, a software company that provides cloud-based operating systems and services to financial institutions. But a group of bank employees convened to consider what platform to go with chose another vendor, which Mr. Sorrentino attributed to the behavioral trait of people looking for their comfort zone--in this case, a company the group had heard of and that had a track record. The bank eventually settled on nCino because, after Mr. Sorrentino questioned the employees about how the choice would affect the client experience he said it became "incredibly apparent" nCino was the right choice. The exercise highlights the difficulties organizations have when trying to get employees to embrace change. Good change management can help employees embrace new technologies and directions, and keep companies relevant. "There is always this collision course with where we think the future is going and what it is we are going to implement to get there," said Mr. Sorrentino. It is important to ask the right questions, he said, such as how can this change the way we do things for the better? "Our clients are experiencing all this change around them," he said. "If we're not going to be part of that change, they are going to make decisions to go elsewhere." Why are we doing this? Education and communication are key drivers of culture change at Santander Bank N.A., said Amir Madjlessi, head of business banking. Education should focus on explaining why change is being undertaken, and that involves direct and transparent communication, he said. To be effective, any change must correlate to the bank's overall strategy and what it wants to accomplish, said Mr. Madjlessi. "The ultimate goal is to tie it to what we stand for and...communication is critical," he said. "If we give people the why behind the what and the how, typically we have the support of the enlisted troops." Santander's approach is similar to the one taken at SunTrust Banks, where Scott Case, the chief information officer, said good change management makes sure client expectations are aligned with the bank's overall goals. "A lot of what we do when we drive change, it always goes back to our purpose," said Mr. Case. Aligning the bank's systems with its values and its risk framework helps the bank better evaluate what risks it is willing to take related to technology, said Mr. Case. "There is a cadence around change management here; we talk about that a lot," he said. "It permeates the day-today." Though it sells products and services, Sean Desmond, an executive vice president at North Carolina-based nCino, said the first thing the company tries to impress upon customers that it isn't showing up to deliver an IT project. "We are very much a cultural-change business," said Mr. Desmond. "Technology is the easy part. If we can set the tone around change management, around attitude, around openness and acceptance to change...if we can get that cultural component part early, that can be the differentiator." That means working with clients to identify the "change champions" at all levels of their organization, though it all must flow from support demonstrated by top leadership, said Mr. Desmond. In one instance, Mr. Desmond said his team worked with a bank to heat-map every single stakeholder in the organization and the role that person would play from a cultural transformation standpoint, allowing it to ensure change was being drilled into all levels of the company. The company also has change-management training that is tailored to the employee and his or her role in the business. Importance of empowerment The key to empowering employees on behalf of the business is having the willingness to let them make decisions, he said. "They are not always going to be right 100% of the time, but you can course-correct that; that's what an agile environment is all about," said Mr. Desmond. Once they realize they won't get in trouble for making mistakes they feel part of the process to drive change, and that leads to great results. There will be resistance to change, but Mr. Desmond said it isn’t something he worries about, saying nCino doesn't look "to solve for the edge case." The company prefers to focus on identifying motivated leaders, holding them accountable and having them communicate the reasons for wanting to solve a problem this way. "Let them be part of the solution," he said. "The rest takes care of itself." Another potential roadblock to embracing technology change is the cost a company must incur to stay current with the latest platforms and services; that's an area where Mr. Sorrentino thinks organizations drop the ball. Part of change management means impressing upon employees why it is a bad idea to try to identify what a client needs based on the technology now being used, said Mr. Sorrentino. "If there is something today that makes sense, I will throw away what we had yesterday," he said. "If we can provide a better client experience, we're going to spend those dollars to do that. It's about constantly making change and then changing the change we make." ********************** QUESTIONS: 1. What do you think is meant by the statement “ good change management can help……. keep companies relevant”? 2. Why do you think it is so important that change involves direct and transparent communication? Be specific in your answer. 3. Why is employee empowerment so important to change?

Life Application Paper Instructions General Directions for Life Application Papers: In this course you will write three Life Application Papers due in different weeks of the course. The first two papers will be informal (i.e. no formal APA required) but professionally written. The last paper will be formally written. The three papers will allow you to explore how to: Connect your professional work and the Strategic Communication community through journals, conferences, and expectations for peer-reviewed research.Understand and engage the communication community, specifically the historical development of Strategic Communication.Connect Strategic Communication and your research interest, which you will develop into your dissertation, to your faith and world view. These papers should be a minimum of 500 words. NOTE: Informal APA style basics include a cover page, page numbers, and references/intext citations where applicable. Critical thinking will be assessed. Careful editing is expected. The goal is to use this knowledge beyond DIGI 700 and to find a community of academics and/or professionals who are also engaged in your topic of interest. Paper 2 Instructions: Using the resources provided in this class and any additional sources you may discover along the way, answer these two questions: Based on the history of Strategic Communication, should Strategic Communication be considered an academic discipline or a field of study? Why is the answer to this question important for you as a student of communication? Be sure to document your answers well.

Assignment 2: Article CritiqueThe practice of quantitative research not only involves statistical calculations and formulas but also involves the understanding of statistical techniques related to real-world applications. You might not become a quantitative researcher nor use statistical methods in your profession but as a consumer, citizen, and scholar-practitioner, it will be important for you to become a critical consumer of research, which will empower you to read, interpret, and evaluate the strength of claims made in scholarly material and daily news.For this Assignment, you will critically evaluate a scholarly article related to factorial ANOVA.To prepareReview the Article Critique Assignment Guide in the Walden Library, listed in the Week 2 Learning Resources.Search the Walden Library for a quantitative article that applies factorial analysis of variance. Note that sometimes these are referred to as “two-way ANOVAs.”By Day 7The AssignmentWrite a 2- to 3-page critique of the research you found in the Walden Library that includes responses to the following prompts:Why did the authors select factorial ANOVA in the research?Do you think this test was the most appropriate choice? Why or why not?Did the authors display the results in a figure or table?Does the results table stand alone? In other words, are you able to interpret the study from it? Why or why not?