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Management professionals systematically avoid the anchoring phase of planned organizational change, to their own surprise. This final phase is seen as boring, difficult, unnecessary, not the responsibility of management, and as offering little career benefit. This is shown by research conducted by Dirk Jan Bolderheij, trainer and lecturer at TIAS Business School and PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Woody van Olffen of TIAS Business School and Tilburg University, and Omar N. Solinger of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
In their recently published article, Anchoring Reticence: Why Practitioners Shun the Final Stage of Planned Organizational Change in The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, the researchers argue that the undervaluation of anchoring may help explain why so many change initiatives ultimately fail. Bolderheij says: “When managers have a mindset of ‘anchoring is boring and difficult’, and when that is also how people talk about it in organizations, you will never get your best people actively involved in it.”
Initial indications
The first indications that something might be lacking in the commitment to anchoring work came from experiences with the Danish change simulation game ActeeChange. Bolderheij regularly uses this game, including at TIAS Business School, as a trainer and lecturer with groups of managers, from early-career to executive level, from both private and semi-public organizations.
Favorite quadrant
After the game has been completed and discussed, he always ends with the so-called “favorite quadrant exercise.” On the game board in the gaming room, the four classic quadrants, or four phases of planned organizational change, are shown on the floor. These are: (1) building a compelling vision, (2) getting started, (3) implementing and (4) anchoring. Bolderheij then invites participants to physically position themselves in one “favorite” quadrant: the quadrant in which they would most prefer to be deployed in a change process.
“Empty quadrant phenomenon”
Bolderheij: “Time and again, the anchoring quadrant remained empty. Only the occasional participant would stand there. And each time, the participants themselves were surprised by this. They would say things like: ‘Wow, this is the quadrant where private organizations earn their money and where government or semi-public organizations ultimately deliver their performance.’ And yet it seems to be systematically avoided. That is when we started a formal study to map and possibly explain this fascinating ‘empty fourth quadrant phenomenon.’”
Strikingly quiet
The approach was strongly systematized, and the researchers looked for a broad population of groups, both within and outside TIAS, to see how systematically the phenomenon occurred. Participants were then surveyed using a questionnaire. Bolderheij also explored the literature in search of previous research. Van Olffen: “We discovered that the literature on the anchoring phase is rather limited, especially compared with the other quadrants. You could fill libraries with books about telling a compelling story and mobilizing people. In our experiment, everyone also wanted to stand in those quadrants. In organizations, you often see that the first quadrant still receives quite a lot of money and attention from top management. At the finish line, in the anchoring phase, things suddenly become strikingly quiet by comparison, while that is precisely where you need to make your slam dunk. That is where you need to secure the learning outcomes so you can continue to benefit from them.”
Painful
“You also hardly see any courses or training programs on questions such as ‘How do you safeguard change?’ or ‘How do you ensure that there is funding for the final phase too?’” Van Olffen observes. “Ultimately, you need to lock in and safeguard what you have changed and learned for the future. Something like discipline, continuing to do what you have agreed on together, is often not a word we like very much, but it is exactly what you also need in that final phase.” Bolderheij adds: “And the painful part is that by not anchoring, you actually undermine all the previous change efforts. People fall back into old behavior. Attention fades.”
The Croma effect
Van Olffen: “What we know about organizations and change is that if you do not stay with it, it will not succeed. I sometimes call this ‘the Croma effect,’ referring to an old TV commercial: ‘you have to stay with it for the best result.’ Everything you see in an organization is essentially a collective behavioral equilibrium that you are trying to shift, for example toward greater customer centricity, innovation, AI use, and so on. The moment you no longer pay attention to it, such a hard-won new equilibrium usually just ‘rolls’ back to the old situation. This is especially true when it concerns very old and stubborn behavior that you have tried to change. Unlearning also takes time and energy.”
“Orphaned” practices
“What you also see is that neglecting anchoring becomes self-reinforcing. If ‘boring’ and ‘difficult’ are the associations people have with anchoring activities, no one will engage with them. As a result, you do not build knowledge around it, and it does not get the chance to prove its real value. That means it will remain undervalued. Based on this, we present a more general model in the article to explain how other organizational practices can also become ‘orphaned.’ These are practices that everyone says are important, but that no one really wants to actively engage with. This kind of ‘stepchild’ attitude therefore sustains itself.”
Shock and awe
“In practice, you see that there is a great deal of impatience, for example among shareholders but also in politics. It is almost institutional,” Bolderheij observes. “This translates into board members and senior managers with ambitious goals, who in fact need to go back to the drawing board when implementation turns out to be difficult or even collapses under the weight of those often towering ambitions. There is a kind of discomfort there. In reality, we need to be more modest, have patience and take greater account of change capacity. So no quick hits, no shock and awe.”
Persistence heroes
Van Olffen: “For us, the origin of this fundamental problem lies in the fact that anchoring is unfamiliar, unloved, under-researched and, partly as a result, under-rewarded. I think one thing you can do is improve the image of this kind of work. We also need implementation heroes and ‘persistence heroes.’ People who persevere and finish. Finishers. Those who are good at this should be able to earn credit for it. It needs to be valued. But in order to be valued, it first needs to be seen and recognized. In business administration, there is a great deal of attention for strategic management. Operational management is also well covered. But what sits in between, real tactical management, the question of how to actually get something done, receives far less attention. You need theory, models and tools to better achieve anchoring. And many, many practical examples.”
First step
In TIAS programs and courses where change management is addressed, Bolderheij and Van Olffen regularly use the change game and explicitly link it to students’ own practice. Van Olffen: “The research is still in its early stages. But the great advantage is that almost everyone recognizes the phenomenon in practice. Awareness of it is an important first step. We naturally hope that when our students encounter change, they will already be a little more alert to paying attention to this ‘back end’ of the process, to ensure that the changes that have been set in motion are safeguarded and that the change process is properly ‘closed off’ before moving on to the next change effort. First, make sure you complete the circle properly.”
About Dirk Jan Bolderheij
Dirk Jan Bolderheij is the founder of Simulation Experience, a lecturer at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, a trainer and guest lecturer at TIAS Business School, and a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
About Woody van Olffen
Prof. Dr. Woody van Olffen is Professor of Organizational Change and Development at TIAS School for Business and Society, Tilburg University.
