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Organizational change: A critical challenge for team effectiveness


Elisabeth Goodman and Lucy Loh Business Information Review 2011 28: 242 DOI: 10.1177/0266382111427087 The online version of this article can be found at: http://bir.sagepub.com/content/28/4/242

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Business Information Review 28(4) 242250 The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0266382111427087 bir.sagepub.com

Organizational change: A critical challenge for team effectiveness


Elisabeth Goodman Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting Lucy Loh Owner and Principal Consultant at Lucy Loh Consulting

Abstract Change is again in the spotlight. Much of the current debate about organizational change is focusing on large scale changes, e.g. public sector reshaping or the role of the third sector, for example, and many private sector organizations are working hard on internal efficiencies. All of these bring huge challenges. But what about the people and the teams within these organizations, who must continue to deliver today as well as achieve changes to their own roles and services for delivery tomorrow? This article describes some of the current drivers of change, and the challenges for teams. It highlights a number of models and approaches which describe the cycle of change and the elements of team effectiveness, and gives practical advice on how to use those to develop and support teams in a time of change. Our advice is grounded in good practice gained through real life experience, with practical tips and suggestions. These will help readers to build and rebuild teams so that they remain effective and the people in them motivated and aligned to the organizations goals. Keywords change management, customer value, Lean, Six Sigma, stakeholder management, team effectiveness, team leadership, team learning

Introduction
Organizations are in a constant state of change, though the degree and rate of change will vary from organization to organization. It is important to recognize that all change involves people: what they do, and/or how they do it. Although this article is titled Organizational change, it is the people within the organization who actually change. One essential point to ensure team effectiveness is sustained during periods of change, is to recognize that engagement of the team throughout the process is crucial. As Peter Senge (1993) said, People dont resist change. They resist being changed. We believe that it is the uncertainty associated with change that can be so difficult and painful to cope with; everyone needs to feel that they have some sort of control over their situation. Team leaders should value expressions of resistance as an opening up of dialogue on what people are thinking and feeling, paving the way for constructive discussion on how best to go forward. This article describes some of the challenges facing organizations during change, and why this topic is more important than ever. Our intention is to provide ideas and techniques that both leaders and team members can use to improve the effectiveness of their team, whatever its

sector or current level of performance. We describe core principles and general approaches to team development (often initiated from inside the team) and show how to use these to address change stimulated from outside the team. We share ideas on how to diagnose the current state of the team, whether it is performing well and is strongly aligned with its customers, or less so. Our own experiences of running courses, seminars, and of generally working with our clients have given us many examples of the changes that people are going through and we have written several blogs and conference presentations relating to this theme (see Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). Jay Galbraith, a world leader on organization and team development, states: Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results its currently achieving (Galbraith, 2005). We believe that it is critical for teams to design themselves for effectiveness, to manage the status quo and to increase their resilience for change.

Corresponding author: Elisabeth Goodman Email: elisabeth@riverrhee.com

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243 management and organizational issues at the top of the list. This priority included gaining more staff as a way of improving the work/life balance. Other priorities highlighted included globalizing support systems, monitoring new outsourcing arrangements, harmonizing and integrating services across locations and within the organizational context, cost reduction and ensuring delivery of value, refining work processes and increasing quality, implementing new systems and programmes. These are all examples of the types of change being faced by organizations.

Challenges Facing Todays Teams The Big Picture: The Economy


The credit crunch of 2008 has cast a long shadow and is one of the prime drivers of the change that we see today. As we write, in the second half of 2011, many global economies, including the UKs, are undergoing unprecedented change. These macroeconomic changes are triggering change at all levels in the public, private and third sectors. The public sector faces the challenge of having to do more with less. The private sector is seeking increased efficiencies and effectiveness, and is looking at innovation of products, services and the ways in which it does business. The third sector has the opportunity, and challenge, to take on activities previously performed by the public sector. Although todays wave of change has been primarily created by economic conditions, change is now such a constant feature of organizational life that this article is relevant irrespective of the triggers for change.

The Impact of Change


Some organizational change is driven by factors outside the organization, to which it then has to react. In other cases, an organization can proactively choose to change, interpreting the changes in customers, services and demand likely in the future and reshaping itself accordingly. In each case, a particular team may discover that its customers have changed, or the needs and wants of their existing customers have changed. This means that the value which the team delivers to its customers must also change, which in turn alters the nature of the team itself, its roles, and what good quality looks and feels like (Figure 1). In addition, the team members will have a wider set of established stakeholders with whom they have a good relationship, and whose needs and styles of working they understand well. As the organization changes, the stakeholders for the team may change, bringing the need to build relationships with a new set of people. The UK local government election in May 2011 offers a vivid example of change in organizational values. A number of councils changed from leadership by one political party to leadership by another, with a substantial turnover in the Councillors themselves. The incoming Councillors held different political views and values (political and other), and had different manifesto commitments to the outgoing Councillors. Almost overnight, the local government officers needed to stop working with previous Councillors, and begin adapting to a new programme of work as described in the manifesto. This is change at its most radical: a new direction, new values, new stakeholders, a new programme of work, and new ways of working, rapidly imposed. For teams, this is the ultimate requirement: sustain delivery to the teams customers in parallel with evolving the team and its effectiveness in a radically new environment.

Impact on Organizations
The economic conditions have created a scale and rate of change to challenge organizations, and the teams within them, as never before. Within organizations, some teams are being downsized, with difficult choices to make about which people to retain and which to let go. Often, a team is in the position of waiting and watching as the change ripples down the organizational layers towards them. Some teams are being reorganized, revising their priorities, or making a case for their survival. Teams are being asked to be more effective than ever, at a time when they are under more pressure than ever before. Many people in todays organizations have spent their working lives in a period of comparative stability. Their expectations about the emotional contract with the organization (their future, their working style, and terms and conditions) may now be challenged, leading to a sense of uncertainty and instability. Their job content (what a job comprises, how it is to be done, and how performance is assessed) may have been stable for years.

Change and Business Information Managers


Previous Business Information Review articles provide useful background for this article: Jennine Knight (2009) described the skills needed by team leaders (or managers); Sue Edgar (2009) discussed some of the major changes being faced by corporate information units; and Gina Lane (2008) wrote about organizational change in its broader context and inspired us with the title for this article. In addition, the top strategic priorities in the next two years reported by the BIR survey respondents in Allan Fosters (2011) Business Information Survey placed

Change as Renewal
For many individuals, change is demanding, personally and emotionally, as things which were important in the past are put aside, and new ways of working take their place. But change also offers an opportunity for renewal: to look

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Figure 1. The Change Links

Figure 2. The Ku bler-Ross change curve

again at what each team does, and to reposition the team to meet the voice of its customers. This brings us to our first proposed approach: recognizing reactions to change, and responding to them.

Understanding the Change Cycle: The bler-Ross Change Curve Ku


This approach was developed by Elizabeth Ku bler-Ross and was based on her work with people confronting grief. It illustrates the typical stages that people go through in response to change. Whether the people concerned view a change as predominantly positive and to be welcomed, or as something negative, they will go through some version of this change cycle. In this description, the stages are named for the prevalent emotion or activity experienced (Figure 2). When a substantial change happens, many parts of the organization are affected and go through this curve and at different rates. Within any one team, individual team members go through the change curve at different rates.

How can this model be used to support team effectiveness during change? It is important for leaders of affected teams to recognize that they too are travelling through the change curve. They will need emotional resilience to travel through their personal change curve quickly. Doing so gives them the capacity to monitor the responses of their team members, supporting each one according to where they are in their cycle, and assisting them if they get stuck at a particular point. The flexible leader will recognize that whilst some members will focus on the rational reasons for the change and view it as a task, others are more likely to focus on the people impact and the disruption to relationships. Both categories are likely to go through the curve in different ways, and so each requires a different management approach. All change involves letting go of something, and it is important to deliberately create space for this to happen. In one re-organization where a team was broken up, they held a celebration party to acknowledge all the learning and accomplishments they had achieved together. This was their way of letting go in a positive way, and developing energy and resources for each of them to move forward. In another team, where a team member was stuck in depression, the team leader spent time listening to that person and their sadness about what they were leaving behind, and then gradually coached them into seeing some possibilities in the future. Other resilient team members can also support their colleagues in an informal way. The people with whom the team interacts (its stakeholders, suppliers and customers) may also be going through change, and so the same principles apply. At a time of change, a number of people will not be operating at their best, and yet much is expected of them. It is a time for mutual respect and support! Below we present five tools that we have developed for working with teams on their change journey:

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Figure 3. Stages of team development

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Stages in team development Prerequisites for effective teams Team temperature checks Lean/Six Sigma Dilts Logical Levels of Change

1. Stages of Team Development


We have adapted this tool from Tuckman and Jensen (1977) and Hersey and Blanchard, and we have used it with new and established teams, to help leaders and their members understand the status of their team, and guide them through its further development. Teams are often relieved to realize that it is natural and in fact desirable to go through the forming, storming and norming stages in order to reach high performance (Figure 3). Team leaders and members may fear and try to avoid the storming stage but this is an important time for people to air their views openly and share their ideas constructively in order to make the team stronger. In fact the team leader needs to play a different role at different stages: one-on-one interactions with team members are especially valuable in the storming stage and a focus outwards to stakeholders is valuable in the high performing stage. Through awareness of these different stages, team members can also support the team leader and other team members, as well as ensure that they are fully developing their role within the team. The renewing (also sometimes referred to as mourning) and forming stages are the ones that will happen most frequently at a time of change for the team. These are the

stages that require the most hands-on and directive attention from the leader. For a team going through change and renewal, it is important for the team leader and members to celebrate the successes of the past (as previously mentioned), and to take note of what made them successful. One key role for the team leader is to keep a watchful eye outside the team to understand how the landscape is changing. This may include different pressures and opportunities for the wider organization; changes in its strategy and culture; and other changes in its overall operational context and its stakeholders. Each of these will have implications for the team: what it needs to accomplish and how. Structured learning techniques such as discussing other teams experiences in Peer Assists at the start of a teams life, conducting After Action Reviews (timely debriefs on lessons learnt) at key milestones, and holding in-depth Learning Retrospects at the end of a teams life can be particularly useful to capture and share lessons learnt between existing and new team members and others outside the team (Collison and Parnell, 2004). During a time of change, it is also important for the team leader to recognize that not all the team members may fit the new world. They may need to work with Human Resources personnel to manage this. Additionally, if new members join the team, it is important for the whole team to acknowledge that a new team has in fact been created and that the entire cycle of team development will need to be repeated in order to embrace the skills and values of the new members. Whenever there are further changes, the team will enter the renewal stage, and will need to go back around the cycle and re-test itself against the new task,

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Figure 4. Sample output from a Team temperature check

context and stakeholders. Future journeys through the cycle get quicker as the team becomes more change resilient.

2. Prerequisites for Effective Teams


This is the second tool that we use to support teams through change and for achieving effectiveness. We have coached team leaders to use this list of prerequisites as a checklist, and encouraged them to engage members in the success of the team by discussing best practices from other teams in which that they have been involved. The prerequisites are:  Clear purpose and goals share, and commit to, a mission that provides focus and direction. Team engagement in the development of the mission is crucial to ensure buy-in and understanding Trust and support each other believe in each other, work for each others success, know that you can count on each other Open communication continually share information, ideas, concerns, skills, knowledge (both within the team and with external stakeholders) Clear roles know what is expected of you and how you can best contribute to team success Diversity recognize and value differences in styles, ideas, cultures, backgrounds, expertise Task/Relationship balance balance the need to get work done with the need for strong, healthy relationships Decision making exercise effective, clear, structured decision making Meeting management hold effective meetings for the right (and stated) purpose(s), at the right time, with the right participants, with the desired outcomes and follow-up Information management effectively manage plans, actions, issues, risks, agreements, quality and other documents.

In a time of change, the context for many of the practices adopted by the team will also change. Additionally all interactions (task and people) across the team boundary will be up for review, and the position of the team boundary itself may change. The team leader, assisted by the members, will need to revisit each of the elements of this list in turn.

3. Team Temperature Checks


This is the third of our team tools (Figure 4). We use it as a diagnostic with the prerequisites checklist to determine the status of the team at a time of change, and to engage team members on the priorities to be addressed going forward. The relative importance of each prerequisite will change during the life of the team, as will the teams perception of how well they are performing. Rather than dwell retrospectively on everything that is not working, the team should focus on the biggest gaps between importance and performance of a prerequisite, and explore the suggestions for improvement in order to move forward in a constructive way. At the request of team leaders, we have polled members individually to obtain ratings of the perceived importance and performance against each prerequisite, and to encourage them to make suggestions for improvement to share at a team workshop. Using an external and objective facilitator can help with this, although the long-term teams can manage this themselves, e.g. by doing periodic After Action Reviews in team meetings, or at key milestones. It may help buy-in to the approach to include one or two additional criteria or prerequisites which are particularly important to the specific team and its customers. This may also be useful if there are criteria which are strongly relevant to the team situation, and which it is important to track.

    

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247 savings, and embed this approach as a sustainable way of working.

5. Dilts Logical Levels of Change


This is our fifth and last team tool and is one that can be used both as a diagnostic and as a planning tool in a time of change. Robert Dilts is a leading figure in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) who recognized that it is important for team leaders to act at multiple levels to achieve change. He developed the Logical Levels of change model (Figure 5), as a helpful way of understanding the elements of effective team performance (OConnor, 2001).

Figure 5. Logical levels of change

In a time of change it may also be appropriate to involve customers, suppliers and other stakeholders in this process. This will deliver two benefits: getting some external input, and also building relationships with people of importance to the team either during or after the change.

Environment
The Environment refers to what is outside the team: the place and time (where and when) the team works: the teams customers or stakeholders. The team may be successful only in specific circumstances or with particular people: being in the right place at the right time. The physical layout of the work area, in relation to the team and also its customers and suppliers, may either constrain or facilitate the way a team works. It may be that altering physical workflow is sufficient to respond to a change well.

4. Lean/Six Sigma
The Lean and Six Sigma process improvement philosophies and tools (developed by Toyota and Motorola respectively, and modern-day representations of Total Quality Management, Business Process Re-engineering, ISO 9000 etc) can be extremely useful to a team undergoing change. Many organizations now use a combination of both Lean and Six Sigma tailored to their own culture and needs; we have worked with some of them to develop strategies and implement change in an approach analogous to that described by Steven Spear (2009): 1. Identify the value to be delivered, and your teams goals, in the context of your customers and other stakeholders expectations Adopt an end-to-end (cross-team/-department/-organization) process orientation, i.e. going beyond traditional silos to explore how to deliver customer value most effectively and efficiently Commit to identifying, solving and learning from problems Build capability within the team to perpetuate a culture of continuous improvement.

Behaviour and Capabilities


Behaviour refers to specific actions: what each team member does, says and thinks. This will be the outward display of having successfully introduced new working practices and so it will also be useful to define the key expected behaviours for implementing a particular change. Capabilities also referred to as competencies are skills, qualities and strategies, such as flexibility and adaptability. They are consistent, automatic and habitual, are how work gets done in the team and will often need to be defined, taught and practised in order to support change. Performance management is an established process for managing goals for Behaviours and Capabilities in most organizations.

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Values and Beliefs


Values are what an individual or team holds to be important, so they act as the why: the emotional drivers for what a team member or the overall team does. Beliefs are what an individual or team holds to be true, and so influences how the person or team acts. Values are critical: for most of us, they are key, unconscious influences on how we act. The values demonstrated by the team leader are particularly important. For example, a team leader who values harmony could act to reduce

We have found that even short workshops around any one of these steps with a team undergoing change can already help them to be better equipped to deal with it. We have worked with an academic library team preparing to centralize processes for books and periodicals that were previously decentralized across several college libraries. An engagement with a pharmaceutical contract research organization (CRO) has enabled it to engage people across the whole of its organization, deliver real cost and time

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248 tension in the team. In some circumstances, it could be more important that the team leader values achievement, and temporarily parks an issue of tension in order to meet an important deadline. Within the team, it is vital that the team leader sensitively manages debate on the values which will be important for future team success and meeting the needs of its customers and stakeholders. These values will not necessarily be those which the individual team members hold most strongly. Imagine, for example, a team that has been working at the forefront of process change, and values innovation very strongly. Perhaps their success with process change has been recognized, and the team is now being asked to replicate process management across a wider part of the organization. A key value now could be standardization quite a change from innovation. At a time of change, it is helpful for the team leader to ask all the members of the team to state their beliefs about working in the team and to facilitate a healthy debate about these. For example, a team member may say: I believe I am empowered to . . . .. This may have been true in the past; if no longer true, the implications of the change can be discussed constructively.

Business Information Review 28(4) Many of us would start with our environment, competencies and behaviours: we might join a gym, or begin a diet. We are likely to start with great enthusiasm, but then find the new behaviour hard to sustain. An alternative approach would be to consider and explore why we want to be fitter or healthier and how we would view ourselves or feel in our new identity. For example, a parent might want to increase their fitness to be able to be more active with their children, as part of their identity as a parent, and also to demonstrate a value about health. Then, each time the parent considered behaviour which was in conflict with their mental image of trampolining and bicycling with their children, the parent is more likely to make a healthy decision. The same is true when introducing change in an organization: our first thought might be to put up posters, or run training courses. When setting out to achieve change, its tempting to focus activities on the lower levels of Dilts pyramid, because they are more visible, and easier to act on. Organization change, for example, (changing the organization chart, reporting lines, which skills are located in which team), affecting the bottom three levels of the pyramid. But change at these lower levels will not necessarily affect the higher levels, and each of us can identify examples where large amounts of energy went into these activities at the lower levels but little into the identity and values of the new organization, with poor results. In one case, a changing organization put much time into building new role profiles (Capability) and interviewing existing role holders for those roles, but without engaging the organization in a discussion about the new mission and identity for the organization (why are we here, who are we now?) and the values now needed for it to succeed. We can create more lasting and sustainable change by working on purpose, identity, values and beliefs. These higher levels in the pyramid are generally more invisible, harder to change and harder to assess because they address the thoughts and emotions of individuals. For lasting and sustainable change, we need to consider the new purpose of the team, what the new identity would look, feel, and sound like, and what the values and beliefs would be to sustain that new purpose and identity (Bridges, 2004). It is worth significant effort to engage the organization and its teams in this as much as is practically possible. This is the way to change those thoughts and emotions, which will then motivate changes in capabilities and behaviours. Training courses and posters could be developed which re-emphasize the changes in identity and values, while also developing the capabilities and behaviours needed. Development of the environment to support the change would also honour the new identity and values. The Fire Service provides an example of how a teams identity might change. Many Fire Services now spend much time on education (in schools, for example), or on preventative and audit work (perhaps in a care home). Longer-serving staff joined the Fire Service as their job title

Identity
Identity is how a team thinks about itself, the core beliefs and values that define it, and which provide a sense of who the team is. Healthcare professionals could have an identity as nurses, for example. Library and information professionals might describe themselves as librarians, or information analysts (there are, of course, lots of other descriptions they might use).

Purpose
Purpose refers to the larger organization of which the team is part. It connects to a wider purpose for whom? or what else? For healthcare professionals, their purpose could be to alleviate suffering or to provide care. For library and information professionals, their purpose could be to assist others to locate the information they need and want.

Using the Dilts model


The model helps the team to understand its status, and to make choices about what to do. The model has a natural hierarchy, and indicates where change is required in the team to assist its effectiveness in the wider organization. Where the nature of the wider organization has changed, and the role of the team has changed within it, then the team would need to work through all the levels, from identity downwards, to consider what has changed and to redefine itself. It may help to think about the model in terms of individual change. We might for instance want to be fitter or healthier.

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Goodman and Loh implies: as Fire Fighters, with an active focus on the urgency of fire-fighting and saving life and property, and yet they are spending much of their time on other duties; truly an identity-level change. Dilts model of levels of change provides a powerful tool to visualize and diagnose and assess the impact of change on a team, and to plan interventions to keep the team effective and motivated. References and Further Reading

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Conclusions
Change brings challenges to teams that are delivering services today and need to evolve to deliver differently tomorrow. Fortunately, there is a wide range of wellestablished methods of assessing and developing team effectiveness, and we have described several of them here. It is critical to make active use of these methods to retain a focus on team effectiveness, providing a solid foundation for team members. Although we have not got the space to mention such approaches as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Belbin team roles, or the Enneagram (Riso and Hudson, 2000) in this article, they are also extremely valuable for understanding individual members preferred and actual behaviours within a team so that the reader may wish to find out more about them. In a time of change (external or internal to the organization), it is also critical for team leaders to understand the change and interpret its implications for the team. Then the understanding of the change, combined with team effectiveness methods, can be used to develop and position the team to be effective in its new context and with its new stakeholders and customers.
Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times. (Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince)

For a team to be effective in a time of organizational change, the team leader needs: 1. An understanding of the changes and their organizational context, and a clear vision for the future of the team A strong engagement with key stakeholders and customers (internal and external) An appreciation of the status of the team and of its members An insight into the possible blockers and enablers to achieving the vision, and ideas on how to overcome and make use of them respectively A plan for how to achieve the teams vision with solid action steps to deliver early progress and feedback Lots of personal energy and motivation!(Adapted from Kotter, 1996 and Kotter and Rathberger, 2005)

Belbin Team Role Theory. See for example: http://www.belbin. com/rte.asp?id8. Bridges W (2004) Transitions. Cambridge MA: Perseus Books Group. Collison C, Parnell G (2004) Learning to Fly: Practical Knowledge Management from Leading and Learning Organizations. Capstone (2nd Edition). Edgar S (September 2009) Is the bell tolling for the death of the Corporate Information Unit: Can Google really fill the gap? Has turning east accelerated the demise? Business Information Review 26: 201204. Foster A (2011) Business Information Survey. BIR 28(1): 824. Galbraith J (2005) Designing Dynamic Organizations. Amacom. Hersey P, Blanchard K Situational Leadership. See for example: www.12manage.com Knight J (March 2009) The contemporary library and information services manager: Skills and knowledge requirements. Business Information Review 26: 5156. Kotter JP (1996) Leading Change. Boston MA: Harvard Business School Press. Kotter JP, Rathberger H (2005) Our Iceberg is Melting. London: Macmillan. Lane G (December 2008) Organizational change: The challenge of supporting staff. Business Information Review 25: 262267. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). See for example: http:// www.opp.eu.com/psychometric_instruments/mbti/Pages/ default.aspx OConnor J (2001) NLP Workbook. London: Element. RiverRhee Consultings website http://www.riverrhee.com includes case studies and articles on change management, team effectiveness, Lean and Six Sigma and approaches to knowledge management including the use of learning reviews. Riso DR, Hudson R (2000) Understanding the Enneagram. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Senge PM (1993) The Fifth Discipline. London: Random House. Spear S (2009) Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and How Great Companies can Catch Up and Win. McGraw Hill. Tuckman B, Jensen M (1977) Stages of small group development revisited. Group and Organizational Studies 419427.

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About the Authors Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting (http://www.riverrhee.com), a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale. Elisabeth has 25 years experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she has held line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting Information Management and other business teams on a global basis. Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management and in Lean Sigma and is a member of CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and

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250 Information Professionals), and APM (Association for Project Management). Lucy Loh is the Owner and Principal Consultant at Lucy Loh Consulting (www.lucyloh.com), a consultancy that helps businesses and organizations develop their business plans, and manage change in their organizations and teams to be able to deliver those plans. She is also a RiverRhee Consulting Associate. Lucy has 25 years experience in BioPharma, where she has held management roles in strategy development and all aspects of performance

Business Information Review 28(4) management, as well as extensive internal consulting. Lucy has expertise and experience in organization development, benefits management and in designing and leading business change. She is a Master Practitioner of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP), which enhances her work in change management and individual coaching. Both authors have extensive expertise in team effectiveness and change management across a number of organizations, in library and information management as well as other disciplines.

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