Change management: who decides when work is ready to hand over?
Changing a tool or an organisational structure often alters the conditions under which one professional group hands work over to another. The managerial question is precise: how can we check that what the sending team considers complete is actually usable by the receiving team?
What the literature establishes
Paul R. Carlile (2002, Organization Science) shows, in a study of new product development, that knowledge is embedded in the practices and constraints of particular professional groups. At the boundaries between specialisms, transmitting more information is therefore not necessarily enough to enable coordination. A shared artefact becomes useful when it helps people represent differences and dependencies, then work through their consequences.
A shared object does not guarantee shared meaning
Beth A. Bechky (2003, Organization Science) analyses exchanges between engineers, technicians and assemblers in a production setting. Her study shows how difficulties in understanding can be overcome by situating problems within another occupational group's work context, notably through concrete objects. A drawing or a component does not replace this translation: it can provide an anchor for it.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that a single form or harmonised terminology would solve interface problems. These studies suggest a different requirement: making the criteria by which each group judges work usable open to discussion. Two departments may use the same word, “approved”, while associating it with different checks. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these studies cannot promise
These qualitative studies illuminate situated mechanisms; they do not quantify the causal effect of a handover protocol on transformation success. Their applicability to other sectors therefore needs to be tested rather than assumed. A returned file may indicate missing information, but it may also reflect a legitimate check: aiming for no returns would be an ambiguous objective.
A practical check in Sion
Within SHR's “Change Management” programme, one possible exercise in Sion is to select an interface affected by change: operations and maintenance in hydropower, handovers between healthcare departments, the transition from vineyard to winery, or coordination between reservations and reception in Alpine tourism. The two teams jointly define the information needed to continue the work, then record every handover and every return for missing information during a baseline period and an equally long trial period. The indicator is the proportion of handovers returned for this reason, retaining the denominator and distinguishing avoidable omissions from required checks. Comparing periods with similar workloads and activity mixes provides a locally verifiable signal without automatically attributing any improvement to the exercise. To go further: explore the Change Leadership training in Sion in the canton of Valais, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Change Leadership in Sion
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