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thought-BaSed QueStionS examPLe inteRview anSweRS interviewer: tell me about a time when you recognised
that change was needed.

“One of our production facilities was not meeting its expected targets.

When I explored the underlying reasons for this, it became apparent that
the production unit manager hadn’t adopted the new ways of working that
we had introduced the previous year as part of a general drive to increase
production. At the time, she had been hesitant but had agreed to buy into
the change and try to make it work. In fairness to her, she was managing
a difficult site that had a history of disagreement with senior management.
In my discussion with her, though, it had become apparent that she hadn’t
succeeded in implementing the changes we had discussed and so the facility
was falling behind its production targets. This clearly needed to be addressed
quickly because it was having an overall impact on the business plan. What we
decided to do was to identify those employees that would be supportive of the
change and only with them, on certain lines, introduce these new changes. We
changed our implementation plan, with the overall aim still being that we would
ultimately convert the whole facility. My thinking was that by showing it could
work on a small scale in the facility, alongside the successes in other facilities,

we might be able to get them on board with what we were proposing.”

This example addresses an aspect of organisational change. It demonstrates
the respondent’s awareness of the change not having lived up to expectations
and their willingness to alter the implementation approach so as to make it
work.

n Circumstances: a change had been introduced which had not yet
taken hold in a production facility. Consequently, the facility was
underperforming.

n action: identify a small cohort of supportive individuals and introduce the
change to them, in the hope that this would then cascade through the unit.

n Result: is not provided, as it is too early.

However, do you notice something else about this response?

It’s actually an example of a piece of change implementation that has not gone
particularly well and, as such, the response shows some negative indicators
against managing change. In other words, had the change been managed

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