Change at Los Alamos Keywords: organizational change, change management, restructuring Several management writers have identified common threads to successful change, including focus on the organization's mission and core competencies while re-designing structures around processes. But what happens when an organization's mission becomes obsolete, and its core competencies have sharply diminished in value? Find out in change at Los Alamos. Several management writers have identified common threads to successful change, including focus on the organization's mission and core competencies while re-designing structures around processes. But what happens when an organization's mission becomes obsolete, and its core competencies have sharply diminished in value? This situation reflects the reality at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, United States. LANL was formed in 1943 as an effort to consolidate the widespread research into nuclear weapons. However as we step into the next century, the world is fundamentally changing and LANL must change with it. The end of the Cold War has reduced the need for the development of nuclear weapons, and the budgetary problems of government create challenges for organizations that rely on the government for funding. Such factors illustrate the need for change at LANL. And so it became that LANL embraced change. Terms such as TQM, re-engineering and leadership became part of the corporate lexicon. However the change has been far from easy. The changes have been so far-reaching that almost no aspects of the organization have been left untouched. View from the top - the deputy director As a result of the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a 'global' economy and marketplace, it was important to re-evaluate what LANL did and develop a new mission. The guiding principle of this mission was to become a customer-focussed organization that builds on historical strengths in science and technology. The restructuring at LANL eliminated an entire level of management and created a new top management team. Top management felt there were four key challenges during the changes: How do you keep an organization running while you are selecting a new top management team? How do you continue to make big decisions in the midst of major leadership change? How do you ensure the continued operational functioning of the organization in areas such as finance and personnel while undergoing such fundamental change? Since all management positions were opened up to competitive hiring, what do you do with those former top managers who do not "win back" their jobs? What has top management learned? Changing behaviour takes time - especially in a large organization. Even after a year, only minor changes in behaviours were detectable in the workforce. Leaders should extend the time horizon for significant change and not look for instant results Mid-lev ...

1. Change at Los Alamos
Keywords: organizational change, change management,
restructuring
Several management writers have identified common threads to
successful change, including focus on the organization's mission
and
core competencies while re-designing structures around
processes. But what happens when an organization's
mission becomes
obsolete, and its core competencies have sharply diminished in
value? Find out in change at Los Alamos.
Several management writers have identified common
threads to successful change, including focus on the
organization's mission and core
competencies while re-designing structures around processes.
But what happens when an organization's mission becomes
obsolete, and its core competencies have sharply diminished in
value? This situation
reflects the reality at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
in New Mexico, United States.
LANL was formed in 1943 as an effort to consolidate the
widespread research into nuclear weapons. However as we step
into the next century, the

2. world is fundamentally changing and LANL must change with
it. The end of the Cold War has reduced the need for the
development of nuclear
weapons, and the budgetary problems of government create
challenges for organizations that rely on the government for
funding. Such factors
illustrate the need for change at LANL.
And so it became that LANL embraced change. Terms such as
TQM, re-engineering and leadership became part of the
corporate lexicon. However
the change has been far from easy. The changes have been so
far-reaching that almost no aspects of the organization have
been left untouched.
View from the top - the deputy director
As a result of the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a
'global' economy and marketplace, it was important to re-
evaluate what LANL did
and develop a new mission. The guiding principle of this
mission was to become a customer-focussed organization
that builds on historical
strengths in science and technology.
The restructuring at LANL eliminated an entire level of
management and created a new top management team. Top
management felt there were
four key challenges during the changes:

3. How do you keep an organization running while you are
selecting a new top management team?
How do you continue to make big decisions in the midst of
major leadership change?
How do you ensure the continued operational functioning of the
organization in areas such as finance and personnel while
undergoing such
fundamental change?
Since all management positions were opened up to competitive
hiring, what do you do with those former top managers who do
not "win back"
their jobs?
What has top management learned?
Changing behaviour takes time - especially in a large
organization. Even after a year, only minor changes in
behaviours were detectable in the
workforce. Leaders should extend the time horizon for
significant change and not look for instant results
Mid-level supervisors were empowered and they have responded
with better decision making and improved LANL's efficiency.
Many top managers took an early retirement package and left
during the restructuring. Although the loss of such seasoned
leadership was
initially viewed as detrimental, this in fact was not the case.
New leaders brought new energy and new ideas.
An employee survey conducted soon after the restructuring
indicated high levels of disenchantment among LANL staff. Top

4. management
realized they still have much to do in terms of employee
motivation, trust and empowerment.
View from the outside - the contract consultant
Once the change initiative was underway, representatives
from the laboratory visited the Motorola University and
this proved to be a great
awakening for many of those who attended. Representatives
from Motorola also visited LANL to carry out an organizational
needs analysis. This
analysis was frank in nature and spelled out problems such as a
lack of an accepted mission, a lack of management
accountability and too much
bureaucracy.
"Employees wanted answers to questions such as "why are we
reorganizing?" and, as is usually the case in major change
initiatives, rumour control is paramount."
LANL management also carried out a basic employee survey in
which staff seized the opportunity to jump all over management
and voice their
criticisms. It was found that during the second year of
change, people began to get impatient with the rate of
transformation. Two teams
re-examined laboratory activities and as a result the decision
was made to reorganize LANL from top to bottom.
So much emphasis had been put on the reorganization that

5. people had come to believe that all of LANL's problems would
disappear as soon as
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change had been fully implemented. They didn't. In fact things
got worse as people at all levels had to learn how to make
decisions. LANL was now
operating with a significantly flattened structure, yet people
were still behaving as if the structure was hierarchical.
With the benefit of hindsight, it can be seen that LANL faced
organizational issues too early in the change process. The
Motorola perspective is that
"form follows function." As a result, Motorola would have put
more emphasis on working the vision and mission issues, then
trying to figure out how
work gets done at LANL.

6. View from the middle - the director of public affairs
A crucial problem in undertaking fundamental change at large
organizations is that such change creates a demand for
information not frequently
recognized prior to implementation.
Employees wanted answers to questions such as "why are we
reorganizing?" and as is usually the case in major change
initiatives, rumour control
is paramount. But how can the company continue to
communicate efficiently when the old lines of communication
have been eliminated through
restructuring?
Want to know more about the issues raised in this article?
Then search the Emerald database with the following keywords:
| Organizational Change | Restructuring | Organizational
Structure |
Some of the internal changes in communication policy included
ideas such as adding a question and answer column and a letter
to the editor
section in the employee newsletter to allow employees to
specifically respond to organizational issues. The public affairs
department has learned
many important lessons from the change program including:
The demand for information during organizational change from

7. both internal and external audiences is enormous and constant
Themes and visions must be repeated constantly throughout the
reorganization process
A report published by ProSci Learning Centers
(www.prosci.com) revealed that More than 50 percent of survey
participants had implemented
dramatic process change, more than 90 percent implemented
process changes that crossed departmental boundaries and
almost 50 percent
expect the change to impact their entire enterprise. Read
organizational change and find out more.
View from the inside - the Human Resources department
During the changes at LANL, the HR department saw three
primary challenges:
Training and development needs
Implementation of new personnel policies and procedures
Addressing employee concerns and fears
The HR department is facing the challenge of helping to change
the historical mindset of LANL employees from passive workers
into empowered
decision makers.
The change plan has brought about many new HR practices such
as performance-based appraisals and employee empowerment.
During major change a key role of a HR department is to
identify employee annoyances and eliminate them wherever

8. possible. It is also especially
important in such an environment for the customers of HR - the
employees themselves - to understand the commitment of HR to
their well-being
and development as individuals.
Conclusions
It can be noted how several of the contributors mentioned the
difficulty in transforming the organization without a clear
definition of a new mission. It
appears as though top management realized the historic mission
of the lab was rapidly declining in social value and a new one
was needed.
However they may have failed to take the necessary time
to fully develop a shared sense of the new mission and
common vision for the
organization. If an organization has no viable mission to guide
its change efforts, then the first step must be to develop and
communicate a new
mission prior to any discussion of organizational form.
A second lesson learned from the situation at LANL is that the
time frame for meaningful change needs to be extended, perhaps
even dramatically
extended. Management was disappointed that behaviour change
was almost negligible one year after initialization. But Kotter
argues that the time

9. frame for major change may exceed ten years.
The changes at LANL involve significant culture issues which
raise an interesting paradox: how do you manage an
organization on a day-to-day
basis which may be culturally bound to a mission it no longer
wants to pursue? As communication regarding a mission change
moves through an
organizational culture that emerged to achieve the old mission,
the changes may not make sense and employees will find it
difficult to change their
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behaviours.
LANL's story is illustrative of the challenges and difficulties
that face any organization undergoing major change.
20th October 2001

10. This is a précis of an article entitled "Managerial
perceptions of change at a national laboratory" which
originally appeared in the
Leadership & Organization Development Journal Volume 19
Issue 1, 1998.
The authors were Richard C. Ringer of Illinois State
University, Normal, Illinois, USA and Kelly C. Strong of
Michigan Technological
University, Houghton, Michigan, USA.
You can buy the fulltext of this document by clicking on the
link above.
Increase your knowledge on the subjects raised in this article
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Towards a new workplace culture: development strategies for
employer-employee relations looks at the process of the
development of
employer-employee relations in an organization-wide change
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11. Strategic organizational change: the role of leadership, learning,
motivation and productivity presents an overview of strategic
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