Is Change Management Relevant for You?

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Change Management Strategy (24-slide PowerPoint presentation). Seventy percent of change programs fail, according to the April 2001 Harvard Business Review article, "Cracking the Code of Change". According to Bain & Company, businesses that implement fast, focused, and simultaneous change programs can create enormous and long-lasting shareholder [read more]

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Change management is one of those terms that many people hear regularly without giving it too much thought, but it’s a great driver of efficiency during any corporate changes. It’s a structured and systematic way for companies to manage progression and ensure that their company effectively moves from the current state to a desired future state. If you are wondering if change management is relevant for your organization, it might be beneficial to learn about the processes involved in an effective change management project.

What is Change Management?

If you hold a managerial role at an organization, you’re pretty likely to want to change some aspects of the company. The problem that many people face when they’re in this situation is that humans just don’t like change. Resisting change is a natural way of life, so any desired changes should be structured and controlled so the resistant tendencies of individuals don’t cloud the effectiveness of the changes that need to be implemented.

Businesses each have individual characters, so they respond to change in many different ways. Change management consultants use metaphors to understand corporate change, and these typically convey an organization as an organism or machine, which might ring a bell if you have heard discussions about change management in the workplace.

What’s involved in the Management of Change?

In general, change management includes several steps. Every change is different, however, so just consider these as a guide.

1. Assess
2. Prepare
3. Plan
4. Implement
5. Sustain

These are fairly self-explanatory. The prepare step is one of the most crucial, as it involves the preparation of a vision that allows the change to elicit support. This often comes down to human management and knowing your workforce well enough to know what they want from a change. This can also be a great opportunity to understand your employees and even take on board any pivots or feedback they might suggest. The prepare phase also includes a definition aspect – you need to clearly define the change you want to implement and establish governance and roles to support that change (e.g. a dedicated business change manager).

There are change management tools that can help in different phases that can allow the orchestrator of the change to measure employee voices. Remember, of course, they need to know exactly why these changes are happening so involve them in the process. This can help a company get a grip on what can make or break any corporate change. If employees feel particularly negative about a certain aspect of change, it’s really important that their voices are heard and they are either convinced that the change is beneficial to the company as a whole or treated differently to make the change easier for them.

Deciding to embrace change within a workplace can be made a lot easier with the help of a change management plan in place. You need to find the right plan for you so that the change is effectively implemented.

Want to Achieve Excellence in Change Management?

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"The only constant in life is change." – Heraclitus

Such is true for life, as it is for business. The entire ecosystem our organization operates in—our customers, competitors, suppliers, partners, the company itself, etc.—is constantly changing and evolving. Change can be driven by emerging technology, regulation, leadership change, crisis, changing consumer behavior, new business entrants, M&A activity, organizational restructuring, and so forth.

Thus, the understanding of, dealing with, and mastery of the Change Management process is one of the most critical capabilities for our organization to develop. Excellence in Change Management should be viewed as a source of Competitive Advantage.

Learn about our Change Management Best Practice Frameworks here.