Change is imperative for growth and development but is extremely hard to bring about to achieve exactly those. For Organizations to remain relevant and in demand, there is an irrefutable need to bring change to the processes, job roles, organizations structures and enabling technology.
Before an Organization plans to enact the change, they need to have clear objectives, they should define the change and align it to business goals, conduct critical reviews against the objectives and use performance tools to make sure that the change is desired and will take the business in the right direction.
Next Organizations need to do a thorough Impact Analysis, they must understand the effects, a change will bring to each business unit and how it will cascade to the lowest level of the organization's structure. This will help them to understand the areas that require more focus to mitigate the impacts.
There are many ways in which organizations can then prepare for the change they want and guarantee the achievement of desired objectives through it, a few crucial steps are.
Change strategy
Organizations should address how they will encourage their employees to “own” the change, they can create a sense of urgency by absolving that the status quo is no longer acceptable. There should be a proper motivation for employees to bear the pain of moving out of their comfort zone to embrace the change.
Leadership Sponsor
Organizations must appoint representatives who will be credible leaders for promoting and leading the change among employees. They should have substantial authority, effective management skills and proven leadership abilities to manage employee’s adoption to change.
Communications
People will always resist a change that is dictated without any logical reasoning behind it, they need to have specific answers to lay their trust in the management. While organizations try to interpose the change and inspire their employees to adapt, they should be ready to answer “why, when, how and what” questions with relatable examples in response.
Resistance Management
While many will be convinced of the change there will still be some who would try to resist the change, organizations must address these slow adopters and naysayers. All the employees must be convinced positively for the change, managing resistance to change is very important, it will help managers to understand who will need more persuasion than others.
Short-term Gains
Organizations require maintaining the urgency through the end, by rewarding those who made early achievements possible they can keep their employees stay motivated through the stages of change. Regular appreciations and rewards can help Organizations merge the short term gains by hiring, promoting and developing employees who can implement the transformation vision.
Training
Organizations must analyze if extra training will be required by the employees to sustain the change and should provide them. They must estimate the employee readiness with assessment instruments and self-evaluations for leaders to identify weak points.
Support System
Organizations must provide due support in the form of counselling services to help people to cope with the change, a mentorship or an open door policy with management can be very facilitating. They must interpret where and what kind of support to provide to assist people to navigate the situation well.
Continuous assessment
Defining the change is not enough if it is not monitored, organizations must put a structure in place to check the extent of impact change causes and ensure that continued reinforcement opportunities exist.
Unlike installation or updating of a system or a processor data, change management is about preparing people to embrace something new by accepting it, trying it out, supporting and owning it.
