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Change Management

This document discusses principles for effective change management. It emphasizes that change management requires thoughtful planning, consultation with those affected, and involvement of people in the process. Some key points made include: - Ask why change is needed, what is to be achieved, and how success will be measured. Understand how people may react. - Do not force or "sell" change but rather ensure people understand the need for change and have a role in planning and implementation. - Use workshops and face-to-face communication to develop understanding of changes and get input and commitment from those impacted. - Responsibility for managing change lies with management, who must facilitate change in a way people can cope with.

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65 views2 pages

Change Management

This document discusses principles for effective change management. It emphasizes that change management requires thoughtful planning, consultation with those affected, and involvement of people in the process. Some key points made include: - Ask why change is needed, what is to be achieved, and how success will be measured. Understand how people may react. - Do not force or "sell" change but rather ensure people understand the need for change and have a role in planning and implementation. - Use workshops and face-to-face communication to develop understanding of changes and get input and commitment from those impacted. - Responsibility for managing change lies with management, who must facilitate change in a way people can cope with.

Uploaded by

albert
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Change Management:

Organizational and personal change


management, process, plans, change
management and business development tips

Here are some rules for effective management of change. Managing organizational
change will be more successful if you apply these simple principles. Achieving
personal change will be more successful too if you use the same approach where
relevant. Change management entails thoughtful planning and sensitive
implementation, and above all, consultation with, and involvement of, the people
affected by the changes. If you force change on people normally problems arise.
Change must be realistic, achievable and measurable. These aspects are especially
relevant to managing personal change. Before starting organizational change, ask
yourself: What do we want to achieve with this change, why, and how will we know
that the change has been achieved? Who is affected by this change, and how will
they react to it? How much of this change can we achieve ourselves, and what parts
of the change do we need help with? These aspects also relate strongly to the
management of personal as well as organizational change.
Do not 'sell' change to people as a way of accelerating 'agreement' and
implementation. 'Selling' change to people is not a sustainable strategy for success,
unless your aim is to be bitten on the bum at some time in the future when you
least expect it. When people listen to a management high-up 'selling' them a
change, decent diligent folk will generally smile and appear to accede, but quietly to
themselves, they're thinking, "No bloody chance mate, if you think I'm standing for
that load of old bollocks you've another think coming…" (And that's just the
amenable types - the other more recalcitrant types will be well on the way to making
their own particular transition from gamekeepers to poachers.)
Instead, change needs to be understood and managed in a way that people can
cope effectively with it. Change can be unsettling, so the manager logically needs to
be a settling influence.
Check that people affected by the change agree with, or at least understand, the
need for change, and have a chance to decide how the change will be managed, and
to be involved in the planning and implementation of the change. Use face-to-face
communications to handle sensitive aspects of organisational change management.
Encourage your managers to communicate face-to-face with their people too if they
are helping you manage an organizational change. Email and written notices are
extremely weak at conveying and developing understanding.
If you think that you need to make a change quickly, probe the reasons - is the
urgency real? Will the effects of agreeing a more sensible time-frame really be more
disastrous than presiding over a disastrous change? Quick change prevents proper
consultation and involvement, which leads to difficulties that take time to resolve.
For organizational change that entails new actions, objectives and processes for a
group or team of people, use workshops to achieve understanding, involvement,
plans, measurable aims, actions and commitment. Encourage your management
team to use workshops with their people too if they are helping you to manage the
change.
You should even apply these principles to very tough change like making people
redundant, closures and integrating merged or acquired organizations. Bad news
needs even more careful management than routine change. Hiding behind memos
and middle managers will make matters worse. Consulting with people, and helping
them to understand does not weaken your position - it strengthens it. Leaders who
fail to consult and involve their people in managing bad news are perceived as weak
and lacking in integrity. Treat people with humanity and respect and they will
reciprocate.

Responsibility for managing change


The employee does not have a responsibility to manage change - the employee's
responsibility is no other than to do their best, which is different for every person
and depends on a wide variety of factors (health, maturity, stability, experience,
personality, motivation, etc). Responsibility for managing change is with
management and executives of the organisation - they must manage the change in
a way that employees can cope with it. The manager has a responsibility to
facilitate and enable change, and all that is implied within that statement,
especially to understand the situation from an objective standpoint (to 'step back',
and be non-judgemental), and then to help people understand reasons, aims, and
ways of responding positively according to employees' own situations and
capabilities. Increasingly the manager's role is to interpret, communicate and enable
- not to instruct and impose, which nobody really responds to well.

Change must involve the people - change must


not be imposed upon the people
Be wary of expressions like 'mindset change', and 'changing people's mindsets' or
'changing attitudes', because this language often indicates a tendency towards
imposed or enforced change (theory x), and it implies strongly that the organization
believes that its people currently have the 'wrong' mindset, which is never, ever, the
case. If people are not approaching their tasks or the organization effectively, then
the organization has the wrong mindset, not the people. Change such as new
structures, policies, targets, acquisitions, disposals, re-locations, etc., all create new
systems and environments, which need to be explained to people as early as
possible, so that people's involvement in validating and refining the changes
themselves can be obtained.
Whenever an organization imposes new things on people there will be difficulties.
Participation, involvement and open, early, full communication are the important
factors.

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