Change Management

Understanding change

Change is an inevitable part of the modern day workplace. With the fast pace of technological, social, economic, and political change, organisations are in an almost constant state of change.

Organisations restructure, change roles, change their product and service offering, change systems and processes in an effort to stay competitive and survive. Organisations that don't change, get left behind.

Emotions in change

Change means moving from the known into the unknown, and that creates uncertainty and fear. Sometimes that fear is unfounded, but often it is not.

Many organisational changes result in loss. People have to let go of systems and processes that they were comfortable with, people have to change location, people are moved into different and possibly unfamiliar roles, and in the case of many restructures, many roles are made redundant.

When a change involves significant loss, it can have a profound emotional impact on people.

Resistance to change

Resistance to change is one of the major reasons why change initiatives fail. It is important to have a good understanding of why people resist change so you can anticipate resistance and take steps to manage it.

It also helps to understand the types of resistance behaviour that you need to look out for, because it's not always outwardly expressed.

Managing change

Change is an inevitable part of the modern day workplace. As a manager, you need to know what to do when change arises and be able to help your team through it and do your part to ensure its success.

You may not be able to control what happens in other teams or other departments, but you can certainly help change succeed by managing it well within your own team.

Building support for change

Change is hard and requires a lot of support to ensure that it is successful. Before you even get into planning a change, it is essential that you build support for the change and get the right people involved who will help you lead the change forward and overcome any obstacles that might otherwise prevent the change from succeeding.

Planning the change

To prepare your change for launch, you need to develop a number of plans. Like any project, you will need to develop a project plan that details all of the tasks associated with the change, but in addition to that, you need to develop plans for communicating information, managing resistance, and training employees to adapt to the new ways of working.

Implementing the change

Once you have all of your plans in place, you are ready to implement the change. If you have gained the much-needed support for the change and developed the necessary plans to action the change, then you have laid a good foundation for success.

Your role now is to help the change gather momentum, overcome issues and obstacles, and drive the change forward until it is embedded within the organisation.

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