The Change Management Process- Ultimate guide

Many times you have heard about the “Change Management process” from your friends, peers, leaders and you might have a question in your mind that what is change management? What happens in change management? How an organization handles this change management?

However, in this article, you will get the answer to all your queries regarding change management. You will get to know how change management plays a critical role in the success of any organization.

The change management process is one of the major concerns for any organization. It’s a very painful process for any organization. Whenever any initiative has taken on change management, employees always are in denial mode. They never ready to accept the change till the time they are not being communicated properly.

What is Change?

Thus, the change management process always consists of your process, people, and technology. These there are the common things that will impact on the outcome of your initiatives.

However, to be effective, the change management process must take into consideration how an adjustment or replacement will impact processes, systems, and employees within the organization.

There must be a process for planning and testing change, a process for communicating change, a process for scheduling and implementing change, a process for documenting change, and a process for evaluating its effects. Documentation is a critical component of the change management process, not only to maintain an audit trail but also necessary to ensure compliance with internal and external controls, including regulatory compliance.

Why do you need Change?

in other words, every organization needs changes in all its functional areas to improve performance and increase profits by implementing new initiatives and projects.

Changes are always required, however, it is rarely simple and a range of strategies and models for managing change in organizations have been established.

Not all change demands a formal management approach, but change management process models can help the organization understand how people react and plan for their resulting support needs.

Consequently, it is essential that people are encouraged to work through the curve for successful acceptance of changes –whether it is a company merger or incorporation, relocation, or redundancies.

However, if the change is sudden or unexpected, the organization will have a real impact. If employees are unprepared for change, the shock will be greater and it will take longer for staff to work towards acceptance. This means that organizations must consider the method and timing of the announcement of the change.

You would have seen many examples of fraud from large well-known companies, because of which the local Government has either declared bankruptcies or taken legal action. Some of the instances like…

• Enron Corporation –  

  In October 2001, the Enron scandal led to the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. Enron violated public disclosure rules in its dealings with banks. The company’s deluge of deals with off-the-books partnerships involved potential frauds

• Sainsbury –

  The year 2012 – A leading supermarket chain in the UK was charged with:
  • Extending favors to one of their suppliers for lucrative contracts
  • Artificially inflated prices
  • losses through excess payment of expenses

• Jet Airways –

  The year 2019 – A leading Indian aviation company was charged for:
  • Inaccurate accounting entries
  • Unaccounted investments
  • Inappropriate fund diversions

• Nokia –

  They missed out on learning, they missed out on changing, and thus they lost the opportunity not only to earn big money, they lost their chance of survival.

• Yahoo–

  In 2005 Yahoo was one of the main players in the online advertising market. But because Yahoo undervalued the importance of search, the company decided to focus more on becoming a media giant. The decision to focus more on media meant they neglected consumer trends and a need to improve the user experience. Yahoo succeeded in attracting a huge number of spectators to view content, but could not make enough profit to scale.

• Kodak–

  Steve Sasson, the Kodak engineer, invented the first digital camera back in 1975. “But it was filmless photography, so management’s reaction was, ‘that’s cute—but don’t tell anyone about it,”. The leaders of Kodak failed to see digital photography as a disruptive technology. Kodak’s former vice-president Don Strickland said: “We created the world’s first digital camera for customers but we could not get permission to launch or to sell it because of the fears of the effects on the movie market.

• The Concorde–

  The Concorde was a British-French turbojet-powered airline that closed its doors in 2003. An airline founded in 1976 used to have one of the fastest and greatest designed aircraft. Blake Scholl, Boom Technology CEO, says: “Where else do you have the expertise in the technology, and then reverse? The Concorde flew the last aircraft in 2003 because of technical failures and financial difficulties.

Change Management Process Framework

Kotter’s Model

In his book “Leading Change,” Dr. John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor and a respected change specialist, presented the 8 Step Model of Change that he built based on the study of 100 companies that experienced a change process.

1. Create Urgency

Most important that you need to create an urgency for the need for change which others can easily realize the importance of change management process. 

2. Build the guiding team

However, every change management process in an organization should be accompanied with some values, vision, and strategies. However, the core team should determine these and effectively communicate to the people, who can understand those values easily.  

4. Communicating the vision

The involvement of the change management process team must be so effective and they should communicate the values & vision to the stakeholders powerfully and convincingly. Besides this, they should handle all issues and concerns of people honestly.

5. Empower action

Most important, you should ensure the vision and values are aligned with the overall organizational vision and values. Find out the obstacles and remove those obstacles. 

6. Create short term wins

Furthermore, create short term goals and celebrate with the team after meeting the target. 

7. Don’t let up

You should continuously analyze, and do improvements from all individual success stories.

8. Make change stick

Discuss the success stories related to change initiatives on every given opportunity. In addition to this tell the Leadership team your goals and clarify how your vision and beliefs are aligned with the principles and vision of the company.

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