Principles of CHANGE Management

Two to three decades back, probably, Stability was a major goal for most of the organizations and shareholders expected nothing more than predictable earnings growth. But the scenario has changed drastically, market transparency, labor mobility, global capital flows, and instantaneous communications have blown that comfortable scenario and have forced the management of most of the organization to face a new challenge called “CHANGE“. Successful companies, as Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter in 1999, develop “a culture that just keeps moving all the time.”

This presents most senior executives with an unfamiliar challenge. In major transformations of large enterprises, they and their advisors conventionally focus their attention on devising the best strategic and tactical plans. But to succeed, they also must have an intimate understanding of the human side of change management — the alignment of the company’s culture, values, people, and behaviors — to encourage the desired results. Plans themselves do not capture value; value is realized only through the sustained, collective actions of the thousands — perhaps the tens of thousands — of employees who are responsible for designing, executing, and living with the changed environment.

Long-term structural transformation has four characteristics: scale (the change affects all or most of the organization), magnitude (it involves significant alterations of the status quo), duration (it lasts for months, if not years), and strategic importance. Yet companies will reap the rewards only when change occurs at the level of the individual employee.

No single methodology fits every company, but there is a set of practices, tools, and techniques that can be adapted to a variety of situations. What follows is a list of guiding principles for change management. Using these as a systematic, comprehensive framework, executives can understand what to expect, how to manage their own personal change, and how to engage the entire organization in the process. The principles to cater CHANGE MANAGEMENT are listed below:

1. Address the “People Issues” systematically.

2. Embracing CHANGE should start at the Management level.

3.The Transformation programs should involve all different level of organizations.

4. Creation of a Vision Statement Document and articulation of a formal case for change.

5.Ownership by leaders willing to accept responsibility for making change.

6. Communicating the right message (Top to bottom) and Feedback.

7.Assessing the cultural landscape.

8.Prepare for the unexpected, assess the risks.

Interesting, I will write on these principles in detail in my next post on Change Management and let me know the feedback whether this post is gripping enough or not.