Why Change Management?
In today’s fast-paced business world, being able to adapt to change is a quality any successful organization needs. Within the supply chain industry, conditions and requirements are always changing. As a result, to be successful you must be adaptable. For this reason, change management is an important concept to understand and implement in your organization.
Change management is a systematic approach to dealing with the transition or transformation of an organization’s goals, processes or technologies. The purpose of change management is to implement strategies for effecting change, controlling change and helping people to adapt to change. Such strategies include having a structured procedure for requesting a change, as well as mechanisms for responding to requests and following them up.
Change can occur in an organization in many ways — strategic, leadership, or technological changes.
Why Change Management Matters?
There are numerous reasons to employ effective change management on both large- and small-scale efforts. Here are three main reasons to employ change management: *
- Organizational change happens one person at a time
- Poorly managing change is costly
- Effective change management increases the likelihood of success
- Source: https://www.prosci.com
Communications And More
Typically, organizations believe change management consists only of training and communications efforts and those activities are usually part of the budget. While employees have to have the knowledge of the new systems or processes to be able to perform in the ‘new’ company environment, it’s rarely enough to get employees engaged. Change management is not just communication or training. It is not just managing resistance. Effective change management follows a structured process and uses a holistic set of tools to drive successful individual and organizational change. Change management is a formal way of communicating with employees. It tells them why change is happening, what it will look like for them, and how it will ultimately benefit them in the end. Keeping employees informed from the start helps smooth the transition and shorten the time. Also, if employees are more open to change, they will be more engaged in the process of making it happen. When employees are more engaged, the transition can happen more quickly and ultimately save your organization time and resources.
Change Management Is Necessary Because:
- we change for a reason.
- Organizational change requires individual change.
- Organizational outcomes are the collective result of individual change.
- Change management is an enabling framework for managing the people side of change.
- We apply change management to realize the benefits and desired outcomes of change.
*Prosci Five Tenets of Change Management.
And, more things that underline the importance of change management are:
- Tackling the unexpected: This is by far one of the key contributions of a change management programme. It enables the senior, executive team of the company to plan for an unexpected change in business fortunes, and be prepared for change.
- Being on the same page: With a change management programme, it is possible for all stake holders, particularly within the company to be on the same page. In the case of an acquisition, this ensures that the new entity is seen as one company by existing and future customers.
- Ensuring that soft skills do not fall by the wayside: If a CMP does not take into account soft skills such as culture and leadership, much could be at stake. If soft skills are put into the program from the very beginning, the chances of success can be significantly increased. Successful leaders of change management are necessarily proactive in tackling potential issues and objections, providing clear direction on new expectations, offering training and education on new responsibilities and allowing for a learning “grace period”.
The ability to successfully deliver project objectives is directly impacted by how effectively we manage the people side of change!
The results and outcomes of workplace changes are intrinsically and inextricably tied to individual employees doing their jobs differently*
*Change Management: The People Side of Change
