5 steps to effective organizational change management
Not all organizations that venture into change management do succeed. A significant number of organizations fail at making their change efforts successful. A firm could have its heart and mind in the right place concerning the change, but fail to effectively bring the change into action. Failure to implement a proposed change hurts the organization's morale. An organization that has gone through a failed change process tends to doubt its abilities and may take a while to recover and attempt to make changes again.
How can your organization effectively implement organizational change management?
1. Align change to business goals
Upon determining why the change is needed and what needs to change, aligning the change to business goals will help you determine the value of the change. Reviewing organizational objectives concerning the change will help you set the right direction and pace of the change process. Ensure that the proposed changes do not steer away from the organization's strategy.
2. Structure a communication strategy
Structure communication within the organization such that everyone understands what the change is about and the role they have to play in making the change effective. When change resistance happens, it mainly comes from poor communication. This can be avoided by ensuring the right communication strategies are put in place.
3. Empower the teams
More often than not, the change will require organizational members to do something new. This means that teams need to be empowered with the right knowledge, skill, and attitude to tackle new challenges. Empowering teams also involves breaking down the change and encouraging the employees to question or contribute to the change process at their levels of expertise.
4. Provide support
Organizations that effectively implement change recognize that change is not an event but a process. Management needs to constantly support the employees through the change processes so that they don't easily slip back to the old and comfortable ways of doing things. Support may involve coaching, holding regular meetings, and listen to the challenges the employees may be facing. Support also involves opening up communication channels so that employees can always seek help if they need to.
5. Measure and institutionalize the changes
Throughout the change process, there is a need to put in place structures to measure how effective the change is being. Measuring changes will explore the questions of whether the changes have been effective in achieving business goals. Measurement goals check if the change process was successful and what could have been done effectively.
Should the changes be successful, further structures need to be put in place to help institutionalize the changes. An organizational change process is perceived as successful if it is absorbed into the organization’s culture and structure and transforms the organization in the way it was intended to.
Conclusively, effective organizational change management involves a lot of interaction between management and employees. Management need not see the change as a sole mission but as a project carried out by the whole organization, from the top to the bottom of the chain.
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