Dependent on routines to guide their everyday lives, people seem to shutter and panic at the very thought of change, or some unforeseen interruption. Whether it is Sunday night football or stopping at the Tim Hortons on our way to work, we are so dependent on our daily routine it’s not funny. Changes in our lives are rarely seen as a positive. This reluctance is what makes change so hard and particularly for an organization where multiple parties are often involved in change initiatives. The fear of change comes from not knowing how it will impact us, or alternate our lives.
Organization that cannot mange change well will end up going through difficulties. This is even more crucial when economies go through an upward or downward swing. During a recession, organizations that are susceptible to change are more likely to survive and recover. Having said we all know that Change is enviable. Rather than focusing on isolating our lives to avoid change, what can we do to ensure change is not feared upon? What should we do to reduce the impact of upcoming change? What can we do to prepare ourselves for future?
The best tool we have to deal with change is preparation. Our success in any change initiative is directly related to our level of preparation. The theory behind preparing individuals and organizations to deal with change initiatives is called change management. The change management practices allow us to deal with all aspects of the change including what, when, how, why, and what-if of an initiative.
The first step in getting prepared requires us to answer some of the basic questions:
• What is the purpose of the change?
• What are the end results?
• What are the benefits or losses of the change, and what is the net result?
• What steps must be taken to complete the change?
• Who is going to be impacted with the change?
• Are there other alternatives?
• How will the change be perceived by users, various associated parties?
• What is the time-line?
• Does organization have tools to measure progress, assess results, and manage the project?
• Are there resources available to perform the change?
The answers to these questions will allow management to assess if they are ready to go through the change and if the change is even necessary. If it is determined that change is necessary, we need to start focusing on how will it be done.
There are many theoretical change management models that can help us guide through common mistakes. The purpose of these models is to increase our chances of success by highlighting best practices used by the industry. These models are designed to expose inherent weaknesses in most change initiatives. One of these models by PROSCI is called ADKAR. According to which there are five key success factors to any change initiatives.
1) Awareness – the model emphasizes that awareness is a key to any change initiative. In order to get Buy-in in any new initiative all beneficiary parties must be aware of upcoming changes.
2) Desire – The buy-in usually required to create a desire for change, and participate in the project. The Desire is also critical in reducing any push back.
3) Knowledge – Organizations that are willing change need to understand how to make these changes. This is why knowledge is such a critical part of the ADKAR model. In order to achieve the objectives, new skills and experience must be gained or acquired.
4) Ability – Organizations need to ensure that new skills and behaviors are available in the resource pool. They need to be prepared to get additional resources to compensate their current mix.
5) Reinforcement – Management need to maintain consistent behavior to reinforce recently made changes. According to the model, the reinforcement will stay in place until new change becomes a routine.
These Principles help organizations systematically address potential hurdles as they put new initiative in place. Management support to these concepts is highly important as any of the failures will lead project delays.
In addition to the principles mentioned above, these are some additional guidelines we can all use to avoid change management stress for everyone in the organization.
1) Learn about the organization and people within it.
2) List the current weakness or opportunities
3) Outline where organization needs to go and why that is important.
4) Define clearly what are the goals and milestones of the change initiative.
5) Formulate a plan that will list individual steps that will be taken to achieve goals
6) Create a reasonable timeline to achieve these goals or milestones.
7) Maintain communication with the group that is going to be impacted by the change.
Keep in mind that as business processes get revamped or re-organized, work force has to be re-trained, and augmented to keep up. Sometimes it is cheaper to acquire additional resources from external sources to achieve the change initiative. The change has to be in line with overall organizational objectives. Every change is going to result in some costs and some benefits. Job of the management is to identify opportunities where change will result in net benefit to the organization as a whole. Objective of a sound change management strategy is to mitigate risk of change.