Change Management, the secret ingredients or careful elaboration?

After some days of brake of easter, here we are back to work, a nice day(some might say its not, its a gray day but I like it....) and also a start of new year and a new decade in my life. So there are changes viz. change of back to work from 4 days long holidays, change of decade for me..... that is what made me choose the topic of change management.


We all do change management even in our daily life, the change we do might be an impact of some other change or your change might impact some other plan and make someone else change something. We contemplate those changes with best of our knowledge and intension.


But today I would like to focus on change management in companies. 


The changes like change in culture, change in management, change in company focus, etc. involves (or should involve) a tremendous amount of attention on how you manage the changes.


Change in culture : 


The change in culture is a process, it doesn't get changed in one day or two. Cultural change normally brings reactions (as Newton´s 3rd law of motion states, "To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction"),  the reaction can be changed to a favorable one if the change management is done correctly.


The important part of any change management is interaction, communication. The perfect match doesn't exist when it comes to cultures, adaption and continual improvements are the key factors to make the match work and we have to be extra careful about communications and interactions, the information about the change and the adaptations should flow like a healthy river (a blockage and there can be a disaster).


Change in Management : 


Communication is the most important thing to manage the impact which this change generates, the information on what is happening and why is happening and how will it impact in future is very important for the collaborators in company. The communication has to be very fluid and clear.


Change in Company Focus : 


Some companies I have worked with change their focus in terms change from project based to product based or from any projects to specific types of projects. Reiterating the same the important part is communication, letting the collaborators of the company the change and how it affects to short, mid and long term.



Any kind of change requires a sound strategic visioning but its almost impossible to have long term plan which you can follow since the whole change process is based on adaption. People see, feel and then adapt the change for this Joan Kotter´s Eight steps to successful change are quite a fit, the steps are as follows

1. Increase urgency - inspire people to move, make objectives real and relevant.
2. Build the guiding team - get the right people in place with the right emotional commitment, and the right mix of skills and levels.
3. Get the vision right - get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy, focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency.
4. Communicate for buy-in - Involve as many people as possible, communicate the essentials, simply, and to appeal and respond to people's needs. De-clutter communications - make technology work for you rather than against.
5. Empower action - Remove obstacles, enable constructive feedback and lots of support from leaders - reward and recognise progress and achievements.
6. Create short-term wins - Set aims that are easy to achieve - in bite-size chunks. Manageable numbers of initiatives. Finish current stages before starting new ones.
7. Don't let up - Foster and encourage determination and persistence - ongoing change - encourage ongoing progress reporting - highlight achieved and future milestones.
8. Make change stick - Reinforce the value of successful change via recruitment, promotion, new change leaders. Weave change into culture.

Even after all this there might be some point which we might not get it right then retrospective is the best way to analyse what went wrong and try to fix it. One this is sure and important someone has to take responsibility.


As its said by Robert Gallagher "Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine" ... so lets face it, the change is here to stay.