Change Management in an organization aims at realizing the strategic goals and improving an organizations preparedness for meeting both internal as well as external challenges, which may influence business growth and profitability. To remain on top, today companies have to undergo through progressive transformation and evolve as per the changing business environment.
Effective Change Management involves a comprehensive and an integrated effort from all the levels of the management. Successful change management involves consideration of several factors, which have been described below:
- Effective Planning: This is critical for ensuring successful change to happen. This stage essentially involves definition and documentation of objectives to be attained from change management and also the strategies for realizing those objectives. It aims at addressing the vital questions of who, what, why, when, where and how involved in the implementation of any change management programme. It takes into context the current situation and equally assesses the impact of change initiatives on the futuristic strategies of the organization, the people involved in it as well as the stakeholders connected with it.
Effective Planning should consider the below factors:
- Definition of the Governance Structure/Framework for effective Change Management: In the absence of a well-defined governance framework, the success of change management efforts may fizzle away. For a successful change to happen, the organizational structure, roles & responsibilities should be established and defined clearly to monitor the progress of change periodically and implement corrective actions for seamless transformation. The following change governance structure model can be used:
- Commitment of the Leadership: Leaders build the conducive organizational culture and climate for the realization of the objectives of change management. Their commitment and involvement is critical for the success of change efforts. Leaders who are transformational, visionaries and lead by example can foster an environment of cooperation and collaboration across all the levels of the organization.
- Stakeholders Awareness and Involvement: Stakeholders involvement and participation in the entire process is critical for the success of change management. The organizations should engage the stakeholders by facilitating an environment of collaboration and communicate the objectives as well as its outcomes.
- Workforce Alignment: This should essentially involve an assessment of the impact of change management process on the people and establishing plans for obtaining the support of the people in the entire process by building collaborative synergies and highlighting the beneficial outcomes.
Change Management: Success Stories as well as Failures (Organizational Case Studies)
- Success Stories (Pearson): In 2012, John Fallon the new CEO of the organization announced a new game plan Global Education Strategy for realizing the bigger objectives of business. Apart from this, he championed organizational restructuring leading to the formation of 6 different units of workforce.
The company went big by not only changing the strategies but also by implementing organizational restructuring to support the entire plan. The communication was established in a top down manner-Intranet was considered as the medium for communicating the objectives of change and also the expectations involved in it. For realizing the strategic intent of change management, the new CEO relied heavily on new technology (intranet) for aggressive internal marketing of change initiatives and the benefits associated with it.
- Failure Stories (Walmart): The giant retail player followed the strategy of Low Pricing few years ago and enjoyed a prominence in the market due to its low pricing strategy for across various categories of products. Few years later, they introduced a change in the strategy for attracting niche customer segments who could afford higher priced products and up-scaled their items.
Due to a change in the strategy, Walmart lost its business profitability since it could neither attract the higher end customers through its products and the regular customers started looking for better bargains from the competitors.
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