Introduction
Generally, a Change Management Strategy consists of a plan on how to make things work differently. However, in business, a change management strategy addresses definite ways in which organizations address its project scope (Aladwani, 2001). According to Nickols (2010), the objectives of formulating a formal strategy in rescheduling a business infrastructure is to minimize on the negative effects that might dampen the ideals of this process.
To institute a change management strategy effectively, stakeholders must formulate a work plan that identifies the needs for change, how to implement, and monitor the change process to make them bring the desired effect. Change management may experience fatalities especially when it does not consider the aspirations of the various stakeholders. Apart from that, poorly managed change motif may end up causing distrust and confusion within the workforce leading to resistance. Often, organizational change efforts run into aggressive forms of human resistance.
Resistance to change is usually a feature in business leadership and management. While experienced managers might be aware of this fact, only a few take to assess organizational change systematically as to cushion those who might resist the envisioned change (Coran and Burnes, 2001). This is not to say that resistance to change is unwelcome in the change process. In fact, the change committee should take increased advantage of the divergent opinions to bring the aspirations of the various stakeholders into play.
Determining what exactly needs to change
There are certainly distinct areas within an organization that may require or demand change. However, the main idea is to make the change management to be reasonable for the organizational ideals for it to be successful (Muduli & Kaura, 2011). Within an organization, various initiatives may need change from time to time depending on the momentum of the growth structure and the needs involved.
While each of the initiatives expects a successful change management process, what needs to change and the right amount as well as the approach for the change management will be different nonetheless. Change must define what is central to the legacy of an organization. As a result, any change within the organization affects every party in the organization in one way or the other. What needs to change must affect the people and the manner in which the employees go about their jobs. Acknowledging that bringing change is not an easy venture, what has to change may suffer from reduced implementation hence creating lower exploitation in the process.
Normally, what needs to change will have hazards that affect people that do not accept new operations in the organization. Leadership should take their time to invest in the process to identify what might be wrong. Experienced managers may use their proficiencies to make the change initiative a success. This process, according to Coran and Burnes (2001), could be demanding and it requires careful thought to make it a success.
However, instead of using past experiences as guidelines, all too often, many managers chose to cling on a simple set of beliefs to insinuate that certain individuals may resist the change because their skill sets demand that they became independent thus rendering their suspicion to top management. Such an approach deems itself limited and often creates serious problems that may make it hard to realize the change itself.
Given the varied ways in which individuals, employees, and groups often react to change, appropriate assessments are necessary to find grounds to appease the aspirations of all the parties involved. There must be a clear separation of duties between management and leadership to make individuals contribute within their respective positions. Proper training for new employees as well as current refresher training for current employees is necessary to make all forces work symbiotically.
Brainstorming potential solutions
Precisely, it is prudent to make the right decisions that will ensure implementation of the change in the organization. This is to create a sense of responsibility in handling the resources when implementing the change in an organization. Within these schemes, leadership becomes the focus of all endeavors. Framing the change management strategy as Aladwani (2001) notes is central to the complete implementation of the change management methodology.
Clearly, any new move within the organization must aim at maintain the project and show how the new move will affect the parties within the organization. The strategy must seek to offer direction and provide informed decision-making kits during the change process. The change management strategy must also communicate the formulation of the change management campaigns. For example, the groups identified in the strategy must partake of the communication plan (Nickols, 2010).
Leadership could possibly summon other parties to enhance the production. Maybe formation of group people that looks into the problem and come up with amicable solutions. Every succeeding change actions and strategies are regulated by the outcome of the management of the change. Leadership should keep an open mind throughout the brainstorming (Nickols, 2010). There should be no belittlement of any parties in this process, the opinions of all the stakeholders count
Deciding on how to move forward
While acknowledging the instrumentality of engaging the employees in the organizational change process, leadership has to set the direction for the rest all their contributions. Though essential in change process, employee engagement could occasionally pose challenges with which a business may have to contend. As part of the change process, the business may decide to conduct employee satisfaction survey to identify the key areas of concern in strategic planning.
Engaging employees in the change process is part of the agenda to protect their interests (Muduli & Kaura, 2011). Usually to protect worker interests, an anonymous feedback mechanism becomes an option so that individuals feel secure to offer their honest opinions. There should be a time when the parties should held a discussion on the changes to be made. The parties to ensure the organizational change are the employees and the managers.
Engaging employees in the change process will definitely make it possible for individuals to open up and to volunteer insightful observations that will for part of general decision-making. The moment an organization obtains employees’ feedback, the management can embark on synthesizing various opinions and address the dissenting views. Incorporating various opinions from various stakeholders and different employees is highly beneficial (Nickols, 2010). These endowments usually keep worker morale high since they feel part of the mainstream management.
Action steps
Leadership, according to Aladwani (2001), must decide on how the organization addresses the change and then communicate it to the various stakeholders as part of the change management plan. Since this is inherent in their jobs specifications, it is upon the leaders and other stakeholders within the organization to find out the best ways to embrace changes in the organization. While some leaders and stakeholders are excellent in ensuring this effort, others may not reach the target despite their struggle. In this regard, one will be able to differentiate the performance of each manager in the organization in the struggle to embrace the change.
Ultimately, setting out a formidable work plan is the basis of evading an ineffective strategy that might frustrate the process. Identifying critically important priorities that the change process must address is vital (Nickols, 2010). The plan must roll out systemic problems that might befall the plan and fix exciting visions that makes change meaningful. The leadership structure should be precise and give an allowance for individual persons to find out how these stages should play out to undertake successful and meaningful change in addressing these priorities in the organization.
Set a time frame
Perhaps setting a timeframe for which the desired change must occur is among the fundamental ideals that the change process must consider. The change process must move in steps in line with the stipulated paradigms to make the change process and pace to transit smoothly. The change process must set achievable objectives spread out along the change wavelength to determine the change progression as well as the success and faults to necessitate adjustments where necessary and possible (Aladwani, 2001). Leadership particularly should be aware of the pace of change because this could influence how efficacy of the change implementation and how well the employees respond to it.
The effects of the changes on the parties within the organization
Managing consists of handling complex priorities in the process that constitute both negatives and positives. Change is about evaluation, planning, and implementation of operations, tactics, and strategies while making sure that the process and the ultimate change is worthwhile, necessary, and relevant. Leadership should be concern with the effects of changes in the organization.
All these attributes of change might cause friction with the traditional establishments within an organization. Leaders acknowledge that managing change is a very complex, challenging, and dynamic process. Change, as it seems is never a choice between people-oriented or technological solutions but rather a combination of all the parties involved.
Effective change is more of unfreezing old behaviors while introducing new ones to conform to the growth apparatus prevailing in the markets (Muduli & Kaura, 2011). Change occurs in many forms, it may be continuous or sporadic, however whenever it occurs, it affects different groups of people. However, predictable change permits room for preparation, while unpredictable change could be more demanding to respond to efficiently.
Since changes in organizations occur so rapidly, they are less likely to be predictable hence, they will always affect different groups of people. To mitigate this concern, the leadership should ask employees how the expected change might disturb their workload and their daily activities (Muduli & Kaura, 2011). The biggest factor of all though is to consider the aspirations of the customers to maintain a rich consumer base for enhanced competitive advantage.
Identifying potential obstacles
Although leadership cannot identify or anticipate all obstacles, leadership should be able to identify what they can and create our plans to help employees work around them and the organization. The trajectory of organizational change passes through a series of obstacles that may either slow down the process or kill it prematurely. With the best intentions, probably that never delivered the desired value or results to the organization, a change process can be a real sham.
Nevertheless, within the change management itself, there are still major obstacles to innovation that makes it hard to rule out such incidences. Statistically, the impediments of change organizational are 98% management while 2% are technological. This infers that process improvements and technological factors are both effective enablers of change (Aladwani, 2001). Particularly, governmental bureaucracy and managerial hierarchy parties to these elements.
A bureaucracy’s rigidity may hinder the whole process of change. Moreover, most of the obstacles to organizational change are structural and cultural. While creating a successful organizational change is not an easy task, there are tried, tested, and trusted approaches to make organizational change a success even in the face of the looming obstacles.
Encoding of the plan
From the research, there are certain characteristics of the parties that embrace changes within the organization. For instance, they are supposed to be adaptive and do their duties diligently. As a result, the management should be selective while choosing the individuals to embrace change within the organization. In addition, the management should devise various methods of selecting individuals based on their strengths and weaknesses.
Similarly, the successful of changes in the organization depends on the influence of the leaders. The leaders should select the best strategies of achieving changes within the organization. Secondly, the leaders should find out the challenges that may affect the development of changes in the organization and find out the amicable solutions to the challenges.
References
Aladwani, M. (2001). Change management strategies for successful ERP implementation. Business Process Management Journal, 7(3), 266-275.
Coran, R., and Burnes, B. (2001). Managing organizational change in the public sector. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 14(20), 94 -110.
Muduli, A., and Kaura, V. (2011). Southwest Airlines Success: A Case Study Analysis. Management Edge, 4(2), 115-118.
Nickols, F. (2010). Four change management strategies. Web.