Change Management: It’s All About Managing Change in Subtle Manner

The ever-growing and evolving business world, an organization needs to cope with the technological advancements and changes to be successful. More you will be your adaptability; higher will be the chances of success. Hence, managing change has become quite necessary to understand and implement in every organization.

What is Change Management?

Change Management broadly covers the approaches made by organizations to prepare, assist, and support their employees, teams, and even management for making a change – in policies, workflows, processes, etc.

Some people, especially the ones in high-tech, consider change management as a upgrade in tools that manage the source code. However, this is just one aspect of the change management. On a bigger scale, managing change may include different tasks such as:

• Identification of the components and structure that need change
• Taking control of the change processes including their release, visibility, and implementation.
• Status of change implemented and their aftereffects.
• Performing audit to keep a track of changes and validating them.
• Tracing the changes made.
• Ensuring that every change has a lifecycle.
• Controlling the team interactions at different level of change process.

Now that you have gained a little understanding about the term change management and its relevant functions, let’s take a leap towards the situations that may lead to change management.

5 Situations When Organizations Go for Change Management

Considering change every now and then won’t be fair in professional and practical terms since it includes many processes from introducing a change till its implementation. The more sensible action could be considering the worth of implementing a change activity with on-going plans. This will ease the change implementation without facing any resistance from your team.

There could be numerous situations that can make organizations think about implementing change management system. The most common ones are:

When something new is happening

Many organizations often misinterpret the process of change management as some large-scale implementations such as introducing a whole new range of products. They don’t think about the little changes including new procedures or policies. However, these small changes are the one that frustrates employees the most. It is not because of the change, but because of the unplanned implementation for which employees were not prepared adequately.

Organization will find the change activity beneficial only if they will weigh small changes as valuable as large ones. Change management is more like an opportunity to set expectations while ensuring that everyone of your team or organization is on the same page.

When something needs to be resolved

It is quite a common encounter where a company find out that the process they are following is not going to work anymore. Or they identify some functional issues in the old equipment and even worse, they find it broken. They quickly decide to get it replaced. And this is not of much surprise. But that doesn’t mean that replacing is easy.

Organizations need to map the processes to help organizations have better communication with the employees about the process of replacement. Managers need to give proper directions to move from the current situation to the desired one. 

Related Article : Explain 5 Levels of Change Management

When something holds your business back

Holding your business back doesn’t only implies sales numbers and statistics. Companies may need an infrastructure improvement. The better example to understand this is IT companies that completely rely on technology to mitigate redundancies and keep their business growth continued. Outdated software and hardware could limit the company’s ability to offer their customers exceptional service.

Technology has become a part of any brand – for the employees and customers. Because people can do everything online from buying a dress to schedule an appointment with doctor. In such a case, organizations should adapt technological advancements to comply with employee and customer expectations.

When something can make your company lead the competition

Every organization makes some strategic decisions that make them lead or lag the market competition. Such decisions should be taken considering the disruption of the industry you are working in. The organizations that are interested in leading the competition will make a proactive approach towards managing change. On the contrary, the organization that have a habit of reacting are the one who chooses to lag behind.

Whatsoever is your decision, change management becomes the constant part of the culture. Its’ just how you deal with the change that results in significant differences.

When something changes with employee (Whether someone leaves or joins the organization)

All the above discussed situations were more about the processes and strategy that are planned and executed in an organization. Organizations tend to forget about managing change when they change people – whether its person leaving the job or new hire. It’s quite basic thing to understand that each of us are different in our work approach, communication, and leading styles.

It has become important for organizations to create user manuals on how they work and rules and regulations to maintain the consistency in workflows and work styles of multiple individuals working in the organization. This will make a powerful onboarding activity to ensure that every employee is following the same guidelines to attain business goals.

One Important thing About Change Management

Considering the situation mentioned above, some people might argue that change is required all the time. But that’s surely not the case. You need to give it a closer look. It has more similarity with the case that if something is already in order, it needs not to be rearranged.

And when change is necessary, organizations should look forward to it positively without assuming things like this change is very minor or no one is going to notice it. Always keep one thing in mind that when you invest in the change management – you aren’t just eliminating the setbacks; you are realizing the actual gains.

Every single change management effort pays off well when it is embraced. This brings us to the next section of the post wherein we will investigate the benefits of having a streamlined change management system.

Related Article: Change Management Principles: How to Implement Them Effectively

Benefits of Change Management System

Change management is a well-planned and streamlined process. In majority of the cases, you know the benefits of a particular change way before it is implemented. It, in fact, serve as motivators to progress. Some of them are shared below:

• The organization can cater to customer demands at a much faster rate.
• The organizations can align existing resources with the business objectives.
• With change management, it becomes easy for the organizations to assess the consequences of implementing a change – be it negative or positive.
• Having a change management solution in place, an organization can implement change without any impacts on the day to day business activities.
• You can maintain and improve the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the organization by acknowledging the staff concerns through change management solution.
• The change cycle time also gets reduced with streamlined workflows and processes.
• The chances of not getting success through a change are likely to get reduced.
• The performance of the employees increases as they feel supported. They also try to understand the entire process of change with more zeal.
• When you keep your employees informed and educated about a new change, they can handle customers confidently and effectively.
• Change management solutions helps you to estimate challenges way before so that you can tackle them in a more efficient manner.
• When you have an effective change management process in the organization, you have lesser risks to manage.
• With a change management solution, you can easily manage the costs of change.
• You can significantly increase the returns on investment (ROI)
• Managing change helps creating an opportunity to develop and follow “best practices” in the organization for leadership and team development

Would you still resist to invest in managing change and hold your organization’s growth? Or would you take a leap forward with technology and get a change management software solution like Qualityze to make your organization and people adaptable to change that can help you to attain a leading position in the highly competitive market.