Management of Change

INTRODUCTION Change management can be viewed from two perspectives – from those implementing the change and from the recipients of change. Your view of change management varies dramatically if you are the executive demanding the change versus the front line employee who may be unsure why a change is even needed. In many cases at the onset of a new change, neither the executive nor the front-line employee is knowledgeable about managing change. CHANGE MANAGEMENT DEFINED The simplest definition of change management is; “making change in a planned and managed fashion”. Today’s proliferation of digital media is making the conscious practice of change management more important than it was only a few years ago. Organizational change can be defined as; “any alteration in people, structure or technology”. Although change has always been a part of manager’s job, it has become even more important in recent years. TYPES OF CHANGE Changes in an organization can often be identified as one of four types, with the definite possibility of overlap among them: 1. Operational changes affect the way the ongoing

operations of the business are conducted, such as the automation of a particular area. 2. Strategic changes occur in the strategic business direction, e.g., moving from an inpatient to an outpatient focus. 3. Cultural changes affect the basic organizational philosophies by which the business is conducted, e.g.,

implementing a continuous quality improvement (CQI) system. 4. Political changes in staffing occur primarily for political reasons of various types, such as those that occur at top patronage job levels in government agencies. These four different types of change typically have their greatest impacts at different levels of the organization. For example, operational changes tend to have their greatest impacts at the lower levels of the organization, right on the firing line. People working at the upper levels may never notice changes that cause significant stress and turmoil to those attempting to implement the changes. On the other hand, the impact of political changes is typically felt most at the higher organizational levels. As the name implies, these changes are typically made not for results-oriented reasons but for reasons such as partisan politics or internal power struggles. When these changes occur in a relatively bureaucratic organization, as they often do, those working at the bottom often hardly notice the changes at the top. Patients are seen and the floors are cleaned exactly as they were before. The key point is that performance was not the basis of the change; therefore, the performers are not much affected. DEALING WITH RESISTENCE TO CHANGE It is easy to change the things that nobody cares about. It becomes difficult when you start to change the things that people do care about—or when they start to care about the things that you are changing. —Lorenzi and Riley Resistance to change is an ongoing problem. At both the individual and the organizational levels, resistance to change impairs concerted efforts to improve performance. Many corporate change efforts have been initiated at tremendous cost only to be halted by resistance among the

organization's employees. Organizations as a whole also manifest behavior similar to that of individuals when faced with the need to change. Change can be a threat to people in an organization. Organizations can build up inertia that motivates people to resist changing their status quo, even though change might be beneficial. Why people resist change? It’s often said that most people hate any change that doesn’t jingle in their pockets. Their resistance to change is well documented. Why do people resist change? An individual is likely to resist change for three reasons: uncertainty, concern over personal loss, and the belief that the change is not in the organization’s best interest. Techniques for Reducing Resistance While dealing with resistance to change, there are six actions manager can use. These actions include education and communication, participation, facilitation and support, negotiation, manipulation and cooptation and coercion. Depending on the type and source of the resistance, managers might choose to use any of these actions. "ADKAR" --- A model for change management ADKAR is a goal-oriented change management model that allows change management teams to focus their activities on specific business results. The model was initially used as a tool for determining if change management activities like communications and training were having the desired results during organizational change. The model has its origins in

aligning traditional change management activities to a given result or goal. For example, Awareness of the business reasons for change is a goal of early communications related to a business change. Desire to engage and participate in the change is the goal of sponsorship and resistance management. Knowledge about how to change is the goal of training and coaching. By identifying the required outcomes or goals of change management, ADKAR becomes a useful framework for change management teams in the planning and execution of their work. PEOPLE DIMENSION OF CHANGE Research shows that problems with the people dimension of change are the most commonly cited reason for project failures. In a study with 248 companies, effective change management with employees was listed as one of the topthree overall success factors for the project. Helping managers to be effective sponsors of change were considered the most critical success factor overall. Effective management of the people dimension of change requires managing five key goals that form the basis of the ADKAR model: Awareness of the need to change Desire to participate and support the change Knowledge of how to change (and what the change looks like) Ability to implement the change on a day-to-day basis Reinforcement to keep the change in place BENEFITS AND MANAGEMENT

SIGNIFICANCE

OF

CHANGE

“Change is a window through which future enters in your life”

Some of the unique benefits of change management from organizational perspective are given below:

Understanding customers)

environment

(society,

government,

It is important for organization to understand, assess and gauge the dynamics in its external environment in order to envisage and establish an appropriate relationship with various actors like government, customers and society. Therefore managers by knowing the subject of change management can better be prepared to understand whatever is going on in the environment. Objectives, strategy formulation & implementation (to develop competitive advantage) Second is consequent upon knowing the impact of change at extraneous level on its own internal dynamics, and the foremost is objective setting and seeking competitive advantage. Employees (trained, reliable organization)

high

performing

work

practices,

The employees are the recipient of change plan. One such perpetual concern of senior managers is to make organization highly reliable; therefore employees ought to be trained and high performing one in today’s hyper competitive world Technology Issues Technology is considered the engine of growth in today’s world. Perhaps the greatest challenge for contemporary

organizations is the acquisition and integration of technology in its strategy, structure and process. ROLE OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT IN AN ORGANIZATION Change management plays an important role in any organization since the task of managing change is not an easy one. When we say managing change we mean to say that making changes in a planned and systemic fashion. With reference to the IT projects we can say the change in the versions of a project and managing these versions properly. Changes in the organization or a project can be initiated from within the organization or externally. For example a product that is popular among the customers may undergo a change in design based on the triggering factor like a competitive product from some other manufacturer. This is an example of external factor that triggers a change within the organization. How the organization responds to these changes is what that is more concerned. Managing these changes come under change management. Reactive and proactive responses to these changes are possible from an organization. Change management is done by many independent consultants who claim to be experts in these areas. These consultants manage the changes for their clients. They manage changes or help the client make the changes or take up the task themselves to make the changes that must be made. An area of change that needs attention is selected and certain models, methods, techniques and tools are used for making these changes that are necessary for the organization. When there is a process in an organization it is not an easy task to make changes to this process immediately. Sometimes a single organization may have varied business

entities and changes in an entity may be reflected in another entity. In such organizations changes are not so easy. There are different types of organizations which have many branches across the world with varied cultures. Implementing a change in such organizations is a task by itself. The change process could also be considered as a problem solving situation. The change that is taking place could be the result of a problem that has occurred. You should know that a problem is a situation that requires some action to be taken positively to handle that situation. This positive action is known as problem solving. The change process could be problem solving for a particular situation. In this process there is a move from one state to another so that the problem gets solved. The change process is leaving the current state and moving to the final state through some structured organized process. Managing the changes in an organization requires a broad set of skills like political skills, analytical skills, people skills, system skills, and business skills. Having good analytical skills will make you a good change agent. You should evaluate the financial and political impacts of the changes that can take place. You should know that following a particular process at that instant would fetch you immediate financial effects and start that process so that the change process is noted by the management. The workflow has to be changed in such a manner to reflect the financial changes that are taking place. Operations and systems in the organization should be reconfigured in such a manner that you get the desired financial impact. Hence change management plays an important role in an organization. This allows the organization to give a reactive

or a proactive response to the changes that happen internally or externally. Knowing the change management and its process would help an organization and its processes to be stable. PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.—Niccolo achiavelli One of the most difficult problems organizations face is dealing with change. In today's rapidly changing, highly competitive environment, the ability to change rapidly, efficiently, and almost continually will distinguish the winners from the losers. Major organizational changes typically involve many different types and levels of personal loss for the people in the organization. For example, change always requires the effort to learn the new, which is a loss in terms of time and energy that could have been used elsewhere. Although some may welcome the learning opportunity, many of us don't want to invest that time and energy unless we are dissatisfied with the current arrangements or see powerful advantages to the proposed change. Upgrading to new software is a common example, in which the future benefits may not be seen as sufficient to outweigh the short-term investment required to learn the new programs. Second, people want to feel good about themselves. Ideally, people are able to take pride in their work, feel responsible for a job well done, and feel they are part of a high-quality enterprise, and feel that their time has some significance. In many work situations, the work itself and the

organizational culture make it difficult for people to feel good about themselves. In these poorer situations, people usually invent strategies to help them feel better about themselves, and these strategies involve getting some sense of control, belongingness, and significance out of their work. Sometimes this involves opposition to management, on the assumption that management is always up to no good. More commonly, the worker-management relationships are not completely alienated. Still, the workers' strategies for achieving “good” feelings are unknown to or quite misunderstood by management. Therefore, change initiatives, unknowingly and unintentionally, threaten to cause the workers serious personal loss. Not surprisingly, the workers resist and do all they can to sabotage such change initiatives. Third, change initiatives often require large losses for middle managers. Generally, people perceive that information systems increase the ability of top executives to know more about what is going on and to exert more direct control. This means a serious loss of personal and organizational significance for the middle manager. Sometimes middle managers fight this loss. Any significant organizational change involves changing habits that is, changing the way we actually do our work. This usually involves changes in the way we interact, both with people and our tools. New systems require us to learn a new set of behaviors. CONCLUSION It can sometimes be hard to separate out 'the change', project management, and change management. In practice, these three components are intertwined in order to deliver a positive outcome to the organization. However, there is value in separating out the components. First, thinking about the three components separately makes it easier to define

and help others understand these distinct elements. Second, separating out these three components is a solid first step when troubleshooting on a particular project that may not be moving ahead as expected. For instance, are our challenges coming from issues around designing 'the change'? Are the issues related to the technical steps, activities or resources (project management)? Or are concerns coming from how individuals are accepting or resisting the change (change management)? It’s a truism that change is constant, and in business continuous change and evolution is usually necessary to be competitive. So to a certain degree, good change management practice simply means practicing good management, and outside assistance is often desirable when true objectivity is required. In the final analysis, the most effective change management is all about articulating and sharing a vision, so that the people being affected believe that adapting to change is the right thing to do. Nothing is constant in this world , except change!