Tips to Handling Change with Ease

“ It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent,

but the ones who are most responsive to change ” - Charles Darwin

Change is a certainty in business. Technology, consumer preferences, legal environment, different groups lobbying on different issues, exchange rates and a host of other socio-economic factors are driving change incessantly. It is an understatement to say that businesses that survive are the ones that thrive on change. They don't just react and respond to change, but they anticipate and institute change. Mentioned below are some of the steps that companies should follow to effectively manage change.

1. Sponsorship at senior level – Management should have a clear vision of where it wants the company to be. Once the goals are defined, change should be seen as a subservient process to achieve the envisioned goals. Change should be driven from the top down. The Management should proactively institute change rather than just be reactive to the various forces that drive change. Once leaders are committed to the process, it gets reflected in company policies and practices, thereby sending a strong signal down the management hierarchy.

 

2. Perceived necessity – The necessity for the change must be communicated. People must feel the urgency to change. The cost of not addressing a current problem or the opportunity cost of not adopting the proposed change must be highlighted to everybody.

    

   The linkage between the visions established by the leaders of the organization, the goals of the company, and change should be clearly established and communicated. Unless change is perceived to be an imperative for the growth of the organization and unless people tie the prosperity of the company to the change process change efforts would not win support from all corners of the company.

 

3. Explore capabilities – Before designing steps for implementing change leaders must ask themselves: Where do we want to be? What do we know to be there? What do we need to know? What could be the problems in the process to change? What strategies could work?

    

   The management should also identify the key people who can considerably influence the change process and should judge their attitude towards the idea of change. Without roping their confidence it would be difficult to institute change successfully.

    

4. Have an action plan? - The vision has to be articulated in terms of a road map that everyone can understand and follow.

    

   What are the key tasks that need to be completed? What resources and how much of them would be required by how much time? Who are the key people to drive change? What are the skill sets of people in the organization? Do we need to get someone from outside to expedite the process for change? How to initiate the change process?

    

   These are some of the questions that the management needs to ask itself while designing an action plan for change.

 

5. Team involvement – It is imperative for the success of any change program is to win the confidence of those who are going to be affected by it. They must feel involved in the process and identify their individual goals and prosperity according to the overall objective. Employee engagement is imperative, as they are the most effective change agents any company has. In fact, a change initiative that is initiated by the employees has the highest probability of success.

 

6. Training and development – Change necessitates, almost invariably, that employees develop new competencies to meet the requirements of change. Change management invariably puts pressure on managers and staff to refine their skills as well as upgrade themselves with newer skills. Leaders should create adequate opportunity for the employees to upgrade themselves.

    

   For example, installing an ERP package may involve a change the work processes of the company, requiring more IT educated people to deal with the ERP system. Appropriate training sessions would help ease the way employees work their way into the new system.

    

   Instead of seeing change as a threat, leaders should present change as an opportunity to upgrade competencies.

 

7. Clarify roles and responsibilities – Change may be paralyzed if people end up saying “I was not supposed to do this” or “No one told me to do it”. Change often brings additional duties and responsibilities and roles and responsibilities should be clearly defined. People should be clear about what is expected of them so that they can deliver. Unless expectations are clarified, change management will end up leaving people totally confused.

 

8. Defined targets that are measurable – Without any quantifiable and measurable business targets, change initiatives cannot be successful. Small measurable outcomes in summation define the answer to the business problems that necessitated change in the first place. So these targets have to be meaningful and coherent to the overall end-goal of the change program. Targets serve as milestones that define the roadmap of change. Measurability and quantifiability make it possible to monitor the progress towards change, and also institutes accountability.

 

9. Communication – Communication involves transmitting the overall vision of the company, and the factors that are driving change (and what their importance is). But apart from these, it is also important to update all the employees about progress. (What are the achievements that have been made?) Give rewards to boost employee confidence. Establish a feedback system so that people know how far they have gone, what their achievements have been, what they did right, where are they going wrong, and what corrective actions need to be taken. It should be a regular ongoing activity.

 

10. Deal with fear and resistance­ – Change is often accompanied with a feeling of insecurity, as you are invariably pushing people out of their comfort zone. People may feel insecure about how they will be evaluated, would they be able to cope with the demands of the change process, and in the worst case would they be laid off? This feeling of insecurity may affect the performance of workers and some may even turn hostile to the process, and in fact resist change.

     

    Through information sessions, counseling and proper training and motivational workshops, companies should allay the fears of the employees. Management should discuss the objectives of groups that lobby against change and should negotiate and explore how they can be aligned to the overall company objective.

     

    Those who resist change must see change as an opportunity and not a problem.

Conclusion:

Change management should not be taken as an isolated process. It should rather be an ongoing process. Companies should be learning organizations, learning and growing every moment as and when business environments change. In fact they may become drivers of change like Apple and 3M, and lead the market by innovating. Change for them is a part of life and changes in the business landscape take them less by surprise than others.