Using change management to coordinate change
Change management runs alongside all of your company’s projects. Because improvement always means change and these changes are always associated with their own challenges. You’re asking your employees to change themselves and learn new standards while also discarding old patterns of behaviour. Not everyone finds this so easy to achieve. This in particular is why it is so important to organise and steer change, to ensure that none of your employees are left behind.
The need for change management
There are various reasons for the volatility of the environment in which your company does business. These reasons include:
- Globalisation
- Technical progress
- Policymaking and legislation
- Societal factors
- Ecological factors
Accordingly, your company needs to constantly adapt to ensure it maintains optimum productivity despite ever-changing requirements. Faced with this change pressure, your company also needs to change constantly – and therefore needs an appropriate change management system for steering this transition.
Your change management model
As a rule, change processes involve three distinct phases:
- The first step is to dismantle old and entrenched patterns of behaviour. Here it is important to appreciate which people or entities in your company may have an interest in the “old setup” – and for which reasons. If you tackle these aspects then resistance will also fade away. Following this, you then define the new target status quo.
- After this, processes and mindsets for the new target status quo are developed, and standards are used to anchor these permanently in your processes and teams – like communications.
- The last step involves a continuous monitoring of results, with immediate intervention in the event of deviations.
This approach ensures the success of your change project.
