Why is it important to have a process to manage change in your organisation?

Most businesses are continually faced with change – whether externally driven, for example by the market, or internally driven, perhaps by new technology – to ensure they remain competitive. The level of change involved can vary from incremental to severe, but in any case it is important to have a process to manage the change and avoid the pitfall to assume that ‘it will just happen’.

Changing an organisation isn’t easy, as people have a natural tendency to resist change stemming from

• a lack of clarity on what is motivating the change
• no clear understanding on what the change means to them
• little experience of how change can successfully be implemented in the organisation

But people are fundamental to the success with which change is addressed and managed, and it is therefore vital to have a robust process to guide them through what could otherwise be an unnecessarily traumatic experience for them personally, and a waste of time and effort for the organisation.

Scope

PSM’s approach to managing and sustaining complex change is built around three core themes: Providing Direction, Realigning Behaviours and  Coordinating the Delivery. These core themes comprise the following facets of a change programme:

• Define the scope and dimensions of the change (analyze structural and/or cultural root causes for poor performance, and ensure the proposed approach supports the overall objectives)
• Creating change leadership (coaching the business leaders, creating a compelling need and an inspiring change vision)
• Constructing a change map (identifying the change components and balancing imposed and desired change, assessing change history, change risk and readiness for change) and developing a communications programme
• Building commitment (make the change vision operational and relevant to the various stakeholder communities)
• Identifying and exploiting appropriate levers for change (e.g. behavioural examples, performance management, training programmes)
• Configuring the change implementation (team selection and development, and integration of all activities)
• Managing the implementation (dealing with issues, measuring progress, etc.)

This approach effectively and seamlessly integrates the soft as well as hard issues allowing change to be sustained and ensuring planned benefits are realised.

Competences

PSM consultants have the skills, style and competence to provide the edge that is crucial to make a change programme really succeed.

Furthermore, PSM's consultants have worked in most parts of the globe and in numerous multicultural engagements. This allows us to handle differences in socio-business cultures, which can have a major impact on the success of complex change programmes. We are familiar with and sensitive to the cultural norms across business sectors in the following regions/countries:

• Eastern and Western Europe
• North America and Mexico
• South America
• Middle East and Southern Africa
• Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand & India

“Change has to be managed by people, it cannot manage itself”