Organizational change is hard, but it's not impossible. The key to change that sticks? A well-implemented, successful change management process.
Without change, there is no progress. But change is rarely easy.
In any organization, successful implementation of change requires an organized approach, unified efforts of all stakeholders, and a considerable amount of mental energy. Without preparation, companies set themselves up for failure.
This is when organizational change management comes in handy – in particular, a change management process. By following a structured, coherent process, you can be prepared for all the potential bumps in the road that you may face in the journey from change initiation, through to implementation, evaluation, and beyond.
In this article, we will describe all the steps of the change management process for you to apply in your business.
Change management refers to the improvement of organizations by changing certain aspects - for instance, introducing new processes, new teams, or new tools - and ensuring these changes bring positive results.
It’s a broad concept that covers various tactics, strategies, and tasks one applies to successfully lead their business through change.
The change management process, however, is a more specific term. It refers to the actual steps of change implementation and management in order to ensure that change progresses smoothly, making the best out of it. It’s similar to change management models but, unlike them, it provides a much more specific course of action.
If an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except [its basic] beliefs as it moves through corporate life… The only sacred cow in an organization should be its basic philosophy of doing business. – Thomas J. Watson, Jr., “A Business and Its Beliefs”
While change is a natural and inevitable part of organizational development, it’s not always obvious something needs to be changed. It might seem that things work just fine, so why change anything? People like the status quo because it's comfortable and familiar.
However, there is a catch. By deciding to stay where you are at, you risk falling behind. That’s why a company that aims to be successful should always be alert and look for both opportunities and threats it needs to react to.
By analyzing the current situation, you may notice various ways of how to improve your business processes, operations and productivity and, consequently, get benefits like higher profits or a better company reputation.
Similarly, you may find out that something requires your immediate attention and that you need to make adjustments before it’s too late:
Noticing small changes early helps you adapt to the bigger changes that are to come. – Dr. Spencer Johnson, “Who Moved My Cheese?”
Take a closer look at different organizational aspects of your company, from communication and culture, to planning and marketing strategy. Analyze challenges both inside and outside the company. Your research will show you where to start and what change management practices to use.
Once you’ve figured out what you need to work on, it’s time to outline what you aim to achieve. This will provide guidance and structure for implementing change.
Setting change direction should be planned on two levels – strategic (goals) and tactical (objectives.) To monitor the whole process, you should also use KPIs – key performance indicators: metrics that would help you track progress.
For example, your strategic goal could be building a better employee organizational culture. In this case, your objectives could be the following:
To measure your success, you could use KPIs like:
A change management team is a group of people who are in charge of planning and implementing various change initiatives. The purpose of this team is to ensure the change is handled properly.
The members of the change management team have different roles. Let’ mention the core ones:
Make sure there is a powerful team guiding change – one with leadership skills, credibility, communication ability, authority, analytical skills, and a sense of urgency. – John Kotter, “Our Iceberg is Melting”
A change management plan is a document that includes the steps necessary to introduce and manage change. Its components can include the following:
These are the main components of the change management plan; however, you could add more. For example, you can specify communication rules that would ensure smooth teamwork; you could develop a risk management plan, outlining possible risks and ways of dealing with them; or you could add the list of the tools that are going to be used while implementing the change.
A change management plan will be a great reference for team members to use in case they need any information.
Stakeholder analysis refers to gathering and analyzing information about individuals and groups who will be impacted by the change – employees, management of all levels, customers, suppliers, regulatory bodies like government agencies etc.
The purpose if stakeholder analysis is to understand the needs, interest, and concerns of those people, to identify possible resistance (or support), and to use the feedback to manage change more effectively.
To analyze the stakeholders, different methods can be used, such as interviews, questionnaires, or even observations. The best way to ensure the objectivity of results is to combine both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Training is an important element of successful change management, as it provides people with all the tools and knowledge needed to adopt change. Thanks to training, you can minimize operational disruption, enhance collaboration, and ensure success.
Change management training can be conducted for both leaders and employees. Leaders can be trained on how to develop change management plans, assess risks, and communicate the necessity of change; this training is more strategy-oriented.
For employees, training is tactics-oriented. Its purpose is to help people understand how the change will affect their jobs. Employees get trained on new processes and systems, communication, and the psychology of change.
Training methods can be different:
This step is self-explanatory. All the stakeholders should receive a copy of the change management plan to understand how exactly the change is going to be implemented and what their specific role is.
This is the point where the actual work on the change begins, and plans turn into action. Everyone starts working on their specific tasks concerning the change, knowing the time limits and resources allocated, and aiming to reach the goals and objectives stated in the plan.
To make sure that your change management strategy actually works, it’s important to track progress. This will help you figure out if the methods you use are effective – and if they’re not, to adjust or replace them.
Change management progress can be tracked on three levels – individual, organizational, and on the level of change implementation:
Here you evaluate individual performance metrics to see how employees deal with the change and how effectively they reach their new goals. The evaluation methods may include the following:
You evaluate how changes affect organizational outputs by using:
Here you evaluate the effectiveness of change management policies:
People are naturally change-averse. No matter what type of organizational change your company is going through, your employees might be unwilling to adapt to it. It can be expressed in various ways – from blatant and public dissatisfaction to latent forms when a person silently struggles (and fails to adapt).
The reasons why it happens vary. For example, people might feel a lack of confidence in their ability to successfully handle the change, or simply reject change as something that ruins their routine and therefore is perceived as a threat.
They might feel they don’t have enough skills and knowledge. Or they might not understand the necessity of change at all.
However, as we know from the change curve model, even though the first natural response to change is denial, it's possible to overcome it and reach the integration stage (where change is fully accepted).
Here are some tips on how to do it:
While monitoring change management progress with various metrics, you get performance results. Then you should do some comparative analysis – for example, by documenting and comparing the results received before and after the change has been implemented, or by comparing the new results with your goals.
This way, you will see how successful your change policies are. If they are not satisfactory, you will need to adjust some policies or techniques and inform the stakeholders about it. Change management policies are not set in stone – you can modify something that doesn’t work. It’s okay to experiment.
Change is a continuous and never-ending process. To stay competitive, a company needs to actively study the market and its new trends, look for opportunities, and recognize challenges on time to be able to deal with them. This means that it’s important to develop a mindset that would help people welcome change and continuously improve.
Over time, cultural norms must change; strategy must change; product lines must change; goals must change; competencies must change; administrative policies must change; organization structure must change; reward system must change. Ultimately, the only thing a company should not change over time is its core ideology. – Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras, “Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies”
To develop a mindset where change is viewed as an inherent component of progress and an actual value, leadership would have to do a lot of work, communicating with their employees and convincing them of the importance of change.
Here are some ways of how to make change a part of the corporate culture:
While it might be relatively easy to add a small change to a particular aspect of your business, bigger organizational changes, needed for the business to develop, require thorough preparation. By following an effective change management process, you will make sure to cover all of the essential stages of a successful change implementation and lead your company through the challenge.
