Change is a fact of life. It’s not something we enjoy for the most part, but it is (ironically) here to stay and something that we need to get used to in business. Change management can help alleviate some of the difficulties you face when dealing with organizational change.
Identifying Change
In order to deal with change you first need to identify it, and assess which category of organizational change it falls under. There are five types of organizational change, with any specific event in your business usually falling into one but potentially into many of those categories. These are:
- Organizational Change
Anything which affects your entire organization at all levels such as new policies, new technologies etc. Anything that affects all of your personnel, basically. This type of change is slow to implement due to its scale, and definitely prone to obstacles appearing in its path.
- Transformational Change
This type of change is about organization strategy and the direction you’re taking your business in. Transformational change is by its nature a top-down strategy, often rapid and easy to alter. After all, most of your employees are only concerned with their singular department and role, not the overall business strategy.
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- Personnel Change
Any change in personnel falls here, whether that’s new hires, expansion, promotions, layoffs, etc. This type of change is usually dealt with on a small scale, pertaining only to the department in which the change is happening..
- Unplanned Change
Unplanned change is exactly what it says on the tin, anything change that was not planned for. Usually this occurs due to outside events, the most recent glaring example being the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of measures to stop its spread which created huge changes all across the world. More examples include the platforms you use altering their presentation, updates to local laws relevant to your operations, etc.
- Remedial Change
This type of change refers to something that is done to address low-performance areas or difficulties that have cropped up within your organization. The types of problems that remedial change deals with aren’t necessarily caused by underperforming personnel – the same “tried and tested” techniques that you use year after year may be losing efficiency over time. In short, this type of change is to both keep you up with the times and keep your staff on their toes.
Assessing Change
Once you’ve identified your change, the next step is to assess it. What parts of your business will it impact? What is the time-scale that you’ll be operating on? How much does your business need this change? The answers to these questions are complex and there’s no straightforward answer in most cases. Think about what you want to achieve and what might stand in your way, then work to see where these obstacles might crop up.
Another factor to consider is localization. For those organizations that only work in one location or platform things are simple, but when you’re operating from multiple it can get a bit tricky. The plan you’ve concocted for one platform may not be easily translated onto another due to the different features that each platform provides. Furthermore, not every platform allows customization to the levels you might need.
In short, keep in mind that different areas of the business might have different limiting factors – whether those be physical or technological – and that you need to adjust your plans accordingly. The same is true if you operate across borders, with different languages requiring their own adjustments in order to keep your strategies relevant.
Resistance To Change
When you’re ready to begin implementing your change management strategy, you’re ready. The same cannot be said of your staff, your customers, etc.
Resistance to change is a well-documented fact of human life, with any and all changes no matter now beneficial receiving pushback from some individuals or groups who were happy with things the way they were before.
Communication is the key to overcoming any resistance that comes from your employees. You need to make them aware not only of what change is happening, but why it is occurring. By making sure that your staff are in the loop with your planned changes and strategies for implementing them you make them feel more involved, and therefore motivate them to help further the process along. Everybody likes to feel involved, to think that they’re being kept in the know.
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Furthermore, you shouldn’t dismiss complaints about the change out of hand. By learning the reasons your personnel have for resisting you can gain insight into how your workforce thinks and how to best alter your plans if continued resistance becomes an issue. After all, if no business can continue to run if it’s employees refuse to follow new policies, and if significant chunks of your workforce object, you might need to rethink your strategies.
Customer resistance to change is another factor entirely. Any change that deals with customers should be implemented slowly, with options to return to previous modes of interaction where possible so as to slowly ease them into the change.
Good examples of this include Reddit’s redesign of their website in 2018, which allowed users to pick between the new and old layouts, and the rise of self-service checkouts alongside regular tills that have cropped up in supermarkets over the last decade or so. Both used small test projects to see the feasibility of their planned changes and how well consumers would react to them. In both cases, reactions were mixed. Some loved the new features, others hated it, especially with the self-service checkouts.
Remember, when dealing with customers a lot like to have a human factor to interact with, it makes them feel more seen and more valued. While strictly speaking this may be more inefficient from both their perspective and yours, never underestimate the power of emotion to drive someone to resist changes.
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