The ability to manage change while continuing to meet the needs of stakeholders is an essential skill required by today’s leaders and managers.
For organisations to succeed, they must be able to adapt to change.
Organisational change is undertaken to improve the performance of the organisation or a part of the organisation.
However, it is something that can be quite difficult to achieve.
It is not something that should be done just for the sake of change.
The purpose of the organisational change is to improve people’s performance and the productivity and performance of the organisation overall.
For the change to be implemented correctly, the person attempting to implement the change should have a basic understanding of the systems and structures within their organisation, including leadership and management.
For the changes to be implemented successfully, it must involve the top level management, including the chief executive and other board members.
There should be a designated change agent, who must take the plan from paper to reality, but the importance of change being a team effort must not be ignored.
Communication will play a crucial role in implementing the change – all the members of the organisation should be kept up to date with the change.
There will be some key roles required to implement organisational change correctly:
Change initiator: Often this is not the same person who initiates the change, who becomes the primary change agent.
Change agent: The person responsible for organising and coordinating the overall change effort.
This role can be done by different people at different times during the project. The agent will need to have a general understanding of the context of the change effort.
Champion for change: a person or group of who helps maintain enthusiasm for the change throughout.
Sponsor for change: usually the HR department, this is the person/persons responsible for coordinating the change
Organisational change concerns significant changes, like reorganisation or adding a new product or service.
Organisations may undertake changes such as restructuring to achieve more stable growth and development.
Experts believe that successful organisational change requires a change in culture.
A transformational change could be changing a structure and culture from a more traditional model towards self-directed teams.
Incremental change is a more slow and steady process.
It may include improving the quality of management or implementing a new computer system that increases efficiency.
Remedial change addresses a current, significant problem in an organisation.
The developmental change aims to improve upon an already successful situation.
This may be further expanding a customer base or duplicating successful products/services.
Unplanned change normally occurs due to a sudden shock to the organisation, which causes people to make irrational decisions in response.
Planned change is much more thought out: it is when the organisation recognises the need for change and puts a plan in place in order to accomplish this.
Resistance to change is a detrimental setback that must be avoided.
Top level managers need to help employees understand that change cannot be successful without them to avoid resistance.
Organisational change and development should be undertaken to improve an entire organisation, not to instill job insecurity into employees.
Organisational change should improve the work environment and the culture, with employees trained on how to adapt to the new environment, making them more productive and the business more successful.