Every organisation is only as strong as its people. No business can grow without making changes from time to time, and it can be difficult for your employees to accept and adjust to these changes. In helping teams adopt and adapt to new solutions, we have found that guided change management catalyses project completion, increases the rate of change adoption, ensures better system utilisation, and saves money, directly boosting both proficiency and returns on investment.
Intentional People Management
For an organisation to survive the competitive business environment, its most critical asset “ people “ will need to be managed intentionally. Most changes will require a departure from the norm and involve teams doing their jobs differently. This may be perceived as the soft side of change, but more often than not, it evolves and becomes the harder side of managing change.
A significant portion of resources is typically spent implementing strategic and operational changes, introducing sophisticated tools and systems, re-engineering processes and penetrating new markets. The success of the changes is largely dependent on the degree to which the changes are understood, accepted, embraced and delivered in a day-to-day work environment.
Effective Change Management
Change management is not only managing dissemination of communication, delivering technical and behavioural training, or managing resistance, but also using a structured and holistic process to drive successful individual and organisational change, and realise desired business outcomes.
Effectively managing change requires the systematic implementation of steps on an initiative or project using a set of tools and processes to move teams from a current state to a future state. The degree to which the change management effort is successful is largely dependent on the leader’s or manager’s ability to effectively lead, coach and communicate with their teams through the transition.
The Cost Of Poorly Managing Change
An immediate consequence is a decline in productivity among more people for a longer duration than necessary. Suppliers will feel the impact and sense the disruption caused by the change. Customers will be negatively affected. Employees will lose motivation, and talent will leave the organisation.
The project is also likely to experience budget overruns and extended deadlines, which would impact resources and the credibility of the process as well as cause general change fatigue.
The corporate landscape is littered with several initiatives that have failed or had false starts. Granted, there may be several reasons for the failure; however, to a large extent, when scrutinised, the individual and organisational management of the change will be found to have been ignored.
To implement effective change management, both an individual perspective and an organisational perspective are required. Investing the time and energy to manage the people side of your organisational efforts pays off in the end in terms of success of the effort and avoidance of the numerous costs that plague poorly managed change.
MORE FROM CEDAR AFRICA GROUP
Our Change Management Workshops
Prosci Change Management Methodology
Change Management Training and Certification
The Role of HR In Managing Change
It’s Time to Change Your Change Management Strategy
Focus on Change to Get Results
How To Manage Change As A Process
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