Change Management

Change Management (CM) refers to any approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations using methods intended to re-direct the use of resources, business processes, budget allocations, or other modes of operation that significantly reshape a company or organization. Organizational Change Management (OCM) considers the full organization and what needs to change.

Here are some rules for effective management of change. Managing organizational change will be more successful if you apply these simple principles. Achieving personal change will be more successful too if you use the same approach where relevant. Change management entails thoughtful planning and sensitive implementation, and above all, consultation with, and involvement of, the people affected by the changes. If you force change on people, normally problems arise.

Change is right ahead! Change must be realistic, achievable and measurable. These aspects are especially relevant to managing personal change. Before starting organizational change, ask yourself: What do we want to achieve with this change, why, and how will we know that the change has been achieved? Who is affected by this change, and how will they react to it? How much of this change can we achieve ourselves, and what parts of the change do we need help with? These aspects also relate strongly to the management of personal as well as organizational change.

It's an immensely powerful methodology for understanding how and why people think the way that they do, and make the decisions they make, and also for shifting people's thinking and decisions, and thereby, the behaviors/behaviors of groups, potentially on a very large scale.

Do not 'sell' change to people as a way of accelerating 'agreement' and implementation. 'Selling' change to people is not a sustainable strategy for success. When people listen to a senior management person 'selling' them a change, decent diligent folk will generally smile and appear to accept what is being said, but quietly to themselves they are thinking they do not like the idea or have their own idea. Instead, change needs to be understood and managed in a way that people can cope effectively with it. Change can be unsettling; the manager logically needs to be a settling influence.