Change Management

Sharing with you an article I wrote to help our team live trough a massive change we all recently underwent. 
The article was first publshed on the Nikkiso ACD's site Chill Zone, few days ago. 
Hope you will find it useful in your organizations and your personal lives alike. 
Feel free to share it & post comments with your experiences in change management.         

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory” W. Edwards Deming?

After the experience we all collectively went, these words left to us by the father of quality W.Edward Deming, ring truer than ever.

Change is a fact of life in businesses today. To keep pace in a constantly evolving business world, organizations often need to implement enterprisewide changes affecting their processes, products and people.

Changes may arise from:

• Development of new products
• Entry of new competition
• Change in consumer preferences
• Shifting of socio-political, economical and cultural framework
• Advancement in technologies
• New emerging markets

ISO 9001:2015 defines Management of change as a systematic way to handle changes within an organization to effectively deal with the change and to capitalize on possible opportunities.

Most transformation have financial and operational goals and it affects organizations across all levels. Change has become a key source of competitive advantage.?

Change is hard. People naturally resist it, especially when it is imposed on them. Added problem is that organizations often wait too long to act and changes are?being forced in crisis mode. This?tends to be exhausting rather than inspiring. Poorly managing change is costly, while effective change management increases the likelihood of success.

In order to develop a competitive and thriving workplace culture, organizations should follow a systematic approach to managing major change. The primary goal of change management is to successfully implement new processes, products and business strategies while minimizing negative outcomes.

Change management encompasses the process, tools and techniques to manage the people side of change to achieve required business outcomes. It focuses on how to help employees embrace, adopt and utilize?a change in their day-to-day work.?

Implementing major change is impossible unless most employees are willing to help, often even making short-term sacrifices. But people will not make sacrifices unless they think the potential benefits of change are attractive and believe a transformation is even possible.?

For change to work, the discontent by the reality must be far grater than one’s tolerance of it.?

Countless are consequences of ignoring the people side of a change and they affect all of stakeholders:

• Projects suffer due to missed deadlines,?
• Budgets are overrunned by unexpected and unnecessary rework.
• Customer satisfaction is impacted by a change that should have been invisible to them.
• Suppliers begin to feel the impact and see the disruption caused by the change
• Productivity declines on a larger scale for longer than necessary
• Employee morale suffers and divisions between “us” and “them” begin to emerge
• Stress, confusion and fatigue increase, with it sick days and absences
• High turnaround and valued employees may decide to leave the organization

To motivate organization more broadly, transformation needs to be connected with a deeper sense of purpose.

John P. Kotter, professor of leadership at the Harvard Business School and the author of many bestselling business books, including “Leading Change” defines eight phases of change: ?

1. Create sense of urgency. The organization needs to become an environment where individuals are aware of an existing problem and can see a possible solution, thus making it more?likely to gain sufficient support for the change. Kotter estimates that around 75% of company’s management needs to be behind the change in order for it to succeed.
2. Form a powerful coalition. A group needs to be knowledgable, capable and to have enough power to lead the change. They also must work well with each other and be compatible.?
3. Developing a vision and strategy. Successful changes depend on the vision of the desirable future. Formulating the change management strategy is the critical step in implementing a change management methodology. The strategy provides direction for informed decision-making and brings the project or change to life, describing who and how it will impact the organization.?The change management strategy contributes to the formulation of the change management plans.
4. Communicate the change vision. The vision must be realistic, credible and attractive. Using every vehicle possible, new vision and strategies are to be communicated constantly. The guiding coalition must be a role model for the behavior expected by employees. Nothing undermines change more than behavior by important individuals that is inconsistent?with what was communicated earlier.?
5. Empower broad-based action. Real transformation takes time and active participation of majority. Employees won’t help or can’t help if they feel powerless. This is why empowerment is important. Broad base of people need to take action to remove as many barriers to the implementation of change as possible. Some of the biggest obstacle that need to be attacked are: structures, skills, systems and supervisors.
6. Generating short terms wins. Getting caught up in a big dream and omitting to effectively manage the current reality may lead to loosing credibility and support needed to sustain the efforts over the long haul. Short term wins are necessary and they need to be visible, unambiguous and clearly related to the change effort. They will give the efforts needed reinforcement and show people that sacrificing and hard work is paying off. Well timed short terms wins will help us fine-tune the vision, keep bosses on board, undermine critics, recognize change agents, reward them and continue to build momentum and gain more support.
7. Consolidating gains and producing more change. If we let up or relax before the job is done, critical momentum may be lost and regression is what follows. Until the changes are fully implemented and imbedded into company’s culture, they are very fragile. Progress can disappear quicker than it took to be made, mainly due to the corporate culture. The other reason is interdependence / interconnection that makes difficult to change anything without changing everything. We know that few things move easily because every element is connected to many others. At this stage, that may last the longest, we should reinvigorate the process with new projects and change agents. We may move to promoting or hiring new people who can implement the change vision and, by using our increased credibility, move to change all systems, structures and policies that do not fit together or do not fit the transformational vision.
8. Anchoring new approaches in the culture. Culture refers to norms of behavior and shared values among a group of people. It is hard enough implementing changes that are compatible to it. The challenge is much greater and the achieved results will always be subject to regression if we are attempting to introduce changes incompatible to the company’s culture. Contrary to popular belief, cultural change comes last, not first. New approaches are widely accepted and sink into culture only when it is clear they work better than old methods. Sometimes, the only way to assure the new culture sticks, is to change key people, but if promotion process es are not compatible to the new vision and practices, the old culture will surly reassert itself.?

Therefore, for a successful change, participation and acceptance of the majority is necessary.

Most important of all is the role of leadership. Managing change is important, as the process would fall apart if not properly managed. But it is up to the leadership to define what the future should look like, align people with the vision and inspire them to make the change happen despite the obstacles. Only with the active participation from leadership we can get the change to stick by anchoring it in the very culture of the organization.

Managers and change agents also, have a crucial role in translating the vision to the individual team members.

Managers should address with their employees: What is changing and why, how will that affect their department and the employee directly. This will help an employee understand better the reasoning for change and his/her own role in it. It will make him/her more willing to take active part in change implementation.

Department of Human Resources should also be involved in major organizational changes from the beginning and assist by influencing the following:

• Improving employees' understanding of change
• Increasing communication between management and employees?
• Identifying and mitigating risks
• Enhancing employee satisfaction
• Boosting trust between management and employees.
• Improving employee skills and proficiency through change-related training initiatives

All should be reminded that the real change requires relationship driven approach and its broad base must be built on inclusion, not exclusion. Collaboration is the base for growth and successful implementation of change

Beba Markovic,?

Quality Assurance Specialist, NIKKISO ACD, Santa Ana

Sources: Leading Change, John P. Kotter, 1996.