What is Strategic Change?

Strategic change is the implementing of changes to important characteristics of a business, for instance in response to new market threats or opportunities. Upper management and the Chief Executive Officer in particular bear responsibility for this change.

The?planning?and?implementing?of strategic change is an important aspect of?the role of manager.

How do you define strategic change?

Strategic change is basically having a certain strategy and then making changes to it. A strategy is a long-term plan to achieve certain?objectives.?Strategies?are aimed at the future, and should be aimed at lasting change. This is necessary to stay relevant in a highly evolving market.

Strategic change management is the process whereby the strategy is managed in a structured manner to achieve?organisational objectives and missions. A well-known model for strategic change management are the steps in Kotter's 8-Step Change Model.

Is there a need for strategic change?

One aspect of strategic change is that it’s hard to predict and control. That’s why many?organisations prepare for all potential scenarios. Strategic change management is essential for the durability of companies.

If companies fail to embrace strategic change – Blackberry being a prominent example in the smartphone industry – they will fall behind and eventually get pushed out of the market.

Unless businesses prepare for sudden, unpredictable, and radical changes, they won’t survive. Many companies claim to be changing, but only implement change on a surface level.

What is the role of strategic change?

Businesses can’t predict exactly?what will happen in the future, so decisions are made based on knowledge, facts, and scenarios. Those?scenario?are particularly important. What if this and this were to happen? How would that impact our operations?

It might seem like looking for a needle in a haystack, but many large companies have successfully survived changes by predicting something that may have seemed very unlikely at the time.?Risk management?is also part of this. If a company thinks that something will happen in the future, it can respond in one of two ways: accept the risk, or reduce the risk.

A suitable tool for analysing what might happen in the future is the?What-If Analysis.

Strategic change tools

An organisation might come up with the perfect five-year plan day, but the next day something might happen that changes everything. That’s why management has to manage all those plans and change them when needed.

This is necessary if you want to stay relevant in your industry. Every industry will have new opportunities, and it’s important that the?strategic plan?is flexible enough to benefit from these.

A key part of this is identifying new opportunities, as well as threats. They then have to initiate a?change plan. Below we’ve listed some tools that can help support these processes.

Strategic Change and the SWOT Analysis

A?SWOT analysis?creates an overview of an organisation’s threats and opportunities, as well as its strengths and weaknesses.

A company’s strengths can be used to take advantage of new opportunities. These strengths can also be used to minimise threats. By taking advantage of new opportunities, the organisation’s weaknesses are lessened.

Kotter's 8-step Strategic Change Model

With the?8-step Change Model, the required change can be implemented, either to capitalise on new developments or to minimise threats.

The?8-step Change Model?for strategic change management consists of eight steps. The??first three steps??of the model are all about creating the right environment for change.

The?following four steps?are about involving and?stimulating the organisation and its employees. The?final step?is the implementing and maintaining of sustainable change.

Strategic Change is a clear management vision

A change vision is how the organisation, department, product or service will look in the future when a specific change has occurred. This vision describes the organisation’s desired state.

The concept of a change vision is important to link the?essential steps?and activities that are necessary for the desired outcome; strategic change management.

It’s important that the change vision is?unambiguous and solid?for upper management as well as all other employees.

Creating and sharing a change vision

There are a number of?best practices?when it comes to creating a robust and durable change vision:

• Ensure that the vision is easy to understand;
• The vision has to be easy to share;
• The vision has to be intellectually strong;
• Ensure the vision is emotionally appealing.

The message that the change vision has to communicate should be easy to understand. The message also has to be logical, specific, and explain why the change is necessary in relation to today. It’s also important to be succinct.

If the message is written on paper, it shouldn’t take up more than half a page. If the message is communicated verbally, it shouldn’t take more than 60 seconds.

The message itself has to be strong and to the point, and have?emotional appeal. An intellectually strong vision means that the vision is logical and correct.

Strategic Change and Strategic Leadership

Strategic leadership mainly refers to managers’ ability to push through a strategic change vision for the organisation and communicate it to employees. The goal of strategic leadership is, among other things, to stimulate?employee motivation?by engaging them with the strategy.

One of the core aspects of strategic leadership is the developing and stimulating of an open environment in which employees predict the organisation’s needs in the context of their own job. Managers can use various rewards or incentives to encourage employees to deliver quality.

Functional strategic leadership?refers to managers’ ability to recognise the?potential of employees?and tie it to specific activities. This requires a high level of objectivity and the ability to monitor the entire work environment.

What do you think?

Are you familiar with this approach of strategic change? Do your recognise the necessity of change and anticipating threats and opportunities? Which other models for strategic change can be effective?

If you are struggling to answer any of the questions above, talk to our Change Management Specialist.