Change Management’s Vital Role In Achieving Operational Excellence
In organizations around the world, there is an ever-increasing need to build the competency of change management into their operational excellence strategy.
As customer needs and technological advancements continue to evolve at unprecedented levels, businesses are seeking ways to navigate change as part of their day-to-day.
Towers Watson’s 2013 study, consisting of 276 large and midsized organizations, showed that up to 75% of change management initiative programs fail. Yet, despite the slim chance of success, businesses continue investing in change management. Why? Because if your business is not continuously moving forward, it’s falling behind.
What is change management?
Organizational change can occur take on many forms: strategic, personnel, procedural, technological, etc. Change management is the process used to guide the human side of these transitions by helping employees understand, embrace and carry out changes to their existing business environments. It is a standardized approach informing personnel on how to deal with change applied to tools, environments and processes.
What are some of the benefits of change management?
Increased employee morale
Increased employee performance
Positive customer experience
Increased internal and external engagement
Minimize resistance
Enhance innovation
Reduced costs
Why is it so important?
Many companies continue to find that implementing the right change management strategy can be a challenge. A successful strategy requires an open line of communication between leadership and your team and emphasizes planning and training. Companies today are facing more competitive scenarios with the emergence of new consumer demands and technologies. In these demanding conditions, organizations should learn to live in a permanent state of adaptation.
Having an agile, flexible and collaborative organizational culture is essential to navigating growth. By empowering your employees to be responsible for transformation, you can accelerate internal developments that will drastically improve the results of any of your process or procedural initiatives. It’s no secret that operational methodologies like Lean, ITIL and Six Sigma are invaluable to the success of your procedures. However, too many organizational change initiatives continue to place their emphasis solely on the operational side and fail to consider another key factor: the human element.
How to leverage change management
Managing change requires three distinct components: communication, transparency and inclusion.
1) Communication
Why are we changing? What is the purpose? What is the benefit that we are trying to achieve? Why now? Most employees will understand if you give them the opportunity, even if that change might not be what they want. Most organizations do not take the time to truly communicate to the general population what is being changed and why.
2) Transparency
What do the proposed changes mean to the organization, the business and the employees? Sometimes this means sharing potentially difficult news. It may mean there will be a reduction in headcount or jobs will be changed. Although this might mean that some employees will begin looking elsewhere for opportunities, you will find the strongest performers will choose to stay because they see the overall benefits.
3) Inclusion
Make affected employees part of the change process. This empowers them to become part of the solution instead of merely being affected by it. Bringing in those affected by the change helps them to take ownership of the change. This empowers them to be part of the solution and to help drive a positive outcome of the process. It also provides you with supporters in the ranks to help others in their peer groups see the benefits of the change.
Change is inevitable. Every organization will undergo some sort of organizational change at some point, but it doesn’t have to be a scary thing. If you communicate the what and the why, it can be a means to bring your organization together as a unified and empowered team, driving toward the common success of your organization.
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