Lifecycle of Organizational Change
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Lifecycle of Organizational Change |
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From a change management perspective, now "the rubber meets the road". At this point, many well-intended implementation teams go into technical project planning mode--Ghantt charts and critical path dependencies are developed. While these activities may indeed be necessary, they are not enough. What planners may fail to recognize is that unless they plan for the people aspects of transition, everyone involved and impacted may engage in a significant number of task activities, but that does not mean anything is--or ever will be--different or improved. If people need to change their work patterns, behaviors, skills, attitudes, etc., ensuring that shift actually happens requires more than good project management. It requires insightful transition management, and excellent change management.
Resistance will happen. Resistance can (and often does) kill organizational change. It may manifest as overt (open...maybe in-your-face) and covert (hidden). Resistance from any individual or group may have one or more underlying reasons. We accept the notion that there is no free lunch, but organizations often fail to "budget" for the cost of building support and commitment to change. One of those costs involves the time, and effort, to surface and address resistance issues. Clarity around the level of commitment needed is helpful. If a new time reporting document is being implemented, compliance may be the only level of commitment required. Plan for managing resistance...it will happen. Plan for building commitment...it is a cost of change.
During this phase, the implementation team will need to identify the detailed components of the remedy implementation including training, communication, organizational systems and design issues and assess the risks to implementation success. Their job is to identify the supports and risks, develop strategies for mitigating the risks, and integrate those strategies into an integrated change plan that is presented to the primary sponsor(s) for final approval.
Once the integrated change plan is completed, a clear and mutual understanding and acceptance of the implementation plan by the sponsor(s) and key change agents is critical. Proceeding without a mutual agreement sets the stage for at least two potentially disastrous situations. First, change agents may find themselves wandering alone in the implementation wilderness without needed--often critical--sponsorship support. Conversely, sponsors may find themselves in the dark regarding the actual direction and progress of the change as their agents become secret agents with their own change agenda.
© 2002-2004. Creative Interchange Institute, Inc.
