Managing organizational change is often a challenge for many organizations. However, it is clear that in today’s job market environment, change is becoming more of a norm than an exception . It’s not always easy to stay on track! Let’s take a look at the best practices for managing organizational change.
What is organizational change?
Organizational change represents any process by which an organization conducts transformations , which can be of different natures. For example, some changes will aim at an internal improvement on the part of the organization, with the aim of ” doing things better ” (think for example of the implementation of a new billing system or the addition of a new administrative support position in a team of project managers). However, other changes – the most frequent – will aim to establish (or rather, re-establish) a balance between the organization and its environment; we then speak rather of changes aimed at ” doing things differently “. These changes from the external environment can come from economic, technological or even social pressures.
Although all changes are important for an organization, their magnitude can differ. However, any transformation, no matter how small, requires good change management!
The importance of having effective organizational change management
According to John Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School, between 70% and 80% of organizational change attempts fail . Quite staggering numbers! This statistic could be partly explained by the tendency of managers to try to implement changes rather intuitively, without taking the time to carry out effective planning. A poorly defined vision of change, a lack of support from management or inadequate management of the resistance of certain employees to change can also be at the root of the failure of organizational changes .
On this subject, let us remember that resistance to change is an entirely natural reaction. Human beings are creatures of comfort, it can be very difficult to get people to move from the status quo to something new! Changes can be synonymous with confusion and agitation for many, but strategic actions can be put in place to reduce resistance to change. Indeed, a well-planned and well-communicated organizational change process will certainly have a positive impact on people’s adherence to change.
2 Steps to Managing Organizational Change
Step 1: Identify a vision
Before any change, it is necessary to identify the vision pursued by the change and to carry out a diagnosis of the current situation , because it is the gap between these two elements that will allow you to identify the elements on which the change will have to intervene. Building a vision is the first step in the strategic approach to organizational change management. Indeed, defining your vision is essential in order to ensure consistency between the changes made and the objectives to be achieved . In summary, your vision must be desirable while being realistic. It must project the organization into the future, while respecting your values, your deep identity, and being easy for your employees to understand. It is therefore essential that you have a clear and achievable objective within a realistic time frame in order to be able to successfully make a change.
Step 2: Diagnosis of the current situation
It is then essential to carry out an organizational diagnosis to properly prepare for the change. The diagnosis not only highlights the symptoms and causes that lead the organization to want to make the change, but also to collect valuable information that will guide its deployment.
More specifically, it is at this stage that it is recommended to carry out what is called stakeholder mapping as well as the analysis of the impacts of the change on the identified parties (Bareil, Charbonneau and Baron, 2020.) Stakeholders refer to all the people who will be impacted directly or indirectly by the upcoming change. It is important here to “think broadly” and not only consider the employees whose tasks will be affected by the change, but also to think about all the actors, internal or external to the organization, who could have a greater or lesser influence on the success of the change. This information will be valuable to you in anticipating the reactions of the people affected by the change and identifying key actors who may be able to become ambassadors for change (step
After identifying the stakeholders of the change project, the impact analysis will allow you to clearly identify how people will be directly or indirectly impacted by the change and to what extent these repercussions will be . This analysis will allow you to highlight the different elements that will need to be taken care of and managed closely during the deployment of the change. To what extent will the change bring upheavals for the stakeholders? Will some teams have a new manager? Will the responsibilities of some employees be called upon to change? What will be the concrete impacts on their daily tasks? Will our suppliers have to follow new procedures? These are some of the questions you will need to ask yourself in order to properly measure the impacts of the change on all the people concerned.
