When implementing large-scale changes within an organization, it’s generally considered that you need standard change management processes and procedures to ensure that key factors aren’t missed. However, as with any bureaucratic process, this can also backfire and create delays to developments that need to be done more swiftly, so you need to know what is the right set-up for your business and whether or not to eliminate change management.
For many companies, especially large corporate organizations, a change management process is essential and can work perfectly to ensure that changes are implemented in the right way to keep staff and stakeholders on-board and informed about the impacts and benefits. However, if you are finding that your change management strategies are causing most of the negative impacts, it can be time to take another look at what’s going on and whether you need to strip back the rules and regulations.
Do You Need to Eliminate Change Management?
So, what is right for your business? Firstly you need to look at what is going on there at the moment and whether it is helping or hindering your processes. Here are some questions you need to ask:
What is the purpose of your change management process?
Why was it implemented in the first place? Was there a proper investigation into whether it was needed and what the benefits would be? Of course, you need to be sensitive about the internal politics of who instigated this originally, but understanding more about what it was meant to achieve is the best way to be able to take the next step.
What impact is it having?
You’ll always need to have evidence to back up the decision to eliminate change management, so have a look at whether response times are up, and whether customer satisfaction is down. These should both be getting measured as a matter of course, so if they aren’t, you certainly need to start doing it, otherwise making a decision like these will always be a stab in the dark.
What would be the benefits be of elimination?
If you’ve got the evidence of where things are going wrong, what can you show off what stripping things back would achieve? This may all sound like more delaying stages in what you’re aiming to be completely the opposite of that, but recklessness is never the way forward. If you’re going to eliminate change management, you need to know for certain that it’s the right thing to do.
The Problems With Change Management
So what kinds of problems can change management processes cause? The most common is with time delays due to lengthy approval procedures, unnecessary repetition of work and confusion over ownership of various aspects. If all change management requests are going to an advisory board or a member of management with sign-off duties, this can be overwhelming and lead to a bottleneck, causing frustration all around.
Another issue can be when change management processes are all about the bureaucracy and not aimed at solving issues for customers or colleagues. This is, quite simply, crazy. The whole point of change management is to make things easier for the people in your organization to deal with potentially disruptive changes and to make them quickly beneficial rather than problematic. So what can be done? You need to eliminate change management, or at the very least the aspects that are slowing things down.
How To Eliminate Change Management
So you’ve identified that change management is slowing down your business and causing more problems than it is resolving, what next? Here are some steps you can take to improve your processes and eliminate change management stumbling blocks:
Make all your processes customer-centric
By customer-centric, we include your colleagues too as they are your customers when it comes to most change that needs to be managed. Of course, any big change that affects external customers needs to be a priority as that can badly impact on sales and reputation, but the most important thing is to make sure these processes are specific to the customers affected. One size doesn’t necessarily fit all, so don’t try and shoehorn processes in where they don’t fit.
Be lean and flexible
To achieve the above, you need to eliminate change management wherever it is too rigid and/or bloated. Change management processes for the sake of processes must be stripped out to speed things up and give you a lean and agile set of procedures that do the job in half the time or less. And flexibility is key because not every change that needs to be managed is the same, so your processes shouldn’t be either. Colleagues will get sick of these processes, especially if they feel like a waste of everyone’s time for smaller changes that simply don’t need the same rigmarole as something more all-encompassing.
Better sign-off processes
How are your changes currently signed-off? If there’s a committee who meet once a week (or once a month!) to agree on things, this will inevitably cause irritation and inefficiency, so you need to scrap that right away. Sign-offs should be decided on a case-by-case basis, depending on the size and severity of the change being implemented. Too much of this kind of decision-making is done because of a culture of fear and blame, leaving individual managers unwilling to stick their necks out, but this only causes more problems.
Empower your staff
It’s not just managers who can be stifled and encumbered by change management processes. Your staff needs to know that you have the confidence in them to achieve what they are meant to achieve, and holding them up with red tape is the opposite of this. So strip away the processes and procedures around change management that are holding your staff – and therefore your business – back.
Communicate!
One element of change management that you can never eliminate altogether is the need for clear communication with staff and stakeholders to make sure they are informed and engaged. No matter how lean your process becomes, you still need to factor this in, otherwise, you will still lose people along the way.
Change management will always have its uses because change is a part of life for any business. However, if the processes are more about box-ticking exercises than guiding through developments and improvements, you need to eliminate change management until you can finally achieve meaningful and impactful change.
Related Questions
What are the 7 C’s of change management?
The 7 C’s of change management provides a comprehensive perspective on managing change within the organization. These are Clarity of vision, Communication, Collaboration, Commitment, Culture, Capacity, and Continuous improvement”. Wrap these ingredients in the right actions, and leaders can make the transition faster, easier, and can remove several of the typical obstacles to change management. Rather than rigid steps, the 7 C’s promote flexibility and involvement — so change ends up feeling more organic and less intrusive.
What are the 5 key principles of change management?
There are 5 core change management principles which can serve as a roadmap for navigation through the world of change successfully. These principles are: Lead with the culture; Start at the top, Involve every layer; Make the rational and emotional case together and Act your way into new thinking. By adopting these principles, companies can transcend dated change management approaches and create a culture where change is second nature to the company, thus diminishing resistance and easing the process.
How to solve the problem of change management?
To address the change management problem, try reframing your point of view from managing change to enabling it. Concentrate on building an agile and adaptable organisation where regular change is the standard, not the exception. Enable staff at all levels to take action to change and improve their work, so as to encourage a culture of continuous improvement. But, by making change part of your daily routine and the way you make decisions, you don’t need these separate, disruptive change initiatives.
How to roll out change management?
In place of introducing change management as an external program, embed it within the very fiber of your organization. It begins with creating a culture of readiness to change so that flexibility and sensitivity to change is honoured and celebrated. Promote honest and open conversation and idea-sharing. 3. Leaders should be the change champions and take people through transitions with ease. By introducing change as a fundamental component of your company’s DNA, you can avoid the formal change management waves, and build a nimbler, experiment-driving organization.
What are the 5 R’s of change management?
The 5 R’s of change management provide a new angle on managing change. They are: Reason, Results, Route, Roles, and Relationships. Focusing on those would generate a more natural way for change. Rather than change being forced or being implemented top down, the 5 R’s promote engagement at all organisational levels and thereby engender ownership and decrease resistance. This process can avoid many of the problems presented by more formal change management regimes.
How would you handle change management?
To do change management that works, think about breaking from old school models and into something more nimble and integrated. Begin by embedding change resilience in the culture of your organization. Be supportive of trying and failing. Establish teams of employees from all departments who are responsible for solving challenges and keeping the company innovative. By turning change into a steady positive influence instead of a jarring intrusion, you can dispense with formal processes for managing change and build a more flexible, resilient organization.
What are the five steps of change management?
Although change management can be seen as a process in five steps (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement), perhaps a more breakthrough model should abolish these excruciatingly linear steps. Instead, concentrate on an environment that can flow with changes when they occur naturally. Encourage learning, communicate openly, and empower employees to lead the charge. You constantly change your organization in daily activities, going in ways that are beyond strict step-by-step processes, and that are more responsive and agile.
How do you answer change management questions?
When you address change management questions, reposition the discussion away from managing to embracing change. Emphasize the need to establish a culture of change as the default state. Explore the ways we can foster flexibility and strength within teams. Focus on the importance of continuous learning and open communication when aiding in these smooth transitional journeys. In re-defining change management as an integrated and continuous flow rather than a series of events, you are able to offer more creative solutions to these questions.
