Change management is the expression used to describe all the activities involved in making an organisation ready for change including ones such as preparing, supporting and helping individuals and groups with the change process. What are the main instigators of organisational change? These include organisational change, organisational restructuring, consumer demand changes, market changes and business process re-engineering. Change management looks at the impact change has on individuals and teams in a business and in that organisation in a holistic sense.
One of the major challenges or discussion points around change management the psychology of change and how it impacts people and how to get change through in companies. Often the key ingredient is using soft skills to influence people to get on board with a new system, a new process etc.
There are 3 main steps of change.
Preparing for change
Managing the change itself
Ensuring the change itself takes hold and crystallises in the organisation
Change leaders need to have effective change related skills to assist the process. These include effective communication skills to lead the change, coaching skills to bring team members on the journey with them and having the influencing skills to bring members of the organisation on the journey with them.
Why is change management so important, why do you use change management?
Employing change management properly promotes higher success in change initiatives
Change management helps to influence staff to buy into the merits of a change process
The financial cost of not using change management can be extremely negative to a company e.g. if a company tries to implement a new IT system to process their business and fails, the financial impact can be massive for a company.