Do you feel like your company requires changes? These days organizations need to change their marketing and advertising strategies, release new products and come up with competitive advantages more than ever. In this article, we will talk about the essence of change management, its methodologies and metrics.
What is Change Management?
Change management is a collection of practices that are implemented to prepare, train and support teams during changes and shifts in organizational processes. Let’s take a look at change management principles in order to build a sustainable change.
From our experience, the need for changes appear at the organizational level to solve a problem or address a specific challenge a company is facing.
1. Clearly identify the issue and the reasons for changes
To be able to formulate the most appropriate solution.
2. Changing processes from the top
Your change management plan should start from the C-level managers. Divide the responsibility, change management isn’t a solo project, you need to establish a management team and assign a responsible person for each process. It might be a good idea to introduce the role of a chief transformation officer.
3. Implementing an efficient communication strategy
Remove doubts and increase the team’s motivation. When EZtek was undergoing changes we found it effective to combine both online and offline communication. After all, a good email won’t substitute for a productive meeting.
4. Regular training for employees
Use learning management systems, ebooks and educational videos.
You can buy a ready learning management system with templates for sources and ready-to-use functionality or build a custom LMS.
5. Provide support and appreciation
Encouraging your employees through the process of embracing change is the key to keeping their motivation and creating a collaborative atmosphere.
What are the Challenges of Change Management?
Employee Resistance
During change implementation, your team will likely be divided into three groups:
- Observers: Who don’t embrace change actively
- Advocates: The most active support of your change management process
- Rebels: That is the most skeptical group of employees that will resist changes openly.
Planning
Without a coordinated system of actions in place, the change management process will be sabotaged.
Lack of Communication
Employees go through four key stages of communication: Denial, Resistance, Exploration, Commitment.Thus, you can’t use a single communication strategy for the entire change implementation process.
- Denial is handled by communication, set goals and show where to get assistance.
- The resistance stage is faced with support, you need to talk about financial and professional security, show plans B and provide feedback.
- At the exploration stage, people will start looking for new possibilities all you need is to show the direction in which to grow.
- When it comes to Commitment, change becomes a lifestyle and you need to show your team that their efforts pay off.
The most efficient methods of implementing & measuring change and review change management methodologies.
Lewin’s
Lewin’s change management model is based on three stages:
- You need to recognize the need for change, encourage new attitudes, ensure management support and manage doubts.
- You plan and implement the changes.
- You stabilize the change and develop ways to sustain it.
McKinsey 7S
The McKinsey 7S model takes into account seven components:
- Create a new strategy
- Make a sustainable system of measurement and rewards
- Define your team’s structure
- Evaluate the efficiency of your staff and the relevance of current positions
- Record shared values to understand how changes contribute to your existing ones
- Gather statistics and feedback because our own idea of the leadership style often tends to be idealistic
- Evaluate if the skills and competencies of your employees align with the chosen change direction.
Kotter’s theory
Takes a change with a human face approach and divides the process of change implementation into eight fundamentals:
- Create a sense of urgency. Your team should get a clear sense that a change is needed.
- Build a guiding coalition. gather a core group that will support the change.
- Form a strategic vision, boil your motivations for the change process
- Enlist a volunteer army
- Enable action by removing barriers conduct surveys to find out what’s holding your team from their optimal productivity
- Encouraging the team’s small wins
- Sustain acceleration shortens the required time when the process has already been established.
- Institute change: document all best practices and use them as established systems.
Nudge theory
Aims to indirectly influence individuals without taking freedom of choice. It discourages any change in behavior of employees through following strict orders and directions. It’s about giving choices and through providing an enabling environment and encouragement.
ADKAR
ADKAR is a model where first letters stand for:
- Awareness
- Desire
- Knowledge
- Ability and
- Reinforcement
These aspects refer to a team’s capacity to understand the need for changes, desires to participate in the implementation, knowing how to act and using their skills to start and sustain changes.
Bridge’s Transition Model
Bridge’s Transition Model focuses less on the rational aspects of accepting change and more on emotional aspects. This methodology highlights how employees’ feelings fluctuate as they move through various change acceptance stages.
- Ending: Requires highlighting the importance of changes.
- The Neutral Zone: You need to focus on addressing concerns, regarding the adoption of new methods
- The New Beginning: Where it’s important not to lose the positive momentum.
This article was prepared by the EZtek team. EZtek is a software development company that is on the front line of implementing changes.We constantly see how businesses undergo digitalization, switch from old instruments and tech stacks to modern tools. Need software development, UI/UX design or tech consulting services, Contact us!