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Organisational change management can be defined as a discipline that bridges the gap between where an organisation is currently and where it wants to go. Change management is the process, tools and techniques to manage the people side of change to achieve the required business outcome.

According to Dr. John Kotter approximately “70% of all major change efforts fail”. Although the change process at an organisational level is complex and unique to individual organisations, research shows there are common characteristics that can be identified when determining why change management efforts or initiatives have failed.

There are multitudes of challenges organisations face when deciding to undertake organisational change initiatives. Four stand-out internal change management challenges in the workplace which were discussed include:

1.	Resistance to change 2.	Haphazard Communication 3.	Poor Leadership 4.	Entrenched culture

People by nature are resistant to change; we like to stay within our comfort zone. This can be a huge challenge to managing change if people are not brought on the journey. Understanding why people resist organisational change initiatives is critical.

Another big challenge for managing change is communication. Haphazard communication, not bringing people on the journey from the beginning, and implementing correct and continuous effective communication can have great complications for the change initiative and lead to failure. People must be brought on the journey for the change to work. Effective communication to engage and motivate stakeholders, in particular employees, from the beginning and continuously bringing them on the change journey in critical.

Successful change was possible at Microsoft through the new CEO Satya Madella because he engaged, motivated and brought the Microsoft employees on the change journey. Productivity increased and engagement was at 95 percent, with employees happy with leadership.

Culture is the values and norms of an organisation. The culture is what is repeated day in day out. Even a well-designed and well-implemented strategy cannot be effective unless people are motivated to support it. This idea is captured by the mantra “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.