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What is Change Management?

Plain and simply Change Management refers to the modification of a process or procedures with a goal to provide a more efficient way of handling changes within a company. Change Management encompasses having the ability to reduce the number of issues which might be encountered during a business’ standard operating procedures and primarily focuses on improving the operations of the impacted business organization.

Managing Change

Change Management Boards are a way corporations have chosen in order to successfully implement change within a company. There are several key principles which should be followed when a business makes an attempt to implement these policies:

Establishing consistency for the change across all impacted departments and organizations.

Proper Planning, most projects have been scoped and have timelines set prior to them being implemented. Moving to a Change Management model is no different, the move needs to be scoped accordingly so that the transition is smooth and makes sense to all that are involved.

Planned Implementation so that the teams and/or groups that are involved have a high level understanding about the change they are about to be involved in.

Involving the people or groups impacted by the change so that they are aware of what is about to happen. Change is good and can be more widely accepted if it is not forced upon the people or groups who are going to be responsible for enforcing the process upon the groups or teams with whom they interact with on a daily basis

Responsible parties

Within an organization or company there might be a designated group to ‘police’ a Change Management policy-it is NOT the responsibility of an employee to manage change. The employee’s role within the process is to simply monitor the process to ensure that all of the involved parties are following the policies and/or procedures that have been established to support change. It is the responsibility of the manager to enable change and to establish policies for which the change should be held. It is also their responsibility to communicate the policies and how they will be enforced….the process should not be strict or forced.

Challenges and Benefits of Change Management

The main challenge of Change Management policy is the process in which a company decides to Implement the policy. The biggest concern/complication is how the policies are forced upon the people within a company that are put in place to support it rather than appropriately managing and controlling how the policies are rolled out within a company.

Benefits of Change include a smoother more controlled implementation of a plan; it enables the teams which are involved to have more accessibility to the full scope of a project. Of course the legwork should already be in place where educating, training and nurturing a culture that supports the transition to the Change Management process. The most key ingredient to success when a company decides to implement change is communication from management to the people who will be directly impacted by the change, those people include the individuals who are adhering to the new policies or those who are put in the position to support the change.

8 Steps to Successful Change

John P. Kotter a Harvard Business School professor and leading thinker and author on organizational change management established the following steps to achieve a successful change policy. Each of the stages acknowledges a key principle identified by Kotter relating to people's response and approach to change, in which people see, feel and then change. Kotter's eight step change model can be summarized as: 1.	Increase urgency - inspire people to move, make objectives real and relevant. 2.	Build the guiding team - get the right people in place with the right emotional commitment, and the right mix of skills and levels. 3.	Get the vision right - get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy, focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency. 4.	Communicate for buy-in - Involve as many people as possible, communicate the essentials, simply, and to appeal and respond to people's needs. De-clutter communications - make technology work for you rather than against. 5.	Empower action - Remove obstacles, enable constructive feedback and lots of support from leaders - reward and recognise progress and achievements. 6.	Create short-term wins - Set aims that are easy to achieve - in bite-size chunks. Manageable numbers of initiatives. Finish current stages before starting new ones. 7.	Don't let up - Foster and encourage determination and persistence - ongoing change - encourage ongoing progress reporting - highlight achieved and future milestones. 8.	Make change stick - Reinforce the value of successful change via recruitment, promotion, new change leaders. Weave change into culture.

Effective Change Management

In order to achieve effective Change Management in a business environment it must first start with Management. After management understands what is needed for the process to thrive then they must devise a plan which includes the employees and that also involves the day to day business operations. If the process is being implemented into a culture where there an absence of Change Management policies initially, everyone involved must remember that it is possibly going to be a nightmare for all involved. As a last ditch effort a company can employ a third party change agent to implement the process.

References

Chapman, A. (n.d.). Change Management. Retrieved August 10, 2012, from Business Balls.com website: http://www.businessballs.com/changemanagement.htm

What Is Change Management. (n.d.). Retrieved August 10, 2012, from Change Management Coach.com website: http://www.change-management-coach.com/what-is-change-management.html

Vitez, O. (n.d.). What is Effective Change Management (J. Walker, Ed.). Retrieved August 10, 2012, from wiseGeek.com website: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-effective-change-management.htm

Salahudeen, B. (2010, April 19). 10 Steps to Implementing an Effective Change Management Strategy within the Global HR Shared Services Center. Retrieved August 10, 2012, from Human Resources IQ     website: http://www.humanresourcesiq.com/shared-services/articles/ 10-steps-to-implementing-an-effective-change-manag/