The best way to cope with change is to help create it
Organizational change can have many different drivers or banners: total quality management, reengineering, right sizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnaround. But, in almost every case, the basic goal is the same: to make fundamental changes in how business is conducted in order to help cope with a new, more challenging market environment.
Phases
Only few of the corporate change efforts are very successful. Many turn out to be utter failures. Most fall somewhere in between, with a distinct tilt toward the lower end of the scale.
The lessons that can be drawn are interesting and will probably be relevant to even more organizations in the increasingly competitive business environment of the coming decade.
The most general lesson to be learned from the more successful cases is that the change process goes through a series of phases that, in total, usually require a considerable length of time.
Avoid shortcuts
Skipping steps creates only the illusion of speed and never produces a satisfying result. A second very general lesson is that critical mistakes in any of the phases can have a devastating impact, slowing momentum and negating hard-won gains.
Perhaps because we have relatively little experience in renewing organizations,
even very capable people often make at least one big error.
We share these insights John Kotter wrote in his book ourselves and in addition we found out that the change absorption capacity of the organization is an additional factor to take into account when leading change. Understand – and even better, measure – what the organization can handle in terms of extra work during a change process.
Do you want to know more on how PEER can assist your organization at leading change? Feel free to contact us!