Change management – do you need it, or can it go?
Whether we want it or not – we humans are creatures of habit. Fixed structures and processes give us a feeling of security and constancy.
Turning this thought around, it's only logical that changes often present us with challenges. Especially when familiar processes and systems are completely rebuilt.
Change shakes our supposedly safe harbor of routine, in which everything seems predictable and under control. That not infrequently causes an unpleasant feeling.
On top of that come many doubts and questions: how is this supposed to work? Why don't we continue as before? Why don't we do it differently?
Change management is an important tool for organizations to find answers to this kind of question. It aims to make change not only more efficient for everyone involved, but above all more pleasant.
Nevertheless, in our daily work we keep finding that companies, in important transformation processes, assign change management – if at all – only a subordinate role.
In this article, you'll learn why that's a mistake and what advantages systematic change management brings for your company's development.
What significance does change management have for companies?
At first, the term change management seems self-explanatory. Translating it from English into German, one speaks of the deliberate managing or steering of change.
But what sounds so simple at first glance is, in practice, a complex web of measures and activities meant to support companies in delivering transformations. The goal is to strategically shape innovations and upheavals within an organization so that they run as smoothly and successfully as possible.
In the best case, change management ensures that everyone involved perceives a change as an opportunity and not as a step back or even a threat. Ideally, companies can benefit from this effect in a multitude of processes – there are hardly any limits to the applications of change management.
Be it with major upheavals on the meta level, like introducing a new business strategy or opening a new market. Or also with relatively smaller adjustments like onboarding employees or forming new teams.
The advantages of change management
The versatile areas of use aren't the only added value that change management offers companies of all sizes. Further positive effects are:
Overall, transformation projects in which change management is applied early and integratively are up to 66% more successful (Boston Consulting Group 2020).
Those involved, like employees, business partners or also customers, are actively addressed in change management and brought on board, which increases openness and engagement for the planned transformations.
By employees better understanding the context and connections of changes, they can get used to and adapt to new processes and technologies faster and more easily.
Through the direct and transparent exchange with all actors, organizations can gain helpful feedback and optimize planned changes.
Resources can be pooled strategically, so that the best possible results are achieved without unnecessary losses.
Through the holistic planning, implementation and analysis of the transformation processes, possible sources of error and risks are reduced to a minimum. This saves not only time and nerves, but above all costs too.
If change management is carried out with the help of external consultants, the organization benefits not only from valuable expert knowledge, but also from an unbiased and critical view of its own processes and structures.
The involvement of employees, business partners and customers can increase the understanding and engagement for the change process.
With all these opportunities that change management offers companies, one thought almost suggests itself:
Why do many organizations treat change management almost neglectfully?
When it comes to change, the two terms transformation and change are often used synonymously. That shows how closely the two concepts are intertwined.
Nevertheless, it unfortunately still happens far too often that organizations, in transformation processes, either don't do change management at all or only integrate it at a (too) late point.
In addition, we observe numerous cases in which measures of change management are used, but these aren't implemented far-reachingly or sustainably enough.
This experience is also confirmed by the Change Management Compass 2020 of Porsche Consulting Group. According to it, the majority of German companies foresaw profound changes by 2022, but only 20% of the transformation projects were successful.
Given the many possibilities of how companies can benefit from targeted change management, the question naturally arises where it falters in practice.
One of the biggest opponents of successful change management is the lack of awareness of many companies for necessary changes. Not infrequently, familiar strategies and processes are held onto for too long.
Another possible reason is the circumstance that organizations don't assign enough significance to their change processes. The fact that transformations require experienced change managers is still new for many companies.
As a result, in applying change management measures, they tap their potential only partly or not at all.
What risks do companies take that don't take change management seriously enough?
Let's summarize once: for successful transformation processes, change management should be considered as an integral project component from the start.
But what if it isn't?
Forgoing experienced change managers in transformation processes can sometimes entail harsh consequences:
You risk that actors like employees, customers, suppliers or also business partners can't follow the changes emotionally or professionally. That in turn can lead to disappointment, frustration or even open resistance.
If change management measures aren't used sufficiently from the start, it's often only recognized late in the project what needs to be made up for. That leads to considerable extra effort and higher costs.
In transformation projects like, for example, introducing SAP S/4HANA or other business applications, companies invest a lot of time and money. But often set goals aren't reached, because the focus in implementation is too selective, instead of approaching the change holistically and multidimensionally.
Usually, within an organization the same people are responsible for planning and implementing the transformation. However, change management requires specialized knowledge that shouldn't be handled „on top“ by the implementation team. That can lead to costly mistakes through silo thinking.
The grandega approach for organizational change management
There are various models for change management, which, however, resemble each other in one fundamental property – people should be at the center of all developments.
As experienced change consultants, we pursue exactly this approach and combine it with our expertise from numerous transformation processes in various industries and organization sizes.
In doing so, the following fields of action serve us as pillars for successful business change projects:
Change strategy – To keep the overview in transformation projects and implement measures as efficiently as possible, a shared vision and strategy is needed.
Initiating the change – Change managers serve here as the interface between those responsible and those involved.
Change leadership – The change managers work hand in hand with the change leaders. By that we mean important leadership positions within the organization that actively participate in implementing the planned changes and serve other employees as a role model.
Organizational transition – Especially organizations with several locations or teams have to be able to count on planned change measures being implemented effectively on site. Local change agents help you implement change initiatives even with decentralized company structures. Employees with the same topic areas or challenges come together in communities for exchange.
Communication in change – Transparency and audience-appropriate information form the basis for successful transformation processes. It therefore takes a strategy for internal and external communication that brings the planned change closer and gets actors on board.
Training & enablement – For the success of a transformation project, it's essential to actively address employees from the start and onboard them to new technologies or processes. Employees should be able, in a targeted and above all timely way, to handle changed conditions or ways of working. That can be trained, for example, in the form of courses.
Change effectiveness – So that a change can be implemented in the long term and thus sustainably, it takes a continuous analysis and optimization of all change activities with regard to their efficiency and effectiveness.
Learning & adaptation – The personal and professional development of employees shouldn't be viewed as a one-time, but as an ongoing process. With the help of the targeted use of leading practices, existing and recently learned abilities can be adapted and expanded.
Institutionalization – The new activities, approaches and ways of thinking transition into the company culture as fixed components.
In addition, during the course of all these fields of action, a constant monitoring and risk management of the change initiative should take place.
Change as an opportunity
As significant as professional change management is for transformation projects, there's no blanket guide for THE right use case or THE best approach. Every company is different, just as every change is different too.
In our opinion, every transformation initiative should, from the start, place great value on adequate change management. Such complex initiatives need a specialized and dynamic approach that change consultants should accompany as impartial experts.
What exactly this targeted steering of change then looks like in practice and to what extent it takes place is ultimately a highly individual question. But we'd be happy to answer it together with you – simply contact us!
