There are many examples of companies that can take advantage of market change (e.g., Apple), whilst other companies struggle with internal issues or market related conditions. The reasons as to why, will differ for each, and every organisation.
With the certainty of change being constant in any industry sector, your organisation needs to prepare for change. If you don’t act by planning to prepare for change, then your business is at risk of falling behind your competitor’s and who are committed to innovation (strategy, process, technology, etc). Your key to ongoing success is being prepared and in readiness to react to change.
Preparing an Organisation for Change
You can’t know what is going to happen in your company’s future, but you just need to be observant of your competitive market and how that relates to your business strategy. Anticipation is crucial to prepare your organisation for change, but ultimately, it’s about how you learn to adapt and prepare for that change.
The most successful companies have a distinct advantage in making change work. That’s because “change” is viewed as a constant opportunity to evolve and innovate their business model. Change readiness is defined as the ability to continuously initiate change, respond to change, and to create market advantage by minimising risk and sustained performance. A balancing act for both your integrated internal / external focus and approach to change, and which requires the co-ordinated efforts of the management team, key stakeholders, and all employees within an organisation.
An organisation must simultaneously react and innovate when change happens. Before you can improve your readiness to Change Management, then you must firstly assess four (4) steps:
1. Change Awareness
Change Awareness represents your organisation’s ability to redefine itself as necessary and this element is critical to innovation. The practice of change awareness includes being abreast of your business environment for new opportunities, by focusing on emerging technology, trends, and planning for your organisation’s future.
2. Change Agility
Change Agility represents your organisation’s ability to engage people in change. It’s an internal perspective that is critical to implement innovation and that has been identified by your decision makers. Leadership inspires confidence, trust, and consistency in facilitating and executing changes when it’s needed. Change Agility is about the capacity to react and expand internal boundaries when necessary, by shifting internal resources to the area(s) that need help.
3. Change Reaction
Change Reaction represents your organisation’s ability to analyse problems, assess business risks, and manage the reactions of employees. It’s an internal perspective to ensure your organisation can sustain its day-to-day business operation while simultaneously reacting (timely) and appropriate to your unplanned change.
4. Change Mechanisms
Change Mechanisms represents your organisation ability to encourage clear goal alignment across functions, to integrate a change into existing systems / structures / processes, accountability for the achieved results, and reward systems that reinforce the desired change behaviours. It’s an internal perspective that is critical to support the successful implementation of change, without interruption to the organisation’s daily operations.
Summary
Preparing your organisation for change involves reviewing key stakeholders impacted by change, valuation of their resistance to change, and gaining “buy-in” to help you promote the change. You need to prepare an in-depth analysis of what your organisation needs to get fixed and develop a clear Strategy Roadmap for the path ahead.
During this process and the subsequent review of other business capacities, you need to continually identify breakthrough opportunities. Change preparation projects are all about organisational change, with your Executive Management teams continuing to look at alternatives with reducing costs, increase operational efficiency, and boost “Return On Investment” (ROI).
How are you working to increase your company’s Change Management readiness?
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