Organizations which seek to become more innovative and adaptive in the global market, due to ever-changing consumer expectations and the market competition, have to reorganize the work culture, process, products and services to meet the market and consumer demands. Organizations have ever gone through a great evolution in the past several years due to the changes imposed by market circumstances and planned changes to encourage transformation, growth, and improvement and to compete in the market. The key challenge to changes in the organization system is human – the people working in the organization, because either they do not like the change or find it hard to adjust well to the changes. Planning for changes and adapting to changes involves psychological, emotional and physiological factors of people, and organizations focus on these in the change management process while planning or managing changes. A readily embraced change by the people working in the organization will make them self motivated and positive to the changes, while they will resist the changes if these are forced changes.
Due to the reorganization, process up-gradation, new technology implementation, compliance initiation and improving customer services organizations constantly experience changes. Change is constant and important for impact, profitability, and growth. Thus involving people early in the planning and implementation process and constantly adjusting for improvement is critical to effective changes in the organization system and is key to success and growth. Organizations use different tools and models to bring changes in their systems to plan realistic, achievable and measurable change for transformation and impact. Thus change management process helps organizations plan changes in the organization system and adapt to the changes for organization growth and impact.
“ Change Management Process is a structured approach for ensuring that changes are thoroughly and smoothly implemented and the lasting benefits of the changes are achieved”
Change Management Process focuses on people, process and policies or strategies of the organization, and has a multidisciplinary approach starting from psychology to behavioral sciences and from engineering to system thinking. The core purpose of the change management process is to make organizational change happen effectively as planned and achieved its benefits.
“ Ideas survive through changes, they die through inertia in the face of challenges.”
-Tony Blair-
Despite changes are difficult but pre-planned changes help the organization plan the changes in the system instead of waiting for the uncertain circumstances. Thus through the Change Management process, models and plans, organizations plan changes as required and implement these to benefit the organization in all aspects and be a leader in the market. Although the concept of Change management was first coined in early to mid-1900s and was well known in 1990s, the formal organizational process became available in 2000s. The accelerated growth of the Change Management Process is mainly due to two reasons; It was taking years to design, develop, test and deploy Products, Services, ideas, and technology while now it has been squeezed down to months or even weeks. Faster, cheaper and better services, products and technology are the consumer and market expectation which drives change in the system of the organization to meet the expectations and demands.
Managing change in organization system varies widely from project to project and from organization to organization. There are multiple change management models, process and plans available which organizations use these that best fit for them which includes McKinsey’s Change Management Framework, John Kotter’s Change Management Model, The Prosci ADKAR Process and The Deming Cycle – PDSA Cycle. Some of the books available in the market about change management process are; Change or Die by Alan Deutschman, Beyond Change Management by Linda Ackerman Anderson, Change the Culture, Change the Game by Roger Connors and Tom Smith and managing at the speed of Change by Daryl Conner.
“ Authority can demand compliance but once cannot dictate optimism, trust, conviction or creativity.”
Effective changes in the organization system through change management process includes; planning the changes, implementing the changes, communicating the changes and measuring the impact of the changes made. The change management process relies on developed tools and supporting activities which are managed and developed internally through assessments, planning, resource allocation, communication, and constant evaluation.
The key aspect of the change management process is to involve all key stakeholders, top, middle and lower management, in the process as different stakeholders have different experiences and expectations. In the process of change management, for planning and adapting to changes, the reason for the change and its objectives should be clear, and change agents should be identified. It is key in the process to reach out and involve all key stakeholders, and identify change agents. Planning change activities is critical and allocating resources needed for the activities. It should also be effectively communicated when and how the change will happen so that people involved understand the change process. It also includes training needs driven by the change and planning and assessing the impact of the change in people and organization structure. Success indication for change is set and measured.
DR. Reddy’s is a global pharmaceutical company headquartered in India which produces affordable generic medication exists in 27 countries, have 20000 employees and have more than 7 distinct business units. Due to its expansion globally and increased number of employees and branches, decision making was more convoluted and branches of the company had become misaligned. Applying the change management models and process and involving the people working in the organization, the company effective death the challenge, and the decision-making process becomes more effective and efficient helping company grow and thrive. Thus change takes places when people are ready to take action. Change is difficult even painful and an ongoing process which should be woven through all steps to identify and remove roadblocks. Change management is evolving with the different change management processes, models and plans, few mentioned here and few more, and these all help ease impact have on organizations and help company plan changes, adapt to the market needs and consumers expectations, grow and thrive.