Chances are that if you run a business you are familiar with the concept of corporate or business change. It is not a hard one to grasp; even if you’re not pivoting like you would in the early days of a lean start-up, sometimes you will need to make a decision for the future of the company that may change working life significantly for you and your employees. These changes can be crucial for company survival or growth. To avoid relegating yourself and your company to the success rate of a coin-flip, you need to familiarize yourself with the principles of change management.
The Importance of Culture
Company culture is seen as absolutely vital for a successful business. If company culture does not completely run parallel to the change you are trying to implement, then you need to re-think one of them because according to the Katzenbach Center, your chances of failure will be about 80%. Sudden changes to the company culture may shock employees and cause emotional strain that can contribute to burnout, so you should instead review your company culture and draw from it inspiration to tackle your change strategy. A little goes a long way when it comes to making employees feel valued at work.
Watch the Change Develop
Just as you would carefully monitor the transition of your company along your growth plan. It is important to track your change as part of your change management program. This can be via hard progression metrics like change-related cash-flow, but often you will need to track something less tangible: how well your employees are dealing with and adjusting to the change. Inpulse.com recommend regular pulse checks to enable you as a manager to recognize change concerns the employees may have and respond to them accordingly. This helps to frame change as a dynamic concept. And enables your employees to feel more like moving parts of the company as opposed to means to an end.
Be Thorough on a Company Wide Scale
When planning change, it is easy to consider the obvious gears of your business machine. However, every cog that turns needs to be on board with the change. Think about the employees that have no managerial impact (i.e. those working at the frontline of your operations), and try to learn as much as you can from them. They will be able to provide a vast amount of information about workings of the company. And that may negatively impact their efficiency and cause them emotional distress. This is a perfect source of ideas you can add to the change strategy and even the evolution of your company culture.
Bottomline:
These three principles cover the core basics that you need to consider when committing your company to change. And there is so much more you should think about. There are several online guides, as it is a hot topic in business, but if you are yet to formulate a strategy and are only contemplating change you should read as much related literature as you can.
