EXPERT OPINION
10 Principles of Change Management
Tools and techniques to help companies transform quickly .
Way back when ( pick your date ), senior executives in large companies had a simple goal for themselves and their organizations : stability . Shareholders wanted little more than predictable earnings growth . Because so many markets were either closed or undeveloped , leaders could deliver on those expectations through annual exercises that offered only modest modifications to the strategic plan . Prices stayed in check ; people kept their jobs ; life was good .
Market transparency , labor mobility , global capital flows , and instantaneous communications have blown that comfortable scenario to smithereens . In most industries — and in almost all companies , from giants on down — heightened global competition has concentrated management ’ s collective mind on something that , in the past , it happily avoided : change . Successful companies , as Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter told strategy + business in 1999 , develop “ a culture that just keeps moving all the time .”
This presents most senior executives with an unfamiliar challenge . In major transformations of large enterprises , they and their advisors conventionally focus their attention on devising the best strategic and tactical plans . But to succeed , they also must have an intimate understanding of the human side of change management — the alignment of the company ’ s culture , values , people , and behaviors — to encourage the desired results . Plans themselves do not capture value ; value is realized only through the sustained , collective actions of the thousands — perhaps the tens of thousands — of employees who are responsible for designing , executing , and living with the changed environment .
Long-term structural transformation has four characteristics : scale ( the change affects all or most of the organization ), magnitude ( it involves significant alterations to the status quo ), duration ( it lasts for months , if not years ), and strategic importance . Yet companies will reap the rewards only when change occurs at the level of the individual employee .
Many senior executives know this and worry about it . When asked what keeps them up at night , CEOs involved in transformation often say they are concerned about how the work force will react , how they can get their team to work together , and how they will be able to lead their people . They also worry about retaining their company ’ s unique values and sense of identity and about creating a culture of commitment and performance . Leadership teams that fail to plan for the human side of change often find themselves wondering why their bestlaid plans have gone awry .
No single methodology fits every company , but there is a set of practices , tools , and techniques that can be adapted to a variety of situations . What follows is a ' Top 10 ' list of guiding principles for change management . Using these as a systematic , comprehensive framework , executives can understand what to expect , how to manage their own personal change , and how to engage the entire organization in the process .
1 . Address the ' human side ' systematically .
Any significant transformation creates ' people issues .' New leaders will be asked to step up , jobs will be changed , new skills and capabilities must be developed , and employees will be uncertain and resistant . Dealing with these issues on a reactive , case-by-case basis puts efficiency , morale , and results at risk . A formal approach for managing change — beginning with the leadership team and then engaging key stakeholders and leaders — should be developed early , and adapted often as change moves through the organization . This demands as much data collection and analysis , planning , and implementation discipline as does a redesign of strategy , systems , or processes . The change-management approach should be fully integrated into program design and decision making , both informing and enabling strategic direction . It should be based on a realistic assessment of the organization ’ s history , readiness , and capacity to change .
2 . Start at the top .
Because change is inherently unsettling for people at all levels of an organization , when it is on the horizon ,
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