Organisations do not change. People change!
By Anita Baggio, Eleftheria Digentiki and Rahul Varma, McKinsey and Company.
For an organisation to move forward with its business model, the directors and management must have clear objectives in the short-mid to long term. There must be a roadmap identifying the milestones that needto be accomplished. The defined roadmap will take the organisation from its present position (position A) to the planned future position (position B).
To succeed in getting to position B requires the support and effort from your employees. The directors and management cannot do it alone; they need employees to assist them by working collectively as a team. Change within an organisation is about its people, but often, employees are aware that changes are implemented with or without communication.
There is a common misconception that organisations make the necessary changes to achieve their objectives. In reality, these changes are different financial or production targets, new technology, new supply chain directions, etc. Thesecan easily be measured with key performance indicators. In some cases, the targets require a change in employee and management behaviour. The new targets are typically forced upon employees whilst forgetting about their behaviour towards change.
If an organisation does NOT achieve their proposed outcome, the blame is typically placed upon the management and employees’ behaviour without examining the actual cause of the failure. There are many reasons why the organisation’s outcomes were not achieved, such as technology, internal systems, market forces or economic conditions. Yet the failure to understand what has happened is a common problem in many organisations: it is too easy to place blame without further investigation of the root cause.
The people, both managers and employees, are an organisation’s best asset. The people can make the organisation successful or doomed as they are at the core of its activities from cleaning, administration, selling, marketing, IT and manufacturing. Each person has a different behavioural pattern to work and their personal life; therefore, it is critical that their behaviour is understood so they can be managed; thus minimising the organisation’s risk and setting the pathway forward to achieving the outcomes.
People dislike change unless they can see a personal benefit for themselves. They tend to resist the change and spend a minimal amount of time, effort and creative energy to help achieve the outcome of the change. For example, if a change reduces the workload on a person, they will enjoy and participate in this change. However, if the change results in an additional workload, there will be resistance, as it is not in the person’s perceived interest, and they will see that their stress levels will increase.
Change management needs to be applied within an organisation to gain better control of people and begins with understanding each person’s behavioural patterns, i.e., what drives them, what motivates them, etc.
When an organisation targets a change, there must be continued communication of that change from the leaders down to all employees. Leaders must clearly state the details, the reasons and the benefits that will accrue to the employees and the organisation. The communication must be tested to see if all employees clearly understand the messages.
Many organisations fail to communicate and test the communication. Consequently, this results in not knowing which employees support the change because they want to – or because they have to.
When a change is about to happen within an organisation, all employees should participate in setting the outcome of the change that will impact them directly… and indirectly. I state indirectly because personal behavioural bias can occur if they work on the change that impacts them directly. Hence, the reason for people to include the indirect impact as it will help other people within the organisation.
There are four benefits of a person being involved with the organisation’s change. These benefits include:
1. People will become more inspired to accept the change rather than offer resistance.
2. They can take ownership of their change, thus giving them a sense of control.
3. They will become more committed to the change as they will not feel like the victim of change.
4. They will provide less resistance to the change.
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