Firms that take care of workers get faster and more returns. PHOTO | FILE
By NYAWERA KIBUKA
Change management is a term that is slowly becoming
common in business circles. However, it is still a fairly young
concept, especially when compared to disciplines such as project
management, which have existed for years and are thus better understood.
Because change management is still relatively young it has
suffered different, often inaccurate, interpretations. The most common
is the association of change management with a training session or the
release of communication to symbolise the start or end of change.
To many, change management does not go beyond that
e-mail sent to the team to make an announcement with which everyone must
comply.
Change management is a legitimate field and a
practice that every organisation needs to take seriously. Unfortunately,
it is largely misunderstood even at the managerial level, and so
practitioners struggle to justify the budget.
The people side or the “soft side” of change,
namely that aspect that involves bringing people on board and getting
them to participate in the change, is usually the first item on the
budget to be eliminated.
The technical side, also known as the “hard side”,
is assumed by managers to be the only side of change that can be seen
and felt, so to speak, because it deals with things like financial
arrangements, integration of business systems, and physical
arrangements. It is therefore often allocated more resources.
However, the people side of change has a massive
impact on every organisation, and there are countless consequences to
disregarding it.
If change is not managed effectively and as a whole, then it defeats the whole purpose of the change.
The business outcomes that are desired will be
curtailed, productivity will decline, employees will leave, those who
remain will not feel motivated, suppliers will be disgruntled, and
ultimately, customers will be dissatisfied.
It does little good to create a new organisation,
design new work processes, and implement new policies and technologies
without involving the people.
It is when the individuals in an organisation
embrace change that the financial and overall success of these changes
will be realised. Diagrams, charts, and memos have their place, but they
cannot be the entire change management strategy.
For close to a decade now, I have been involved in
managing several change initiatives, particularly in the areas of
systems implementation and culture change.
I have seen leadership teams struggle to galvanise
their people into embracing and accepting change. Many assume that an
announcement – even if in an impersonal email – will result in a
resistance-free buy-in.
The question I pose to leaders is, what percentage
of the desired business outcomes are based on people doing their jobs
differently?
In other words: you’re considering a change. How much money do you want to make, save, and spend, as a result of this change?
To what extent will people doing their job correctly
impact the delivery of these revenues and savings? That is where the
intentionality needs to be focused.
In our world, change management is a structured application
of a set of tools and processes that manage the people side of change
towards the realisation of business outcomes. The type of change that
positively impacts an organisation cannot and will not happen by chance.
Change management is the systematic management of
employee engagement and adoption when the organisation changes how work
will be done.
According to Prosci’s Best Practice Change
Management Report of 2016, organisations are six times more likely to
achieve their business objectives during a change initiative when a
structured change management approach is applied.
We have seen the results first hand; those
organisations that are more intentional about managing the people side
of change actually get a better, faster return on their investment.
Ms Kibuka is the founding director and CEO of Cedar Consulting.
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