Managing Change – The Processes

The only thing constant in life is change. It can occur anywhere, also in business. In the professional front, change is also inevitable. Without it, businesses can find it hard to adapt to the latest trends and updates, manage its people, and meet consumer demands.

However, handling the people side of change is as hard as information and experiences that will affect work habits and practices to which they are accustomed. It is why transitioning and adapting to change requires training, effort, energy and resources. It is also why change management is crucial.

To manage change, you need to implement relevant strategies and methods. You must also determine and focus on an action plan suitable for your goals and objectives.  Let’s discuss these further in the following.

Change Process Models

Managing change requires an ongoing effort, dedication and time. It also needs the expertise to implement, monitor, review and update the change applied. But before adopting a change management model, know the reasons you need changes for and ways that those changes are beneficial to your organization.

Teleological theories

According to the teleological theories of change, human actions are with a purpose, and the goal is directed to the movement of an entity.  A development is through a constant reupdating or reformulating of such objectives using a constant feedback cycle that is based on the problem perception of an organization, for instance. 

A teleological theory, therefore, is an intentional change.  A few examples are functionalism, voluntarism and decision making.

These theories are characterized by representing a firm or an organization, which is directed towards a specific set of goals and objectives. A teleological model of development is determined and adaptive. Its actions are towards a specific end.

Dialectical

This theory states that change happens because of a conflict.  Theories under the dialectical model revolve around the assumption that a firm or organization occurs in a world filled with events and forces. Organizations, in this case, compete for control and domination. 

In these theories, both the change and stability are said to be the balance between opposing forces and power. Using this explanation, change is assumed to take place when one of the forces breaks the norm because one of the forces excels another.

Life Cycle

Also called a regulated change, life cycle change management theories emphasize unavoidable stages. They also adopt the organic growth analogy or metaphor based on the organizational context being a tool explaining the different developmental stages.

Three fundamental groups are in this theory. One of which is the developmental model, stating that change happens during a cycle. It is always composed of the growth stage, emergency stage, maturity stage and decline stage.

Evolutionary

It states that change takes place due to competition. Its framework recognizes evolution of a set of changes, which occur in structures of communities, organization, society and business in general. In this theory, change is explained, accumulative and recurrent, which are further explained by the probabilistic distribution of the Variation-Selection-Retention processes.

Reactive and Self-Reinforcing Sequences

Now in the following, let’s explain the sequence type that a specific situation describes.  According to James Mahoney, two sequence types can be analyzed through a path dependence framework – the reactive sequences and the self-reinforcing sequences.

Reactive sequences are subsequent events that challenge earlier events instead of reinforcing them.  A negative reaction may lead to a small deviation from the desired path. However, they may also be too strong to delay or block the change. Simply, in a reactive sequence, each event works in two ways.  First, it is a reaction to an antecedent event, and second, it is the cause of the next event.

On the other hand, self-reinforcing sequences are positive feedbacks, which reinforce the past events and support the desired direction. It is the better-known type between the two sequences.  An example of this is the layout of the QWERTY keyboard that resulted to its because of increased returns.

Leading Change from a Process Perspective

Recognition

You need to be aware that you need change. If you own a business, you must know that businesses are changing quickly, and so with technology. Customer behaviors change, businesses should cope with global crisis, and new market compliance regulations are introduced from time to time.

Thus, recognize that you need change. Or else, your organization might not cope with it and explore new opportunities. If these things happen, you might be outcompeted and lose your business.  It is why you need change management, which should be one of your priorities.

Diagnosis

What do you need to improve – a product, a process or a result?  You should identify your focus and goals.  

By identifying what to improve, you must also determine the individuals and resources needed for the process.  For example, do you need a developmental change, which involves improving and optimizing the old processes, procedures and strategies? And who will lead this endeavor?

Plus, you need readiness assessments/tools to determine and assess your readiness to change.  These assessments can include culture and history assessments and organizational assessments, to name two.   Each assessment offers a change manager some insights into the opportunities and challenges during the process of change.  A few things to assess include the scope of change, the number of affected people and if the change is radical or gradual.

Plan

You also need to plan, or have a roadmap for the change. It will help plan for the beginning, the direction to take and the results expected.  You will plan for the resources to use, the cost and the objectives for the project.

For better results, a critical element is a multiple step process that is used by many change managers rather than an unplanned and sudden change that might not lead to favorable results. It involves outlining the change with the specific and clear steps. It also outlines a controlled change management process, which aims at reducing the impact of the changes on your organization should implementation begins.

Implement and review

The next step is to implement and review the changes to reinforce the changes in your organization.  However, the continued adaption, which refers to the ability of your organization to adjust to the new information and experiences, should be reviewed.

Learning is adapting to the constantly changing environment, which allows your people to utilize new practices and behaviors and helps them cope with the change.

The long-term successes and wins should be celebrated, but it should also be monitored to ensure that your people aren’t slipping back into their old behaviors and practices.

Sustain Change

Change management is a continued and ongoing process. Thus, it must be adjusted throughout the lifecycle of the project, for instance. In this case, change, just like communication, should be a part of all the steps to determine and eliminate the roadblocks to change.  It is why this process should be as good as the commitment to the analysis and measurement. 

Reinforcement is also needed to sustain the change.   It is to say that the people should have the desire, awareness, ability, knowledge and reinforcement for change to be successful.

Final Thoughts

Change management involves the tools, the process and the techniques to manage change so that your organization can achieve its business outcomes. It also involves a systematic employee engagement and adaption management needed when your organization changes the way things should be done.  Nevertheless, it focuses on helping your employees apply a change in their daily work.