The world is changing faster than ever. So much so that people came up with an acronym for it. We’re living in a “VUCA world”, they say. Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous.
As a result, leading organizations need to be ready to constantly adapt, in order to stay relevant. This can be about all kinds of business transformations, achieving sustainability goals, digital transformations, but also new way of workings, culture & leadership development programs.
So many companies worldwide are striving to increase their internal change capability. That means they are making sure that their organization attracts and develop the right skills to navigate through constant change.
The problem is: change is not at all easy to accomplish.
It involves people (who are usually resistant to change), changing behavior (which you know is a near-impossible task if you’ve ever attempted a new diet or exercise routine), and navigating the complex web of stakeholders and leadership – to name a few.
So it is not surprising that 70% of all projects fail without structured change initiatives. We can’t just design a transformation and hope it will work out. We need to help individuals in the organization to embrace the changes and adopt them. Welcome to the field of Change Management!
“Initiatives with excellent change management are 6 times more likely to meet objectives than those with poor change management.”
(Prosci, 2020)
Change Management is the process of managing and guiding individuals, teams, and organizations through the changes necessary to achieve a desired outcome. It is a structured approach, which typically involves different stages, such as:
- Discover and understand the challenge
- Decide how to deal with it (vision & strategy)
- Execute the change
- Secure and innovate based on the learnings
Change management is a process, but it is also a skill. Beyond the scope of a specific project, change management refers to a set of capabilities that organizations and individuals can attain in order to create a change engine and be better equipped for change. At SPRING TODAY, we call this the change capability.
Additionally, change management takes place across 3 different levels: individual, project and enterprise.
- Individual: Supporting employees through their personal transformation
- Project: Implementing a specific change project to achieve a certain outcome
- Enterprise: Improving the change capability within an organization
Even though there are different levels, change management is built on one central idea. Change doesn’t happen in isolation. It impacts people and organizations. That’s why – ultimately – change management is aimed at helping your workforce embrace, adapt to and leverage change in their daily work.
When an organization manages to successfully implement change, the rewards are undeniable.
Do you need help/support with your change & transformation challenges?
SPRING TODAY provides the Change & Transformation experts who speak the language of the organization and understand the challenges and complexity of the context. They connect, create movement and set a route to “the organization of tomorrow!’’