Leadership Effectiveness Equals Organizational Change
Organizational change is a structured approach in an organization for ensuring that changes are smoothly and successfully implemented with lasting benefits. In the modern business environment, organizations face rapid change like never before. Globalization and the constant innovation of technology result in a constantly evolving business environment.
Phenomena such a social media and mobile adaptability have revolutionized business and the effect of this is an ever increasing need for change, and therefore change management. The growth in technology also has a secondary effect of increasing the availability and therefore accountability of knowledge. Easily accessible information has resulted in unprecedented scrutiny from stockholders and the media. Prying eyes and listening ears raise the stakes for failed business endeavors and increase the pressure on struggling executives.
Managing Change is Tough!
With the business environment experiencing so much change, organizations must then learn to become comfortable with change as well. Therefore, the ability to manage and adapt to organizational change is an essential ability required in the workplace today.
Managing change is tough, but part of the problem is that there is little agreement on what factors most influence transformation initiatives. Ask five executives to name the one factor critical for the success of these programs, and you’ll probably get five different answers. That’s because each manager looks at an initiative from his or her viewpoint and, based on personal experience, focuses on different success factors. The experts, too, offer different perspectives. A recent search on Amazon.com for books on “change and management” turned up 6,153 titles, each with a distinct take on the topic. Those ideas have a lot to offer, but taken together, they force companies to tackle many priorities simultaneously, which spreads resources and skills thin. Moreover, executives use different approaches in different parts of the organization, which compounds the turmoil that usually accompanies change.
In recent years, many change management gurus have focused on soft issues, such as culture, leadership, and motivation. Such elements are important for success, but managing these aspects alone isn’t sufficient to implement transformation projects. Soft factors don’t directly influence the outcomes of many change programs. For instance, visionary leadership is often vital for transformation projects, but not always. The same can be said about communication with employees. Moreover, it isn’t easy to change attitudes or relationships; they’re deeply ingrained in organizations and people. And although changes in, say, culture or motivation levels can be indirectly gauged through surveys and interviews, it’s tough to get reliable data on soft factors.
What’s missing is a focus on the not-so-fashionable aspects of change management: the hard factors. These factors bear three distinct characteristics.
- First, companies must be able to measure themselves in direct or indirect ways.
- Second, companies must be able to easily communicate the importance and value of the changes required, both within and outside organizations.
- Third, and perhaps most important, businesses must be capable of influencing each of these elements of change quickly.
Some of the hard factors that affect a transformation initiative are the time necessary to complete it, the number of people required to execute it, and the financial results that intended actions are expected to achieve. Research shows that change projects fail to get off the ground when companies neglect the hard factors. That doesn’t mean that executives can ignore the soft elements; that would be a grave mistake. However, if companies don’t pay attention to the hard issues first, transformation programs will break down before the soft elements come into play.
The entire subject can be confusing. It must be clear what you want to change and what that transformation should look like at the end. Are you sure this is what you really want? If you want some guidance on what to do and how to do it.