Change Management In A Week

Managing Change In Seven Simple Steps

Mike Bourne

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781473608535
• eBook ISBN: 9781444158823
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Skills
• Index: Business

Change management just got easier
If an organization does not change in response to the environment in which it is operating, it will ultimately fail. Just as people have to change and adapt according to their circumstances, so do organizations. No one can deny that managing change is a difficult and sometimes painful task. It is complex and can be emotionally draining, involving a range of skills from project planning through to influencing those likely to be affected and ensuring that the appropriate actions happen. Difficult though it is, the ability to manage change is one of the critical skills needed by a manager. Anyone who wants to progress up the career ladder must be adept at instigating and managing change. This book concentrates on implementing change and ensuring that it happens. It is designed to help managers overseeing the whole change and those who are managing part of the process and trying to keep it on track. It will also interest people caught up in the change process, helping them to understand why certain things are happening to them. Over this week-long course you will cover:
- Sunday: Why change is necessary
- Monday: Unfreezing: creating the impetus for change
- Tuesday: Moving: The change roller-coaster
- Wednesday: Refreezing: making the change stick
- Thursday: Tools for analysing resistance to change
- Friday: Examples of change projects
- Saturday: Making change happen

The phrase ‘managing change’ can sound vague. It is not like managing the implementation of a new IT system, where you can physically see different hardware and software, although that may in itself be part of a change management initiative. Managing change usually boils down to persuading people to operate in a different way, whether that is working with new equipment, within a new structure or with a different set of processes. It helps to think through what you are doing and why you are doing it in as concrete a way as possible. If you do that, you will be better able to avoid the pitfalls. More positively, the clearer the picture you have of what you are trying to achieve and what that will involve, the more you will be able to gain the commitment of others to your plans.

In today’s chapter we will try to make the management of change more tangible to help you to ‘get a handle on it’. We will look first at why change is necessary, then we will examine different types of change and a number of approaches to managing it. Finally, we will introduce you to the stages of the change process.

Must there be change?

Most people have experienced change at some stage in their working lives. This might be anything from the type of major change much reported in the media – downsizing, restructuring – to changes in job role resulting from the introduction of new technology. But is all this change really necessary?

There are some who say that change is important for change’s sake. Without it, organizations and individuals become complacent and stale. At the other end of the spectrum, too much rapid and constant change brings its own problems, such as lack of loyalty among the workforce and loss of important skills and knowledge from the business when people leave. So why is change necessary? Of course, there are many reasons.

Increased competition means that if you do not continually analyse what is happening in your market, and change and improve what you are doing, then you will probably be put out of business.

Customers are demanding higher standards. In most cases customers have a choice about where they buy products or services and this leads to greater expectations of both. If they do not like what you offer, they can go elsewhere. This is the case even in instances where choice is not always so evident, such as in the UK’s National Health Service, where people are demanding new drugs or treatments that they have read about and they are looking for the very best care.

Success and growth inevitably bring about the need for change. The profitable micro-business starts to employ more people; these people bring new ideas and experience that they want to use; communication becomes more complex as more people join the business; new machinery has to be brought in to cope with demand; and so it goes on.

Market decline nea...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title
• About the Author
• Contents 
• Introduction
• Sunday: Why change is necessary
• Monday: Unfreezing: creating the impetus for change
• Tuesday: Moving: the change roller-coaster
• Wednesday: Refreezing: making the change stick
• Thursday: Tools for analysing resistance to change
• Friday: Examples of change projects
• Saturday: Making change happen
• 7 × 7
• Answers
• Appendix: Checklist for change
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright