Can Change Management be a Strategic Process?

Change Agents as ‘Programmers’ of an Effective Strategy.

Change is the only constant now, and even the speed of change is accelerating. Thus, the change should be part of a company’s culture and should be stimulated by the top management, it is resulting in a flexible and dynamic organization able to adapt to new and unexpected situations and market demands. In doing so, can change management be a strategic process?

Change Management starts with a thought: It leads to a vision; then leads to a culture shift, market changes, or leadership changes. Perhaps change management can be a strategic process if businesses spend more time on how to be effective in supporting a change in the chaotic environment that surrounds business. Strategic Processes are conceptual while tactics are the specifics that create the foundation for the project or desired outcome. Synergy is the unknown frosting available for use in the strategic process if one is aware of its existence, trusts his/her intuition, and recognizes its value. It becomes the catalytic agent that elevates a project from ‘so-so’ to awesome and defies logic. Visionary leaders are the usual catalysts.

“Structure Frames Behavior” and it is the easiest and visible way to incorporate change; and that the people introducing change need to understand what is going to give them a better chance of avoiding simply making things worse. Managing change is tough, but part of the problem is that there is little agreement on what factors most influence transformation initiatives, be customer-centric, to the point, in language the customer understands. Demonstrating how we can directly support achieving their objectives. Also recognizing risk management is about reduction, not elimination, and resistance to change can only be reduced, never eliminated.

Change Analytics Tools: Organization Net Analysis are revolutionizing the world of change management, by giving the business first opportunity to get an objective observation on those issues that were considered "soft" and non-measurable. Those analytic tools are for estimating the effects of cultural change, and for evaluating the organization's agility (flexibility, dynamics and ability to adapt to changes).

Change agents as ‘programmers’ of an effective strategy. One of the very first things you have to kill is not always the strategy, but the strategic planning process itself. Complexity and complication do not have much to do with strategy, but a lot to do with strategic planning. Change management also needs to use strategic thinking that takes analysis, the other is synthesis and synthesis requires intuition and creativity. Only then can they-the change agent be programmers of a strategy, helping to specify the series of concrete steps needed to carry out the vision. Because analysis has encompassed synthesis, people now believe strategy planning is strategy making, and strategy execution needs to go hand in hand with change management.

Change management is the overarching umbrella that encompasses extensive planning, outreach, communications, discovery of concerns / objections / potential points of failure, addressing fears and resistance, developing a shared vision, communicating valid and compelling reasons for cooperation, recognizing sacrifice and incremental success, measuring outcomes in a shared and mutually understood and agreed upon fashion, being able to declare an end-point and successful conclusion. It needs to be a strategic process underpinning key business capabilities and strategy execution as well.

Posted in: Change Management,Strategy