How to Build a CHANGEABLE Organization Riding Above the Learning Curve

The more complex the change is, the more complex the solution would be.

Change is inevitable, and the speed of change is increasing. However, organizational change is always difficult. How can you ride above the learning curve, is there any ideal path to change, how to improve the success rate of change management and build change as an ongoing capability of the organization?

Learning Curve awareness: Most of the changes are complex processes. There is a learning curve behind them. How do you make changes to anything without knowing all the parts and how they are related? In order to make effective changes, you have to know the underneath structure and processes of your business, because they underpin the digital capabilities of the organization. In practice, a mature organization is one that can quickly and safely assess all of the consequences of a possible change and devise effective plans to provide a combination approach for having both sense of urgency and overcoming change curve, to achieve and sustain those changes - and to do them continuously. Having learning curve awareness also means that change leaders need to master the psychological process behind changes. It takes a lot of effort and resource to make change happen. Therefore, it’s important to first understand how much change capability (people, process, and technology) is really required for the effort you are kicking off. An honest assessment of the lessons learned from previous change management projects could be a good place to begin with. The logical assessment includes all necessary steps such as curve awareness, motivation, knowledge, capability, and anchoring changes.

Systematic approach: The more complex the change is, the more complex the solution would be. This often means customized approaches that may apply differently to each individual impacted. Too often the large scale of change, or transformational change is acted on the basis of improving one part of an organization at the expense of other parts of the organization. And often the middle-level change managers don’t have the big picture business oversight, since they have been silo functional managers for so long, and don’t really have the change capabilities or personality traits to lead change and transformation. Change Management is all about balancing the following main elements impacting change: People, Strategies, Process and IT. And you have to maintain and fix any imbalance in those elements by establishing a cross-functional change management team to involving the management in different functions, and take a systematic approach to manage change in a holistic way. It is a change leadership practice to envision the goals of change, develop techniques and methodologies, embed innovation mechanism in change management scenario, and motivate people to ride the learning curve and become true change agents. It is a multi-stepped process that includes both problem resolution and solution implementation. All stages must be handled with attention and proficiency to ensure success.

The measurement of changes: Organizational change is a complex human process, management science, and organizational development have often failed to measure change process, and the main source of that is the lack of multidimensional theory-based assessment instruments. Oftentimes, the organization may not have the systems and structures in place prior to implementation to actually monitor and track the change. Quantitative measures do play a valuable part in assessing, measuring, and quantifying anything. So make a measurement assessment via questioning: How do you design metrics to measure what changes and how these changes are measured? What is the relevant metrics and how can they be quantified and validated? Can you clearly identify where you want to be once the change is complete? And how to establish clarified, understandable, and easily calculable metrics. Ultimately the success of the change program is measured by results that are important values to the organization, and the cultural adoption of these goals is part of that measure.

The goal of Change Management is either for innovation or improvement, to riding above the learning curve, pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, strategic planning, process, action, maintenance, and measurement are the logical steps in managing change scenario and build Change Management as a crucial ongoing capability to improve business agility and overall organizational maturity.

Posted in: Change Management,CIO Debate