Monday, October 22, 2018

Five Drivers of Organizational Changes

There are many drivers behind changes. There is often no shortcut for change, but there are varying paths to changes. 

Change is inevitable and the shift to digital cuts across sectors, geographies and leadership roles. The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. The most successful businesses are the ones that have learned why to change, and how to implement change time after time after time. Change is never for its own sake, here are five drivers of organizational changes.





Business direction and orientation: The environment is constantly changing forcing the business to 'adjust.' Vision helps leaders look into the future clearly and future orientation gets you the path to where you need to go. To change with the purpose, fundamentally, organizations should spend more time looking forward, looking ahead and be more proactive, to anticipate the vision. However, in reality, too many organizations have tended toward being “reactive,” not proactive. To improve the changeability of the organization, future orientation is the ability to identify and interpret changes in the dynamic business environment; figure out the various possibilities that may happen as you intervene in the environment; it triggers adequate responses to ensure long-term business survival and success. Those who plan change need to have a clear vision, understand the driver of change. It’s also important to make an alignment of change planning and implementation; due to the fast pace change and fierce competition, the problem solving and crisis resolution must be handled in real time by as many involved parties as possible in order to survive in today's business dynamic.

Macroeconomic environment Dynamic: Compared to the business world decades ago, the digital ecosystem has become must more dynamic, complex and hyperconnected. Effective senior management leaders are able to comprehend the complexity of the macroeconomic environment and the systemic issues they face and able to consider this as the driver for their Change Management program. The challenge is to develop holistic approaches that allow senior managers to act systemically. Currently social, economic, and environmental sustainability issues may be a prelude to digital paradigm shifts supported by leveraging System Thinking. Don’t isolate yourself in the realm of technology; every organization today is like the switch linking to its hyperconnected and ever-expanded digital ecosystem. Open up and look at the business environment holistically; either driving changes or implementing the strategy; organizations must relate their current business environment, continue to make the timely adjustment when the new issues are emerging or the existing problems are coming back again. Have managers do a “SWOT analysis” for their business area by making an objective organizational assessment. Keep in mind, change is never for its own sake, it’s for making the improvement and collective progress.

Technical update and advancement: The unprecedented digital convenience brought by the powerful technology actually changes the way we think, work, and live. Technology plays a more significant role than ever, for both our individual life and the business world. As a matter of fact, technology is the disruptive force behind many radical changes and digital transformation. Digital technologies are lightweight, powerful, intuitive, and fast. The digital leaders should envision about what the emerging digital technologies can do for the businesses, not on the technology itself. It’s about how to leverage emerging digital technologies for solving both existing or emerging critical business problems. Organizations should become more aggressively leverage abundant information, advanced digital technologies, platforms, and tools as the enabler of cross-functional communication and collaboration, and IT is the catalyzer of changes. Those high mature digital organizations are much more likely to have a senior executive team who understands digital opportunities and threats, embed technology in key business processes, and build IT in the strategy.

Organizational structures, styles, and culture tuning: Organizations have personalities or styles in the same way that an individual does. Sometimes those styles and cultures are the drivers of changes for adapting to the new normal. The culture as the soil will determine the ultimate success of all change efforts as that culture will determine the behaviors and practices which everyone from entry level to senior executive engages in - these will either enable or inhibit the organizational success for the long run. Every organization has a story and every business exhibits a culture. The business culture or style are the collective mindsets, habit, and behavior, it’s the force that guides and directs how people will interact with one another and deal with those beyond their group. In the digital era, organizations today need nothing less than a paradigm shift in their thinking about the fundamentals of how organizations work to build an authentic culture and an engaging workforce. It’s crucial to builds a culture that willingly confronts issues and makes changes because the business leaders understand the driver of change and the psychology behind changes; people are empowered, intrinsically motivated, creative to take initiative and self-confident to explore the better way. Change is an ongoing and differentiated business competency nowadays.


GRC concerns and related process adjustment and optimization: Highly responsive organizations leverage effective risk management or compliance tool to monitor changes, alert the organization to risk conditions, and enable accountability and collaboration around changes impacting each firm. However, in many organizations, much of GRC management is reactive in the sense that there is a lot of rushing around trying to fix problems after they have occurred. Keeping track of activities is surely helpful in being proactive. This requires a common process to deliver real-time accountability and transparency across regulatory areas with a common system of record to monitor regulatory changes, audit and measure the impact, implement appropriate solutions, update policies, and provide training for certain personnel. One of the important aspects when designing a process for GRC management is to perform a risk analysis, to avoid or minimize risks. It’s also important to focus on proactive planning and process optimization for collaboration, accountability, and most importantly, integration.

It is nevertheless true that the change itself has become unpredictable and evolutionary. There are many things (both hard and soft) need to be changed. There are many drivers behind changes. There is often no shortcut for change, but there are varying paths to changes. Change cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the organization, to navigate through the Change Management framework, riding change curves is particularly important for improving business responsiveness, increasing speed and achieve business maturity ultimately.

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