The effects of an increasingly digitized world are now reaching into every corner of organizations and varying aspects of our societies. In fact, the exponential growth of information and continuous disruptions throw the challenge for businesses across sectors to respond and adapt with faster speed.
Going digital is more like a journey than a destination by navigating through changes in a structural way. Predicting and preparing the next level of digitalization is an iterative learning and changing continuum.
The decision making about the direction of the change: Change is usually required when an organization is expanding its business, its mission, or is implementing some new technology. There are strategic changes and tactical changes. In all these cases, a vision provides the guiding light and direction to make progressive change. For strategic changes, it’s important to define why business improvement is needed, and then, cut through complacency so that business stakeholders understand why it’s necessary to move in a new direction. Have a sense of the business direction, and shape the business of the future by developing the initial value proposition and determining demand and estimated pipeline.
Change without good reason is futile and useless. Creating a compelling reason for the change is something that companies often miss and a change program is then initiated without an anchor. Change Managers need to classify: What's the current situation and the net value of the business now as well as in the future if it's not changed? What's the future situation or the vision about the change, and the net value of this in the future if there is a change? Assess key factors such as people, process, the technology of current state capability in change management. Develop the target state change management capability, and identify the gaps.
The degree, scope, and nature of the change required: With blurred territories and interdependent business elements, digital organizations arise when the scale of the interrelations, interactions, and collaboration amplifies the collective capability to achieve more values. The real challenge is to understand where and how you can and should improve to get the biggest effect and scale-up across the digital ecosystem. At the organizational level, change management is an ongoing business continuum with multi-stepped processes that include both change resolution and management disciplines.
More specifically, change can be classified into long term organizational transformation, mid-term change capacity development, or short-term sprint to reach certain performance goals. Change Management should make an objective assessment of the degree, scope, and nature of the change required, identify the real problems that matter, and on a scale that can make a difference. Some factors that could be used to evaluate digital transformation impact within a company could be human and financial resources invested, employee motivation and participation, challenging activities being involved, the number of business initiatives being launched and success rate, and organizational culture, etc.
The mindset about how easy or difficult the change will be to complete: Change is a dance between the top management and the affected parts of the organization. Many times, change is difficult because it involves both the learning curve and the emotional cycle behind it. The fear of change is common and rational. People do feel very uncomfortable and vulnerable in the face of "uncertainty." Top business leaders or managers must first examine their own mindset, and read the psychology of people behind the change in order to deal with change inertia effectively. In the organizational setting, embracing change requires the change of mindset at every level and gains a good understanding that things cannot stay the same.
It would do good for change practitioners to have a reasonably good understanding of neuroscience; since it does help to understand people's responses to change. You can’t just control the people's behaviors manually because you can’t manipulate how they think. The management should understand that you can make all changes you like, but unless people change their mindset, attitude, and behavior, the change will not be embedded and will not be sustained at the organizational scope. From top-down, start with a core belief that people can be trusted, they like to change, but dislike “being changed," develop collective changeability and improve the overall business competency.
The perceptions of the players who will be in the change initiative: Change nowadays is complex, and more often than not, is teamwork. It's implemented via the logical scenario, not through ad-hoc activities. Change leadership and change Management need to go hand in hand. First of all, Change Management is the leaders' game and the top leadership involvement is a must. There are numerous points-of-view and reference points of varying stakeholders such as board members, senior executives, middle managers, or professional staff, etc. They all have a different view or role on "change.” It’s important to establish a cross-functional change team to involve the multifunctional management, space and time are made to scope, plan, and execute in a structural way.
The more stakeholders can impact a change seriously, the better chance the change will achieve or exceed the business expectations. All should be synchronized without compromising. The corporate board’s sponsorship and involvement of changes are important to clarify the very reason to change and oversee the change methodology and practices. Change leadership concerns the driving forces, visions, and processes that fuel large-scale transformation, providing leadership skills like delegation, decision-making, and monitoring. Middle managers are the voice upward. It is their feedback that can result in modifications to change processes. A change agent has the right dose of risk appetite, courage, confidence, and intelligence to overcome the “fear of failure.” The role affects most through congruent behavior, continuous endorsement of the change, and regular communication to keep the change momentum.
The methodology about how change is done: Change Management is all about balancing the main business elements impacting the business such as people, strategies, processes, and IT. One of the major barriers to successful change is the lack of a change methodology and structural approach. Change is more than a goal, it must be accompanied with well thought out execution plans, processes, and methodologies. One of the change pitfalls is that the large scale of change such as digital transformation is acted on the basis of improving one part of an organization at the expense of other parts of the organization without business oversight, thoughtful planning, and scientific methodology.
Continuous engagement through formal and informal methods, as well as clarity and transparency in communications thereby nipping uncertainty, ambiguity, and doubt helps to reduce resistance when implementing change. Train employees across all levels as change agents - being enablers and facilitators to change. Change leaders and managers can also leverage a balanced scorecard in measuring the outcome of the change effectively.
During the journey of change, there are many accumulated steps and perhaps a few leapfrogs. It takes a lot of effort and resources to make change happen, and it takes even more effort and management disciplines to sustain changes. Planned change, tuning organizational structures & systems, and participative management are central to success. Companies need to make the change journey with logical steps, embed a culture of change and innovation into the very fabric of the business, and laser focus on the most important things to lead change successfully.
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