INTRODUCTION

Change management can be viewed from two perspectives –

from those implementing the change and from the recipients
of change. Your view of change management varies
dramatically if you are the executive demanding the change
versus the front line employee who may be unsure why a
change is even needed. In many cases at the onset of a new
change, neither the executive nor the front-line employee is
knowledgeable about managing change.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT DEFINED

The simplest definition of change management is; “making

change in a planned and managed fashion”. Today’s
proliferation of digital media is making the conscious
practice of change management more important than it was
only a few years ago.

Organizational change can be defined as; “any alteration

in people, structure or technology”. Although change
has always been a part of manager’s job, it has become
even more important in recent years.

TYPES OF CHANGE

Changes in an organization can often be identified as one of

four types, with the definite possibility of overlap among
them:

1. Operational changes affect the way the ongoing

operations of the business are conducted, such as the
automation of a particular area.
2. Strategic changes occur in the strategic business
direction, e.g., moving from an inpatient to an
outpatient focus.
3. Cultural changes affect the basic organizational
philosophies by which the business is conducted, e.g.,
 implementing a continuous quality improvement (CQI)
system.
4. Political changes in staffing occur primarily for
political reasons of various types, such as those that
occur at top patronage job levels in government
agencies.

These four different types of change typically have their

greatest impacts at different levels of the organization. For
example, operational changes tend to have their greatest
impacts at the lower levels of the organization, right on the
firing line. People working at the upper levels may never
notice changes that cause significant stress and turmoil to
those attempting to implement the changes. On the other
hand, the impact of political changes is typically felt most at
the higher organizational levels. As the name implies, these
changes are typically made not for results-oriented reasons
but for reasons such as partisan politics or internal power
struggles. When these changes occur in a relatively
bureaucratic organization, as they often do, those working at
the bottom often hardly notice the changes at the top.
Patients are seen and the floors are cleaned exactly as they
were before. The key point is that performance was not the
basis of the change; therefore, the performers are not much
affected.

DEALING WITH RESISTENCE TO CHANGE

It is easy to change the things that nobody cares

about. It becomes difficult when you start to change
the things that people do care about—or when they
start to care about the things that you are changing.
—Lorenzi and Riley

Resistance to change is an ongoing problem. At both the

individual and the organizational levels, resistance to change
impairs concerted efforts to improve performance. Many
corporate change efforts have been initiated at tremendous
cost only to be halted by resistance among the
organization's employees. Organizations as a whole also
manifest behavior similar to that of individuals when faced
with the need to change.

Change can be a threat to people in an organization.

Organizations can build up inertia that motivates people to
resist changing their status quo, even though change might
be beneficial.

Why people resist change?

It’s often said that most people hate any change that doesn’t
jingle in their pockets. Their resistance to change is well
documented.

Why do people resist change?

An individual is likely to resist change for three reasons:

uncertainty, concern over personal loss, and the belief that
the change is not in the organization’s best interest.

Techniques for Reducing Resistance

While dealing with resistance to change, there are six

actions manager can use. These actions include education
and communication, participation, facilitation and support,
negotiation, manipulation and cooptation and coercion.

Depending on the type and source of the resistance,

managers might choose to use any of these actions.

"ADKAR" --- A model for change management

ADKAR is a goal-oriented change management model that

allows change management teams to focus their activities
on specific business results. The model was initially used as
a tool for determining if change management activities like
communications and training were having the desired results
during organizational change. The model has its origins in
aligning traditional change management activities to a given
result or goal.

For example, Awareness of the business reasons for change

is a goal of early communications related to a business
change. Desire to engage and participate in the change is
the goal of sponsorship and resistance management.
Knowledge about how to change is the goal of training and
coaching. By identifying the required outcomes or goals of
change management, ADKAR becomes a useful framework
for change management teams in the planning and
execution of their work.

PEOPLE DIMENSION OF CHANGE

Research shows that problems with the people dimension of

change are the most commonly cited reason for project
failures. In a study with 248 companies, effective change
management with employees was listed as one of the top-
three overall success factors for the project. Helping
managers to be effective sponsors of change were
considered the most critical success factor overall.

Effective management of the people dimension of change

requires managing five key goals that form the basis of the
ADKAR model:

Awareness of the need to change

Desire to participate and support the change
Knowledge of how to change (and what the change looks
like)
Ability to implement the change on a day-to-day basis
Reinforcement to keep the change in place

BENEFITS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF CHANGE

MANAGEMENT

“Change is a window through which future enters in

your life”
Some of the unique benefits of change management from
organizational perspective are given below:

Understanding environment (society, government,

customers)

It is important for organization to understand, assess and

gauge the dynamics in its external environment in order to
envisage and establish an appropriate relationship with
various actors like government, customers and society.
Therefore managers by knowing the subject of change
management can better be prepared to understand
whatever is going on in the environment.

Objectives, strategy formulation & implementation (to

develop competitive advantage)

Second is consequent upon knowing the impact of change at

extraneous level on its own internal dynamics, and the
foremost is objective setting and seeking competitive
advantage.

Employees (trained, high performing work practices,

reliable organization)

The employees are the recipient of change plan. One such

perpetual concern of senior managers is to make
organization highly reliable; therefore employees ought to be
trained and high performing one in today’s hyper
competitive world

Technology Issues

Technology is considered the engine of growth in today’s

world. Perhaps the greatest challenge for contemporary
organizations is the acquisition and integration of technology
in its strategy, structure and process.

ROLE OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT IN AN ORGANIZATION

Change management plays an important role in any

organization since the task of managing change is not an
easy one.

When we say managing change we mean to say that making

changes in a planned and systemic fashion. With reference
to the IT projects we can say the change in the versions of a
project and managing these versions properly. Changes in
the organization or a project can be initiated from within the
organization or externally.

For example a product that is popular among the customers

may undergo a change in design based on the triggering
factor like a competitive product from some other
manufacturer. This is an example of external factor that
triggers a change within the organization. How the
organization responds to these changes is what that is more
concerned. Managing these changes come under change
management. Reactive and proactive responses to these
changes are possible from an organization.

Change management is done by many independent

consultants who claim to be experts in these areas. These
consultants manage the changes for their clients. They
manage changes or help the client make the changes or
take up the task themselves to make the changes that must
be made. An area of change that needs attention is selected
and certain models, methods, techniques and tools are used
for making these changes that are necessary for the
organization.

When there is a process in an organization it is not an easy

task to make changes to this process immediately.
Sometimes a single organization may have varied business
entities and changes in an entity may be reflected in another
entity. In such organizations changes are not so easy. There
are different types of organizations which have many
branches across the world with varied cultures.
Implementing a change in such organizations is a task by
itself.

The change process could also be considered as a problem

solving situation. The change that is taking place could be
the result of a problem that has occurred. You should know
that a problem is a situation that requires some action to be
taken positively to handle that situation. This positive action
is known as problem solving. The change process could be
problem solving for a particular situation. In this process
there is a move from one state to another so that the
problem gets solved. The change process is leaving the
current state and moving to the final state through some
structured organized process.

Managing the changes in an organization requires a broad

set of skills like political skills, analytical skills, people skills,
system skills, and business skills.

Having good analytical skills will make you a good change

agent.
You should evaluate the financial and political impacts of the
changes that can take place.
You should know that following a particular process at that
instant would fetch you immediate financial effects and start
that process so that the change process is noted by the
management.
The workflow has to be changed in such a manner to reflect
the financial changes that are taking place.
Operations and systems in the organization should be
reconfigured in such a manner that you get the desired
financial impact.

Hence change management plays an important role in an

organization. This allows the organization to give a reactive
or a proactive response to the changes that happen
internally or externally. Knowing the change management
and its process would help an organization and its processes
to be stable.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more

perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success,
than to take the lead in the introduction of a new
order of things.—Niccolo achiavelli

One of the most difficult problems organizations face is

dealing with change. In today's rapidly changing, highly
competitive environment, the ability to change rapidly,
efficiently, and almost continually will distinguish the
winners from the losers.

Major organizational changes typically involve many

different types and levels of personal loss for the people in
the organization.

For example, change always requires the effort to learn the

new, which is a loss in terms of time and energy that could
have been used elsewhere. Although some may welcome the
learning opportunity, many of us don't want to invest that
time and energy unless we are dissatisfied with the current
arrangements or see powerful advantages to the proposed
change. Upgrading to new software is a common example, in
which the future benefits may not be seen as sufficient to
outweigh the short-term investment required to learn the
new programs.

Second, people want to feel good about themselves.

Ideally, people are able to take pride in their work, feel

responsible for a job well done, and feel they are part of a
high-quality enterprise, and feel that their time has some
significance. In many work situations, the work itself and the
organizational culture make it difficult for people to feel good
about themselves. In these poorer situations, people usually
invent strategies to help them feel better about themselves,
and these strategies involve getting some sense of control,
belongingness, and significance out of their work.
Sometimes this involves opposition to management, on the
assumption that management is always up to no good. More
commonly, the worker-management relationships are not
completely alienated. Still, the workers' strategies for
achieving “good” feelings are unknown to or quite
misunderstood by management.

Therefore, change initiatives, unknowingly and

unintentionally, threaten to cause the workers serious
personal loss. Not surprisingly, the workers resist and do all
they can to sabotage such change initiatives.

Third, change initiatives often require large losses for middle

managers.

Generally, people perceive that information systems

increase the ability of top executives to know more about
what is going on and to exert more direct control. This
means a serious loss of personal and organizational
significance for the middle manager. Sometimes middle
managers fight this loss. Any significant organizational
change involves changing habits that is, changing the way
we actually do our work. This usually involves changes in the
way we interact, both with people and our tools. New
systems require us to learn a new set of behaviors.

CONCLUSION

It can sometimes be hard to separate out 'the change',

project management, and change management. In practice,
these three components are intertwined in order to deliver a
positive outcome to the organization. However, there is
value in separating out the components. First, thinking about
the three components separately makes it easier to define
and help others understand these distinct elements. Second,
separating out these three components is a solid first step
when troubleshooting on a particular project that may not be
moving ahead as expected. For instance, are our challenges
coming from issues around designing 'the change'? Are the
issues related to the technical steps, activities or resources
(project management)? Or are concerns coming from how
individuals are accepting or resisting the change (change
management)?

It’s a truism that change is constant, and in business

continuous change and evolution is usually necessary to be
competitive. So to a certain degree, good change
management practice simply means practicing good
management, and outside assistance is often desirable when
true objectivity is required.

In the final analysis, the most effective change management

is all about articulating and sharing a vision, so that the
people being affected believe that adapting to change is the
right thing to do.

Nothing is constant in this world , except change!