What Is Change Management? Key Principles and Strategies

Change is the great equaliser when it comes to business management. No matter the size, purpose or structure of an organisation, principles and processes will need to be adjusted over time to best-meet evolving market conditions and changing needs. Whether these changes positively or negatively impact business outcomes will depend on how well-prepared stakeholders are to manage change, covering key principles like the communication, fulfilment, measurement and management of newly-formed initiatives.

This is the basic premise of change management, a collection of analytical, practical and organisational principles deployed to support businesses in deriving positive outcomes from different types of change. However, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this process, requiring key stakeholders, employees and business leaders to work together to form, deploy and manage initiatives unique to their situations.

What Is Change Management?

Change management covers the entire process of guiding an organisation through a necessary change. This includes the creation of methods and practices used to help ensure new initiatives are successfully adopted across an organisation, as well as plans to support employees in transitioning to new practices.

Within a successful change management process, business leaders will outline a strategic vision for the implementation of new management principles, providing employees with all the resources they require to adopt new initiatives swiftly and comfortably. When developing a change management plan, leaders must focus on leveraging the combined strengths of their teams to ensure all stakeholders feel involved.

The Four Principles of Change Management

To gain a better understanding of how change management processes can be applied in business environments, it's important to define the four key principles behind successful change management.

• Understand: Leaders must consider the impacts of a proposed change before making any efforts to implement it. Teams should think about who will be affected by the change, what kinds of support they'll need and how potential negative effects may be mitigated during implementation.
• Plan: Change leaders will create a plan that communicates a clear vision for the change, including key details to help employees adjust accordingly. Change management plans should include steps that need to be taken, roles that need to be filled and timelines for the fulfilment of essential tasks.
• Implement: With a well-structured plan in place, adjustments can be implemented and supported by key stakeholders. Early adopters should be provided relevant training to help ensure the initial transition is smooth, and objectives should be closely monitored to guide teams through adoption.
• Communicate: Successful change management relies on clear and effective communication. Open communication channels must be maintained between stakeholders across all levels of the organisation to help ensure concerns and complications are addressed reasonably and effectively.

Levels of Change Management

The above principles apply to various changes, helping leaders learn why adjustments need to be made, and enabling them to communicate benefits to staff. The types of adjustments that benefit from change management can be divided into three categories, transformational, gradual and individual changes.

Transformational Changes

This concerns any major initiative that stands to impact a business across all departments. Changes of this level include hierarchical changes, new product launches and the adoption of new work structures.

Gradual Changes

These adjustments typically impact specific products, processes and workflows. Examples of gradual changes include the hiring of new team members or the adjustment of existing employment policies.

Individual Changes

Changes of this level may only impact a few employees or a single department, usually involving factors like skill development for an existing employee or goal-setting initiatives for specific members of a team.

Effective Change Management Models

To help leadership teams develop effective structures for change initiatives, it can be wise to review existing and well-established change management models. Below are four frameworks to consider:

• The Bridges Transition Model: This model structures change initiatives around three stages, guiding leaders to centre tasks around helping employees let go of old processes, manage feelings of uncertainty about new processes and focus on the long-term benefits of implementing change.
• The ADKAR Model: This model outlines a five-step structure for effective change management, imploring leaders to define the need for change, outline the benefits of supporting change, provide advice on how to manage change, identify required skills and teach teams how to sustain change.
• The McKinsey 7-S Framework: This model requires leaders to view change management tasks as they relate to seven factors, looking into how shared values, systems, skills, strategies, styles, structures and employee behaviours might shape the formation of change management initiatives.
• 8-Steps for Leading Change: This model offers guidance on communicating change management processes to stakeholders, steps include: creating a sense of urgency, building a guiding coalition, forming a strategic vision, garnering staff support, removing barriers, generating short-term wins, learning to sustain acceleration and establishing standardised change management practices.

The Benefits of Implementing a Change Management Strategy

Changes of all sizes can introduce unwanted disruptions to business operations, opening the door to potential issues regarding clients, staff and a business' reputation. Without a well-developed change management strategy in place, new processes can be costly and time-consuming to implement. While it may take time to plan a reliable strategy, doing so can enable teams to enjoy the following key benefits.

Better Alignment of Resources

Implementing a change management plan provides leadership teams structures from which to guide the allocation of available resources. By visualising how a change will be implemented, including which stakeholders will be involved, which roles will be filled and when specific tasks will be performed, managers can ensure resources are secured and allocated efficiently to mitigate time and cost issues.

Enables Process Standardisation

Developing a change management initiative enables leaders to more closely examine specific aspects of a change, supporting stakeholders in analysing all potential outcomes. This analytical approach can help organisations to create standardised change management processes, providing leadership groups with a framework of repeatable tasks, goals and planning initiatives that can be applied to future changes.

Supports Goal-Setting Objectives

The efficacy of a change process can only be discerned through measurable criteria, meaning without a plan in place, leaders may not know whether an implemented change is actually serving its purpose. By enacting adjustments in line with a clear change management plan, specific, impactful and measurable objectives can be set to help stakeholders monitor the efficacy of key processes as they're performed.

Addresses Multiple Aspects of Change

Change management strategies help businesses to identify and focus on individual aspects of a wider change. This provides managers the ability to balance multiple aspects of a change, stretching across elements like employees, technologies and organisational processes, to ensure all stakeholders who are involved in or affected by the process receive the support they need to pursue a successful transition.

Empowers and Unites Employees

Communicating a change initiative to all employees, including easily-understood steps they should take to ease the transition, can empower teams to navigate tasks faster and more effectively. By making an effort to support all employees through organisational and behavioural shifts, senior management teams can foster a sense of community across the entire business to facilitate a united and positive workforce.

Common Reasons Why Change Management Initiatives Fail

Successful change management, even at the smallest scale, requires a continuous commitment from multiple stakeholders. If managers and employees across all levels of a business are not provided the support they need, communication between stakeholders becomes strained or change management principles are not appropriately adhered to, organisations run the risk of new practices failing to stick.

Poorly-Managed Communication

An effective change management process hinges on concise and clear communication, with all staff involved in the change needing to understand exactly how they will be affected. Setting up a platform from which employees can share their ideas, collaborate with others and receive clear communications about current and upcoming tasks is central to ensuring change management principles are adhered to.

Lack of Buy-In from Key Stakeholders

To ensure staff receive required support, the leadership structures above them will need to be actively committed to the success of the proposed change. Should a business fail to achieve consensus across key stakeholders, senior management runs the risk of tasks and objectives being poorly communicated to vital personnel, increasing the likelihood of the change management process failing at its first step.

Failure to Consider Impacts on Employees

It's not uncommon for leaders to become hyper-focused on the business outcomes and organisational aspects of a new initiative, unintentionally overlooking staff-shouldered impacts. Change management principles outline the importance of not only communicating new practices to employees, but explaining how they will be affected by them and providing tailored support to help guide them through transitions.

Inadequate Measurement of Performance

Prior to the implementation of a change initiative, systems should be devised to accurately measure the efficacy of specific outcomes. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) must be identified and monitored to provide the change team with tangible evidence of relevant impacts. For example, if a new software tool is intended to improve productivity, KPIs related to output and sales growth must be carefully measured.

Flaws in Training and Onboarding

In order to manage change successfully, employees across all levels of the organisation must be trained in the appropriate and efficient use of newly-implemented tools. How confident and comfortable team members are in their abilities to navigate new systems will often be the difference between success and failure, so the change team must focus on creating thorough, adaptive and supportive training programs.

Best Practices for An Effective Change Management Process

Taking all of the information covered above into account, business leaders should have a good idea of how to manage change in relation to tried-and-tested change management principles. To take things a step further, below are some best practices positioned to support effective change management plans.

1. Establish a Clear Leadership Structure

To institute change successfully, clear and consistent guidance must be provided to employees. A team of leaders should be elected and tasked with identifying appropriate change management models to be used as a foundation for implementing change. These leaders will be in charge of developing processes, setting objectives, measuring performance and communicating vital information to front-line employees.

Each team member must have an operational understanding of historic processes and newly-proposed initiatives, acting as a knowledgeable point-of-reference for all employees as they adopt new practices. In addition, those in leadership roles must be prepared to listen to employee feedback, presenting staff with platforms to communicate developments and enable action to be taken in the event of unforeseen issues.

2. Collect, Organise and Act On Employee Ideas

While change leaders will work tirelessly to develop and refine initial implementation plans, the actual performance of a change can uncover unforeseen issues that need to be addressed. Day-to-day staff will likely be the first ones to notice such issues, with their experience in vital roles enabling them to offer insights into actionable and appropriate fixes positioned to help change leaders achieve success.

Providing staff access to a comprehensive idea management solution like Sideways 6 enables teams across departments to quickly and effectively communicate insights to decision-makers. Leaders can collect, organise and prioritise ideas shared across existing collaboration tools, helping to ensure the improvement of a new process or system remains the core focus of operations during implementation.

3. Create a Framework for Implementation

The actual switch from an old process, system or technology to a new one should be rolled out along a clearly-defined path. The framework chosen here will be dependent on how significant the change is, how many people it will impact and the level of risk associated with its implementation. In most cases, one of three methodologies will provide a strong basic framework from which to build a release around.

• Linear: A change is released to individual end-users sequentially over a predetermined period of time, enabling leaders to observe how specific users navigate new processes/systems in a bubble.
• Wave: A change is released in waves to small groups at set intervals, enabling leaders to monitor change benefit metrics closely in a controlled environment before completing a full-scale transition.
• Big Bang: A change is released to all users simultaneously, reducing the amount of time it takes to transition to a new process, though risking significant downtime should unforeseen issues occur.

4. Set, Measure and Monitor Change KPIs

Leaders will need some way to measure the efficacy of a change to help ensure the project has been worthwhile, and to inform plans for future change management initiatives. The specific KPIs that should be measured will be dependant on the type of change implemented, but generalised examples include:

• Budgets and timelines
• Adoption rates
• Change rejection rates
• Time-to-adoption rates
• Productivity metrics
• Employee and client satisfaction

5. Support Change Adoption Through Training

The initial rollout and adoption of a change does not signal the end of the change management process. Leaders must maintain open communication with employees and wider stakeholders to help ease initial issues and act on employee ideas, collecting vital insights to inform continuous staff training programs.

Regular meetings should be held to facilitate continuous improvement initiatives and provide employees with new information that could smoothen the adoption process. The principles of change management can be reaffirmed during these sessions to help employees prepare for future changes and adjustments.

Conclusion

Understanding the principles of change management and applying them to transitional plans can help organisations of all sizes implement required adjustments effectively. Idea management platforms like Sideways 6 support successful change initiatives by providing stakeholders quick, reliable and constant access to high-quality employee insights, enabling teams to facilitate clear, constructive communication.

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