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The organizations that resist to change often find it difficult to improve their productivity and profitability. In the highly competitive business era, it has become even more crucial to stay up to date with the technology advancements, growing customer expectations and changing compliance requirements.
It won’t be wrong to say that change is an absolute necessity for your business to grow.
If you have standardized the change management processes, you are more likely to improve organizational performance. So, a standardized and optimistic approach towards change is required. For which, you need to understand certain aspects of change management. This post is intended to share all those aspects with you. We will start will a quick overview of the concept – change management.
So, what is Change Management?
Change management is the systematic process of dealing with changes in goals, processes, or technologies within an organization. Its purpose is to implement strategies for implementing change, controlling change, and assisting people in adapting to it. Structured change requests, along with follow-up processes, should be included in such strategies.
An organization must consider how the adjustment or replacement will affect processes, systems, and employees to manage change. Change should be planned and tested, communicated, scheduled, implemented, documented, and evaluated systematically. Documentation plays a critical role in change management, not only for ensuring compliance with internal and external controls, including regulatory compliance, as well as maintaining an audit trail.
You can consider breaking down the change process into five levels to achieve your quality objectives more efficiently and effectively.
Every organization experience five different levels of change, including:
It is quite a common scenario that project teams are not aware about organizational change management or often consider it as a formal method for managing the people aspects of change. And change management is used as the last option.
However, this should not be the case. The business must understand that the employee resistance towards change may impact the success of the project. So, change management should be properly integrated with the project management from the very beginning itself.
If you are among business that consider managing change reactive, you are more likely to fail since reactive approach doesn’t go well with the project management. It can be because of number of reasons:
So, how to deal with Level 1 Challenges and Approach the Next Level?
You should organize change management training for your employees. You can also let your team apply the change management strategies on the isolated projects so they can handle the change related challenges in real time and come up with the effective resolution for the same. This will prepare them to approach and manage change more proactively than before. Let’s explore the aspect of change management in isolated projects in Level 2.
Level 2 sees the emergence of elements of change management. However, management of the people side of a change does not often happen or be centralized. It is because of the following reasons:
A project at Level 2 takes advantage of change management when resistance emerges or when the project is nearing completion. Most projects do not apply change management at the beginning. It should not be the case. Also, communication planning is done quite later, which is part of the early stage of the project life cycle.
So, how to deal with Level 2 Challenges and Approach the Next Level?
To better manage change in your organization, you need to create training programs and research best practices in change management. Further, assign different change management projects to other teams so they can test different change management principles. It will help you find the best approaches to manage various types of change in the organization. In addition, you should encourage communication and collaboration among teams to improve decision-making. And provide your team with the right change management software to help them efficiently cover every aspect of change.
At Level 3, the process of structured change management begins. At this level, the team or aspect of the organization is involved with change management. This may occur for several reasons.
Many companies implement change management at the start of projects, with many more doing so when resistance is encountered during implementation. If you want to succeed, plan to manage changes and communication-related challenges at the beginning of the project.
So, how to deal with Level 3 Challenges and Approach the Next Level?
Create a standardized change management process and a team to support change initiatives throughout the organization. Then, you can invest in the change management and training management solutions that help your standard methodologies.
Methodologies aren’t cookie-cutter formulas; they utilize repeatable steps, but they are most effective when tailored to each project. For example, at Level 4, the company chooses a common approach and implements standards to manage change across all new projects and changes. This is due to the following reasons:
Related Article: Change Management Software: Making Organizational Changes Smoother and Faster
The Level 4 team regularly incorporates change management in the planning phase of their projects. Change management and project management milestones are implemented concurrently. It becomes difficult to distinguish between project management and change management as the project progresses.
So, how to deal with Level 4 Challenges and Approach the Next Level?
Have a dedicated team to take care of change-related activities, including deployment, training, and improvements. Perform gap analysis in the organization to identify non-compliance and non-conforming processes. However, you can utilize a tool to manage all the activities efficiently. You can also invest in an enterprise quality management software that can help you build closed-loop quality system to manage all the key processes in a compliant manner. The right tools and methodology can help you leverage the potential opportunities that come with every change in the organization.
At Level 5 change management maturity, organizations have change management competence built into their skill set. It is due to the following reasons:
Organizations with advanced knowledge of change management fully integrate change management into project management. The planning and design phases include both project management and change management. Moreover, the right change management software in place can help create standardized workflows.
There are many tools available online, but Qualityze Change Management Software is the one you can really count on. You can take the product tour by requesting a free demo right away and experience the Qualityze different in simplifying your change management processes.
For more information on Qualityze products, please get in touch with our customer success team at +1-877-207-8616 or email us at info@qualityze.com, and we will be there for you.