Avoiding Common Mistakes In Change Management
Planning according to the demand of the change process
Discus why transformation efforts fail?
Over the year many firms have made changes in them as per the requirement of the business environment and the demand of the company position in the industry (Foster, Richard, and Kaplan). Researches have showed that there are many things that need to be done while any change process is going on. The transformation over the years has failed because of some small mistakes. It is the role of the leader to lead through the changes and hence they must take care of each and every aspect of the change process. There are series of steps that needs to be addressed while making transformation within the organisation. If anyone of them is missed, it may lead to huge amount of loses to the company. From Ford’s change of work mechanism to modern day changes related to technology. All the organisations have made different kinds of changes related to various departments, process, culture, performance management and activities etc. All these changes have different demands and if not taken care of may lead to huge change failures for the firm (Cameron, Kim and Robert).
The first and very common mistake that companies do is that its planning is not according to the demand of the change process. It is seen that their planning are different from the demand of business environment. Such kind of changes has often led to positional loss to the company. This also includes distributing roles among various persons within the organisation (Kotter). One of the most thing that company misses is to give the major responsibilities to the experienced personnel so that they can easily make the change process smoother. It also reduces job dissatisfaction especially among young employees. This may in the form of confusions which is very dangerous for the companies. Experienced personnel play a very crucial role in reducing such confusions in new employee’s minds. Basic thing that company misses is that it fails to recognise the importance of playing important personnel at crucial positions in the organisational structures (Alvesson and Sveningsson).
Changes are often resisted by the employees as it often brings them out of their comfort zone hence they need an external motivation to become the part of the process. In this regards leaders plays a much greater role as they have to motivate their employees through various means. Direct question and answers between leaders and employees are often neglected by the companies but it is an excellent means by which a company can understand demands of the workers (Meyer 60-91). It also helps in resolving the point of conflict that may arise between leaders and employees as leaders can communicate every essential aspects of the change management to the employees. On the other hand employees can also put their requirements regarding the changes. Rewards and benefits are often neglected in any change process which generally is a good motivator for the employees.
Giving major responsibilities to experienced personnel
Whenever a company is making any cultural shift throughout the organisation, they must take care of the fact that it should respect the culture of the nation in which the company is operational in. The study on the cultural shift suggested that the firm who have put the culture of their parent nation above the host country’s culture as well as the culture of their employees have resulted in poor outcomes.
On the other hand the companies which have made the long term goals have also failed in their change process. One of their major reasons to fail that they were unable to understand the things that are affecting the change. This is because they have not made short term goals. When company achieves any short term goals, it boosts the morale of the stakeholders related to the company (Booth). But often companies rely on the end goals which are a time taking process and hence many employees do not contribute at their full potential.
Other major error that companies do is that they predict the outcomes very early and declares the results to be positive which is not the correct picture. It is required that change process and its outcomes must be evaluated and analysed over the long period of time. Initial results must not be understood as the end results as many parameters starts affecting the outcomes after a considerable time of change process (Burnes and Jackson 133-162). Along with this it is to be understood that there are many companies which did not understood the sense of urgency while making the changes. It is always said that changes do not result in expected outcomes if not planned at the required or at the necessary time. This is very clear with the example of Morgan Car Company which was once one of the biggest Car producers of the Britain. In the late 90’s when the automation and IT technologies was started to make their presence in different activities of the firm. Morgan still believed on their man-made activities for the production purpose. There was another reason for Morgan’s case. It was that its leadership was incapable of making changes work. They were not willing to take the risk. Since every change process may result in both ways due to its uncertain nature hence risks needs to be taken. Researches shows that changes usually fails to make positive outcomes when there is inappropriate support from the leaders. There are many types of confusions that are present in the minds of staffs which need to be removed by fulfilling the requirements of the employees. If not fulfilled appropriately then it may create lower productivity of the workers (Hayes). Lower worker’s productivity does not add value to the outcomes of the change process. It is seen that even the hard won gains shatters when any company do not have the support of their employees.
Motivating employees through various means
Other important thing that leads to failure of the company is inappropriate selection of the resources. If the resources are not arranged in a proper manner during the whole process, then it may lead to failure in the change process. The resources may be related to the things that are required in the change process as well as human resource. In any change process, financial resources play a much greater role hence it is essential for the organisations to make sure that they have enough credits to make the change process happen. Sometimes miscalculation regarding the fund that is required in any change process may result in some huge loses (Dawson and Andriopoulos). This can be understood by the fact that if the financial resources of the company get empty in between then there is always a chance that company gets stuck in between. This is not in favour of the firm. Other than this it was also seen that people who are making the changes needs to be very active so that nothing gets missed. This can be understood by the fact that many a time it is seen that in order to fasten up the process of change companies usually skip one or two steps. This skipping often results in poor outcomes as some essential factors get neglected in this process which is not good for the future of the company. In the recent years when the partners have become so much important in business companies often make changes without consulting them. This generally results in breaking of relationship with the partners which is not in the favour of the company.
One of the most common mistake that a company does is that there leaders does not include people from various backgrounds in this change process. It is the role of the leader to ensure that all the stakeholders have been informed about the change process and the activities that needs to adopted in this. If even one set of stakeholders lags some of the information then it may lead to huge deviations from the actual goals (Hickman and Silva). This can also be accounted in terms of the communicational failures. The lack of communication has been one of the biggest reasons for the failures for most of the companies. The major communicational gap often leads to improper unclear visions to be communicated with the stakeholders which ultimately lead to laggings in the change process. It is also seen that if the vision is not clearly communicated company might face serious challenges like the turnarounds, lock-outs or protests. Taking all the stakeholders into confidence is very essential for the change process to produce effective results. Multinational firm which is having their set up in various parts of the world fails to take use of modern mediums of communication in an effective manner so as to reduce the flaws in information transfer (Appelbaum et al 764-782).
Respecting the culture of the nation in which the company is operational
It is to be understood that there are many players involved in any change process and it is going to affect the minds of many people hence it is important for the leaders to make sure that change process do not upset anyone. This might have serious implication in the longer run. This is most common in the case of technological changes as these changes generally results in the job loss which is not good for the environment of the company. This generally is understood in the terms of company’s readiness to adopt changes (Benn, Edwards and Williams). Another common mistake that company does is that it ignores the actual training requirements. This is because of the lack of understanding related to organisational behaviour. There is another way to understand it which that every employee in an organisation comes from different cultural backgrounds. In such diversity, training needs also varies from person to person which many company fails to understand. A common training programme often leads to inappropriate readiness for the change process and the outcome is also not in the favour of the company.
Apart from this the efforts of transformation fails when the company do not focus on the research regarding the requirements of the change process. When there is lack of research often changes may result in undesired form. The research should be regarding that whether the changes are suitable in the market condition, environment, nature of the business, industry trends and many more (Rafferty, Jimmieson and Armenakis 110-135). How the changes are going to influence the future of the company should also be analysed. The vision which is made by the leaders must be the criteria for making the changes and this vision should be made only after doing research on various topics.
While making any conclusion to the essay it is clear that every company makes changes in some or the other ways. These changes are done as per the requirement of the firm and there are several factors that are affecting these change process hence company must properly do research in order to ensure that there transformation efforts do not fail. Most of changes have failed over the years due to lack of very small things which could have been managed if checked properly.
Alvesson, Mats, and Stefan Sveningsson. Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress. Routledge, 2015.
Appelbaum, Steven H., Sally Habashy, Jean-Luc Malo, and Hisham Shafiq. “Back to the future: revisiting Kotter’s 1996 change model.” Journal of Management Development 31.8 (2012): 764-782.
Benn, Suzanne, Melissa Edwards, and Tim Williams. Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge, 2014.
Booth, Simon A. Crisis management strategy: Competition and change in modern enterprises. Routledge, 2015.
Burnes, Bernard, and Philip Jackson. “Success and failure in organizational change: An exploration of the role of values.” Journal of Change Management 11.2 (2011): 133-162.
Cameron, Kim S., and Robert E. Quinn. Diagnosing and changing organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
Dawson, Patrick, and Constantine Andriopoulos. Managing change, creativity and innovation. Sage, 2014.
Foster, Richard, and Sarah Kaplan. Creative Destruction: Why companies that are built to last underperform the market–And how to success fully transform them. Crown Business, 2011.
Harmon, Paul. Business process change. Morgan Kaufmann, 2014.
Hayes, John. The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave, 2018.
Hickman, Craig R., and Michael A. Silva. Creating excellence: Managing corporate culture, strategy, and change in the new age. Routledge, 2018.
Kotter, John P. Leading change. Harvard Business Review, 2012.
Meyer, John P. “Commitment in a changing world of work.” Commitment in Organizations. Routledge, 2012. 60-91.
Rafferty, Alannah E., Nerina L. Jimmieson, and Achilles A. Armenakis. “Change readiness: A multilevel review.” Journal of management 39.1 (2013): 110-135