Adapting to Change Management has been a crucial part of facilitating smooth business activities during these uncertain times of ongoing pandemic. For any process to be successful, the process workflow must be streamlined according to the business requirements and feasibility. The processes should be aligned with the business needs in a well-optimized fashion to generate better productivity and benefits even in a virtual environment.
Your success lies in your change!
Following are some of the imperatives that will ensure systematic workflow to have a structured pattern to handle and mitigate change:
1. Identification
The primary step must be the identification of the scope and state of the project/ process. Having the right information and a deep understanding of the scope will help to deliver a better project in alignment with customer/ client’s expectations, eventually turning in better outputs with a balanced budget. The scope has to be specific which would be measurable, realistic, and time-bound. Having a clear idea about the scope of the project helps in deriving targets and goals for the organization. During this process of identification, the focus should also be given to the current state of the project and drawn a realistic and achievable line to meet the expected state. What helps to gain better results is to have the concepts well absorbed which will define a distinguishing image about the functioning of the process/ project.
2. Awareness & Risk Analysis
The next step is focusing on process awareness and risk analysis. This phase will help to insights on what works well in the organization and what are the possible option available that requires immediate attention and change. This focus on collecting the right set of process information, identifying the risks involved, followed by the analysis of cost which is incurred in the implementation of newer alternatives. Risk assessment benefits the organization by maintaining the standards, reducing the probability of hazardous incidents, having quality data that makes decision-making less complex. Overall, it helps is budget estimations, goal setting for projects and escalation can be handled in a structured way.
3. Planning
In the planning stage, clearer steps should be defined. Here, comes the challenge of how much do you know about the situation? The answer to this is there is always going to be some part of uncertainty and ambiguity while running these business processes. All that matters is how one can drive well out of these uncertainties by correct interpretation of the situation. VUCA World introduces the concepts of dealing with complexity, volatility, ambiguity, and uncertainty. In the planning phase, it is essential to build that momentum in the team, design a plan of action, learn a new set of technical and non-technical skills, emerge as a team player, setting realistic targets for the team. A suitable framework for the process/project shall be defined, the stakeholders involved in the process should be trained on those modules.
4. Evaluation
In the evaluating phase, identification of flaws, division of funding, sharing experiences in the team, checking the quality, re-checking if the process is not time-consuming, documenting the lessons learned from mistake gives appropriate direction to the process/project. Continuous development and transformation are musts.
Despite all these planning and measurement, there are situations where one has to deal with uncertainties. The challenges in the VUCA world are dealt with by organizations simply by portraying agile and adaptive behavior. Therefore, strategic management is essential for dealing with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
- Volatility: This can be characterized by unavoidable disruptions or undefined timelines of change. Example: The prices of essentials get hiked if there is any disastrous situation. A suitable approach to this issue would be to invest as per the realistic requirement by assessing the risk rather than panic buying or stocking.
- Uncertainty: This can be characterized by a lack of adequate information about the process or circumstances. Example of uncertainty: In the current pandemic situation employees are unsure about how prolonged the remote working setup would be. The adequate approach of the organization in such a case should be to facilitate as many provisions as they can to ensure the health and safety of the employees.
- Complexity: Complexity can be characterized when there are multiple factors interdependent in a process. Example: Any business process which requires several steps for execution and has a greater dependency on other resources makes it complex to resolve. The right approach to this situation to redesign or restructure the process to avoid deadlock.
- Ambiguity: There is always this sense of unclear understanding of customer demands and preferences. This shall be tackled by making an experimental study of probable cases and testing the same as well as gaining customer insights by various research methodologies.
5. Execution
Finally, the execution phase deals with identifying a concrete plan for required change and executing those activities. Change Management adds to improvement, growth strategy, better efficiency, gaining competitive advantage within the organization’s budget. The classic example for change management could be that of Nokia which was once a leader in its industry class and enjoyed success but was, later on, was left far behind in the race due to the introduction of the new smartphones in the market by its competitors in 2007. Nokia appointed new CEO and changed its strategy and showcased powerful transformation by purchasing Siemens and then Alcatel-Lucent which benefited Nokia in billion as a shareholder. Nokia then became a full-service infrastructure provider.
“Culture does not change because we desire to change it. Culture changes when the organization is transformed; the culture reflects the realities of people working together every day.” – Frances Hesselbein
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