Principles of Change Management

You will be familiar with word “Change Management” if you are working within a large corporation or organization. Change management has been around for a while but this term has become very common among organizations and corporations that like to initiate changes to processes including both tasks and organizational culture. A change management is a set of processes that are employed to make sure that changes have been implemented in ordered, controlled and systematic way.

Change management is a basic skill in which business leaders and executives need to be competent. Only few work environments are known that can continue working without changes otherwise every business needs change due to technological awareness in world and high competition in market. Change management has been developed over a period of time. Business leaders use different models for making changes in their businesses. ADKAR model is one of most commonly known and followed change management models. This model defines five basic stages that must be kept in mind to make successful changes in an organization. These stages include:

Awareness: Leaders must know what changes are needed and why.

Desire: All concerned members of organization must have motivation and desire to make changes in processes.

Knowledge: Organization must know what changes can be made and how?

Ability: An organization willing to change must have abilities and competencies to plan and implement changes.

Reinforcement: All concerned people must be reinforced to sustain any changes and adopt new behaviors.

Change management is only possible if some specific principles of change management are being followed. Here is information about basic principles of change management that must be in knowledge of all managers and leaders:

• · Different people will react differently on proposed changes
• · Everyone has fundamental needs that should be considered in change management
• · Change may result in loss therefore business leaders should be courageous to accept changes
• · Expectations need to be managed realistically
• · Courage to deal with fears

You need to know how these principles will be applied in change management.

• · You can deal with different behaviors of concerned people by proper communication beforehand. Be open and honest about providing facts. Avoid being overoptimistic. Meet their openness needs but in way that they may not set unrealistic expectations.
• · Make a communication strategy for large groups of people that ensure necessary information is efficiently and comprehensively disseminated to all people. Tell the story of change to everyone at same time. You can also arrange individual meetings to make strategies to deal with changes. This will help leaders in dealing with individual behaviors towards change.
• · Give people a choice to make among proposed changes and be very honest about consequences.
• · Give people time to express their reviews and support their decision making.
• Identify chances of losses. Define ways to replace the losses. This will help to overcome fears.
• · Give individual opportunity to all involved people to express their concerns and satisfy them with potential facts.

Follow each principle while introducing any change in your organization to get optimum results from change. Try to develop change oriented attitude in your team.