Change Implementation and Business Readiness

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No

sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but

the world as it will be— Isaac Asimov

This profound quote captures the essence of change in all walks of life and business today. This

quote is more pertinent to any business carried out today. Businesses worldwide today are working

for or on a ‘Change’ on a daily basis. They could be working pro-actively or reactively to achieve the

change but the most agile enterprise make change as the constant for stabilising or improving their

businesses. Every change needs executives to mobilise and sustain energy within their organisation

and communicate their objectives clearly and creatively. Objectives are defined based on the kind of

change intended and creativity aids in communicating them to employees effectively. All the

changes which businesses carry out are handled as programmes with clear definition and intent.

They are of the following nature:

1. Developmental

2. Transitional

3. Transformational

The reasons for undertaking the change programmes are different and these differences call for

appropriate methodologies to manage them.

Developmental Change Programmes: These are cyclical change programmes which are undertaken

by a business unit or units of an organisation for improving their processes or performance

standards. Employees part of these programmes seldom are resistant to the changes as they initiate

them and are an integral part of these changes. It is easy to keep up the motivation level of the

employees in such programmes and thus managing them becomes easier.

Transitional Change Programmes: These programmes concentrate on replacing the existing

processes with completely new ones and hence the changes are more structural and necessary in

nature. The necessity could be due to a corporate re-organisation, merger or an acquisition, for

creating new products or implementing a new technology. Employees in such programmes might

feel unstable during such changes and have insecurities resulting in non-existent hurdles

unnecessary and thus adds additional challenge.

Transformational Change Programmes: Transformational changes may involve both developmental

and transitional change programmes happening in tandem. They are generally undertaken when

market scenarios create unique situations which would mandate organisations to re-look at their

strategies to counter changing supply & demand equations, falling revenues, and unexpected

competition or while implementing a radically new technology. These situations only engender more

complex situations with additional people challenges.

The graph below tries to link the different factors which play important role in any Change

programme. There is no particular order that connects the factors and they should be independently

indicating a view. For the ease of representation, we have assumed that the employee buy in for all

the changes is at the same level and the key for graph is as given below:

1. ‘D’ stands for Developmental Change programme

2. ‘T1’ stands for Transitional Change programme

3. ‘T2’ stands for Transformational Change programme

Fig 1: Developmental vs. Transitional vs. Transformational changes

Business need drives all changes but greater need doesn’t necessarily translate into a buy in by all

the business users and this affects morale of employees working for the change or employees

affected by the change. The stress levels they are under plays a major role in motivating them.

Effort put in by employees could act as a good indicator of the stress they are under being a part of

the change. All the factors behave differently for different change programmes and they determine

the effort required by the members who are managing the change on behalf of the management.

If only a third of the change programmes are successful*, it becomes doubly important for employee

buy in to be high. This depends upon various factors and needs to be addressed very carefully.

The fundamental building blocks for any Change model which could increase the employee buy in

are:

a) Building the story for change

b) Team Building for incorporating the change

c) Reinforce new system and

d) Capability enhancement.

Fig 2 in the subsequent page highlights the different team structures for a change programme.

* - Kohn Kotter’s research in Leading Change

Avg

High

VeryHigh

Employee Stress

Employee Effort

Change Programme

Effort

Employee Morale

D D

D D

T1

T2

T1

T1

T1

T2

T2

T2

Avg

High

VeryHigh

AboveAvg

AboveAvg

BusinessNeed

D

T1

T2

Attempts for any change starts with identifying the change agents who will implement the change

model. Change agents could be leaders who cut across business units or could be nominated from

within the business unit.

Fig 2: Centralised Change management Decentralised Change Management

A carefully constructed change agent program is essential to any Change implementation. Such a

programme requires three elements: a thoughtful design, the careful recruitment and development

of personnel, and close integration between the change agent team and the organizational areas

targeted for Change. There is no one correct change management team structure. These structures

are dependent on the culture of the organisation and the nature of change being targeted. After

carefully designing the team structure and laying concrete roles and responsibilities, it is imperative

that the right members/ change agents fill in the structure proposed. The change agents’ team need

to be a mix of experienced business experts and academic experts. As the business experts design

the solutions, the academic experts help in implementing and socialising them with the wider

employee base. By recruiting the right change agent team, it becomes an easier task of integrating

them with the end business user.

The foundations laid by the activities above help in a smooth delivery of the successful change.

Delivery of the change needs to be led by seasoned programme managers who propagate ‘one

team’ attitude across the organisation structure and build a metrics based control mechanism. By

bringing in strong programme management processes coupled with innovative solutions from the

business experts, a change programme can bring in desired changes which align with the vision of

the organisation and help reap the short term benefits while laying a roadmap for future

transformations.

A famous quote by a person who managed to alter a sluggish nature of a conglomerate to make it

one of the finest examples of a company with change in its DNA:

Change before you have to – Jack Welch.

This example proves to us that every organisation which builds change into its DNA will outperform

rivals in the present, outsmart competition in the future to create new markets and live for many

generations.

Jaipal Naidu

Business Consultant, Business Advisory Services

Senior Management

Business Unit 1 Leader

Business Unit 2 Leader

Central Change Leader

Change Agents-Business Unit 1

Change Agent -Business Unit 2

Senior Management

Business Unit Leaders

Change Agents-Business Champions

Business Unit Leaders

Change Agents-Business Champions