How to Navigate Successfully with Organizational Change

In order to meet the challenges of a shifting market and the changing demands of that market on a company’s resources, time, and people, leaders must first clearly understand where they are now (See Business Analysis) and where they want to be. Empowered with that clarity, they can then plot the course for creating a highly focused, efficient organization that is flexible and responsive to the market, to its employees, and to its customer base. Companies that do not make these changes will be left behind, and their market share will be increasingly absorbed by their competition.

Strategy: Short Term and Long Term

If a company’s leadership fails to see the need for change coming, or to respond proactively, they may find themselves in an organization that needs to change NOW! If revenue and profitability are down, or cash flow is a problem, changes have to be made immediately in order for a company to survive. Similarly, if employees are exhibiting disengagement, low productivity, and discontent, change needs to happen quickly. Rapid adjustment of people, methods, and strategies may be required to breathe new life into operations. Left unattended, these problems can bring a company down.

On the other hand, if you see the need for organizational change coming, you can plot a new course that unfolds over time to proactively solve these problems.

The Team: Individual and Team Performance

Individuals must be directed to carry out roles that match their strengths and the changing needs of the company. Individual performance must be harnessed into a smooth team process that produces desired results consistently through all changes required.

Coordination: Methods, Systems, and Roles

Measuring results for all methods, systems, and roles is critical to accurately track progress. It must also be coordinated with intelligent situational and proactive problem solving in order to produce reliable productivity, efficiency, cost control, and accountability. Collaboration, teamwork, and knowledge sharing must be present at all times.

Making effective and meaningful organizational change can make the difference between thriving or just surviving in today’s challenging and rapidly changing world of commerce. Utilizing a strategically designed organizational development and change management model for your company is crucial to continued business success. Whether it involves changing company culture, team building, strategic planning, performance management, leadership training, communication, or addressing resistance to change, doing this work consistently and effectively will separate the winners from the losers in the game of business. See Jerry’s blog The SMART Way to Promote Organizational Change.

What Intelligent Organizational Change Might Look Like

Developing and implementing strategic plans for change management might include the
following:

Functional analysis: Look at all the company functions and align them with the right structure and systems.

New organizational structure: Leverage the company’s strengths and mitigate its vulnerabilities.

Restructure:  Create new or revised job titles and descriptions, and training for those new jobs.

New/ clarified Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Create for each functional area of the company, and the processes to measure and track them.

Personality/ instinctual patterns assessments:  Match the talent and “culture fit” of people to specific jobs.

Team meetings:  Institute creative problem solving processes.

New or improved collaborative connections: Create cross-functional teams.

We take all the different pieces and synthesize them into one cohesive whole to create an optimized structure and systems for performance improvement.

We Can Help with SMART Change Management

The most significant question is, what changes will be most effective in getting your organization to where you want it to be? With our help, you can raise your company’s performance to the next level by making change an exciting challenge that can and will be fully met with success.

At Business Whisperer, we partner with you to take the fear out of organizational change and make it work. Contact us today to start embracing change and the good that it can bring.