Understanding and Planning Business Change

Actions speak louder than words” is an often-repeated saying. It has come to epitomize organization life. No time to plan - have to get on with things. In fact, “fire, ready, aim” seems to be the common way of managing in today’s competitive marketplace.

However, if you want to be successful at changing your organization, a strong planning process is invaluable. It will help you to understand the need for change and to build proactive, rather than reactive, plans to survive and prosper. It will also help you create plans that are supported by key members of the organization.

There are a lot of challenges in planning for change, some of which need to be guarded against. For example, avoid being internally focused. Make sure you continuously scan the external environment so the need for change can be readily identified.

Success sometimes breeds complacency. Just look at sports teams that win a major title. They struggle to win it a second time. Strive for an objective appreciation of the business issues facing you and check the assumptions that created your past successes.

Shared ownership is a powerful motivator. A participative planning process involving representatives of all key stakeholders will ensure that everyone understands and supports the need for change.

Time and energy spent in planning meetings with the right people will produce stronger strategies and strong leadership throughout the organization.

The right people often include members of the board, staffers, and even outside stakeholders. Sometimes a third party provides a useful, facilitation process to make sure that all viewpoints are considered.

Understand the Need for Change

The first step in the change process is to recognize the external forces for change and be a driver of change rather than a victim.

Kodak, for example, was late in recognizing that the digital camera would eliminate the need for film and so shares have fallen from almost $28 to $25.50. Kodak shares stood at $40 or more until 2001, but since then the company has been hit by declining sales of camera film, even though Kodak has moved into digital camera production.

The need for change usually originates in forces and changes in the external environment as in the trend to globalization, to outsourcing, and the aging population.

Thus to understand the impact of change, it’s a good idea to promote a “culture of awareness” in all employees, by bringing the outside world on a regular basis.

Look Inside Your Organization

To identify the need for change and build effective solutions, you need to develop a complete understanding of your organizational environment.

Ask yourself, “What about our business is consistent with the demanding, constantly- changing, external environment and what is not?”

Perform an Internal Diagnosis

There are lots of data sources to consider. Use a variety of techniques, both formal and informal, for collecting information from employees. You can do this with interviews, surveys, formal assessments, focus groups and large group interventions. You can and should monitor key measurements in your operations, in your financials, in technology and in the market.

The real challenge is to summarize and synthesize all this data into a coherent package of information that will actually give you strong indications of, first, the changes occurring in the environment and, second, how those changes are affecting your own business.

The final step is to present the data to the organization to create understanding for the need to change. This can be done through constant communication of the data in meetings, in newsletters, on bulletin boards, and employee ‘town halls.’ Once understanding is achieved, and you need to obtain feedback that it has been achieved, the process of defining and implementing strategic changes can begin.