Organisations can be very resilient to crises or quickly wither and fall away. Much research supports the notion that building agility is a way to develop the strength to cope with crises and also suggests that building change management capability is one of those factors.
However, Change Management is a broad topic, so it would be helpful to understand what parts of this discipline are beneficial.
Change Management usually starts after we decide what to change, not which change to make. The driver of the change could be a response to an event, or it could be a planned change “from within”. Determining what or how we should react to a crisis is not in our scope. Change Management aims to improve the likelihood that the change we choose to make is successfully adopted.
Our experience has taught us that a good starting point is understanding our change capability and matching this capability to the changes we are busy with now and those we see coming. One action is identifying the “must win” projects to focus our resources and energy on. Failure to achieve a strategically important adaptation to the crisis can spell organisational death.
We have seen a similar reaction in the past two months to what we saw at the beginning of the pandemic – organisations pausing for a short time in the hope/assumption that they will soon see the direction events are going and plan their survival changes from that.
I think that what is different now from a little over three years ago is a greater sense of reality than before. It’s almost as if the pandemic created a more accepting mindset that some changes can happen despite all the sophistication and development we have achieved so far. Many are deciding that this storm will endure and significantly impact the world economic order. Because industries (even countries) are affected differently, organisations need to adjust differently to others to prevail. It’s about asking the right questions.
What I suggest organisations think about is the following:
- Given increased commodity prices and a sudden shortage of investment capital in Africa, how does that affect the changes you plan to make? We are experiencing a “scissors effect” in many industries – rising cost structure and lower demand. What risks are we taking by not insisting on measuring the people side of change? There are objective measures of change that we incorporate into project dashboards
- How critical are your people in achieving the “must-win” changes? If the dependency is high, Change Management becomes an existential competency, not an optional “nice to have”
- In an environment of imbalances and scarcities, can we afford to throw away any investment we make in building a capability to change? If the answer is “no”, then it becomes essential that we build change capability in a way that is sustainable and accessible to the whole organisation. This capability could become the new competitive advantage
The benefit of the Change Management approach and methodology we train and practice focuses on basing our strategy on a foundation of data gathering and analysis, using tools and techniques honed from decades of research into winning practices.
Striking a balance between the technical and people sides of the change and adequately preparing leaders to lead their people through change are critical components of the agility we seek to weather the challenging times we are in these days. While we could do this at a single-project level, we would always suggest a strategic approach to embedding this capability into all facets of the organisation.
*Tom Marsicano is the founder and CEO of ‘and Change’, a global advisory and change management consultancy. Tom is Master Certified Prosci® Instructor with an extensive background, especially in financial services and IT systems. His love for research make him a widely respected facilitator and speaker. Write him at tom@andchange.com or learn more at andchange.com
