How good is your Change-Management?
With a broad-based campaign "Germany needs more YES-sayers", a newspaper in November 2021 is promoting the willingness to think NEWLY and MORE OPENLY and to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing
world - but also to question them critically:
YES to challenges
YES to now-not someday
YES to curiosity
YES to impatience
YES to questioning
YES to wanted to know
YES to experience/strong>
YES to believing in oneself
YES to high goals/strong>
YES to perseverance
YES to starting small
YES to planning great goals
YES to dreaming
YES to action….
In business, openness to change is more important than ever to...
– to remain competitive,
– meet challenging customer requirements,
– to assert themselves in the face of increasing international competition,
– to take advantage of the opportunities offered by global networking,
– to work more efficiently and effectively,
– and, and, and… (Keyword: VUCA World)
But why are many change processes, which are supposed to have a positive effect on the company's success and on securing the future of its employees, not successful? What challenges do companies and their employees face?
In theory, every company knows that an important success factor for sustainable change is the exchange of information about the goals to be achieved and their impact on the company and its employees.
In addition, management must agree that the necessary resources will be made available in the long term. In short, the change should be well planned.
For managers, change means "leading" employees through unfamiliar terrain toward a new goal. In the process, tensions, conflicts, fears and resistance should be adequately taken into account and ideally resolved.
Change is not an everyday occurrence and is often not in the "repertoire" of managers. On the other hand, employees who are affected by change want the certainty that there will be no doubts about further implementation in the event of setbacks, or that solutions exist if the change does not go according to plan.
This is precisely why management support and awareness of these challenges is a key factor in the success of the change.
In reality, however, things often look different: The motives for change are sometimes incomprehensible to employees. There is usually a lack of clarity and persuasiveness, and often simply a lack of time, which has been underestimated for informing and involving employees. In most cases, possible scenarios are not discussed in advance.
How do managers, who are largely responsible for the success of the project, manage to implement change successfully?
Change meansletting go and not holding on to old structures. The process of letting go must be enabled in order to make room for the new. Breaking away from familiar ways of doing things is not a rational process. This high emotional involvement of employees requires leadership. It is not surprising that entire management teams show signs of being overtaxed and underconfident in view of the dimension of the leadership tasks in change processes, because this change process also often has to take place in parallel with day-to-day business.
What should managers be prepared for in the change process?
Successful leadership must deal with the various emotional stages in the change process and take the time to accompany the change. Good employees should not be "lost" in the process.
A good illustration of these different stages has already been described in 1996 by C.F. Janssen and further developed by P. Kirkbride in the so-called"House of Change".
Surveys have shown, that when Changemanagement is successful, that is, when there is a excellent leadership, the process takes place more quickly and with fewer "casualties."
Poor leadership leads to higher levels of resistance and friction, resulting in demotivation, loss of time and resources, and in extreme cases, the loss of good employees.
Every responsible manager should consciously deal with the emotional stages before the vor change and take the employees along accordingly at each stage.
