Change Is the Only Constant

Everybody talks about "Change" and importance of "Change management" as the only "constant" with dynamics in the global economy changing rapidly. Global competition necessitates that traditional organizations service or product line models incorporate innovation for on-going differentiation.  However little is said about the Change Agent leaders who lead this change. One of our clients (I will not mention the name) is going through a change management process. My observations on this are little effort has been made by the leadership in understanding the business model of how and why the change needs to be done along the lines how to lead by participative trust. Instead the model of "divide and conquer" is assumed making the change management process a painful, chaotic and chasing after the wind affair.

I think the fair questions that a change management leader needs to ask before he embarks on one are:

1. What are the main dimensions of innovation that can be brought before disrupting a business model holistically?
2. How do I enable my organization to pursue business model innovation?
3. How does the role of technology, software and people integrate in supporting my business transformation?

I feel answering those three questions goes in parallel with self introspection within the change leaders and may translate to something like:

1. How am I contributing to build this organization and how can I involve the existing people so that growth takes place in them as well?
2. How can I be innovative myself ...what the changes that I personally need to make before I dictate?
3. How am I using technology, software and people skills to support my transformation in alignment with the business transformation?

 Circling back then on the innovation organization go through different models of business innovation to facilitate change this can be customer-centric, process innovation centric, or supply chain centric. In the past lot of emphasis has been given to customer centric innovation but management specialists have realized the internal stakeholders are also a type of customer who make up the organization and provide the services. If change is not accepted by the them, change management and change initiatives will fail, even if you alienate them or throw them out of the organization.

My suggestions are simple here:

1. Understand why the change and outlay the metrics for transparent discussion
2. Be the change first before you dictate change.  
3. Involve everybody in the road map. This takes time but is very essential. There are proponents who may say we don't have that kind of time...but believe me if this is not done well ...we will be spending lot more time and resources fixing stuff. 
4. Improve responsiveness and service with love and trust. (Boy this is a hard one!!) 
5. Optimize pricing, think or creative sources of funding.
6. Research, monitor and gather feedback, incorporate back the good and refine the process. 

Change is the only constant but how we manage this change will enable our constancy in the marketplace.


Thoughts,

Sam Kurien