How would you manage the change process while maintaining operating effectiveness?

As a manager, you have encountered issues that mandate wide spread change within the company. How would you manage the change process while maintaining operating effectiveness?

Change in any company is difficult for people to deal with. As an employee who has dealt with this handled wrong I would say that the first thing that I would do it sit down with my team and explain to them the changes that are coming. This would not be a negotiation, but rather just a conversation in which I let the people on the team feel that they are important and that their opinions matter to the overall function of the organization. In this conversation I would lay out what will be changing and how it will be changing. I would then create a timeline of the changes to come and the people to be involved in the changes. The creation of the schedule, once complete, would lead to another meeting in which the changes as far as the way all members of the team will be involved, would play out. I would break the change down so that it would not interrupt the flow of the business so that clients or customers would not be affected in a negative manner. This could mean that physical changes would occur after hours. As far as human capital changes, I would say that the best thing to do would be to have incremental training to ready everyone on the new steps, expectations and procedures for the company. This would allow me to integrate the staff into the change as opposed to imposing it on them. This would allow the business to operate as usual while the changes are taking place in the background. So when the time comes to “go live” with the new procedures it will not be like being dunked into cold water, but rather it will be like an immersion that gets completed to 100%.

References:

COBIT® control practices. (2007). Rolling Meadows, IL.