Ten dos and don'ts for effective change management 

When adapting to a new business model, organisations need to evolve to meet new needs. It is not enough to simply come up with and present a new organisational structure to your stakeholders: you need to work hard to make change a success!  

In order to improve efficiency and competitiveness, each person must find their place within the new structure, get to grips with new ways of doing things and take ownership of new processes. It is, therefore, essential to prepare your change management strategy very early on, in order to enable the people involved to give their best during the period of instability inherent in any change.  Here are ten things you need to do and ten things you need to avoid doing for successful change.   

Do the following: 

  1. Include the change in the business targets of the organisation's global strategy.  
  2. Establish a change strategy and build a roadmap. 
  3. Anticipate the expectations of people involved in order to be able to put forward actions while managing the change. 
  4. Clearly define what is expected from each person in the new organisational structure. 
  5. Build a team that you can rely on during challenging phases. 
  6. Promote the expertise of internal and external stakeholders in order to reduce their zone of discomfort. 
  7. Effectively manage the transition period: which actions? To achieve what results? For how long? 
  8. Promote innovative work methods to increase efficiency. 
  9. Allocate sufficient resources to internal and external communications (newsletters, events, flyers, training, etc.). 
  10. Adapt to the various cultures and work methods specific to each country (worldwide). 

 

Don't do the following: 

  1. Believe that change will happen by itself once the organisational structure has been explained (change doesn't happen overnight).
  2. Expect immediate operational efficiency.
  3. Believe that the organisational structure will be the same in theory and in practice. 
  4. Disappoint those who support change, push those who are undecided onto the wrong side and allow those who resist change to muddy the water. 
  5. Fear heated and sometimes repetitive discussions: change does not happen without conflict. 
  6. Forget that time is needed between the explanation of a concept or business model and its taking on board by the various stakeholders. 
  7. Forget that each person has a past and must build a future in which he or she needs to play an active role.
  8. Think that reporting tools can be set up once the situation is more stable: it is important to be able to measure what has been achieved, be aware of improvements to be made and assess what remains to be done. 
  9. Put forward ready-made solutions: each organisational change is unique. 
  10. Be tempted to return to the previous organisational structure: it is no longer available and change cannot be stopped once it has begun. 

  Changing now means preparing for tomorrow's success!