I’m too familiar with the distant, quizzical look people give when I tell them I’m a business consultant specializing in change management.
Disciplines such as marketing, sales, or IT have specific methods that, when properly executed, can help a company generate more revenue, be more efficient, or develop new products. People generally get that.
Just like those disciplines, there are specific strategies that can be used to influence the likelihood of successful implementation of a business’s new endeavors – the change they want to see. Implementing these strategies can produce the same positive results in terms of time, money, and efficiency that a sound marketing or sales strategy can produce. I find people frequently overlook this critical point.
There’s only a one-letter difference between the words chance and change. When evolving your business to be more efficient, more organized, or trying something new, your probability of success increases when you define a strategy and use proven methods.
Take a calculated approach to accomplish the new goals you’ve set for your employees, teams, and company as whole. That’s what change management is all about!
So, What Is Change Management?
To level set, the Association of Change Management Professionals defines change management as “the practice of applying a structured approach to transition an organization from a current state to a future state to achieve expected benefits.”
As a process, change management is a cyclical series of events that include identifying goals, evaluating a company’s ability to achieve those goals, defining a plan, implementing the plan, and evaluating the results. Those results are then used to initiate the process again.
Why This Is Important To Understand
Well, like with many things in life, using structured methods adds a layer of thoughtfulness and efficiency to what you are doing.
It reduces guesswork and tests assumptions before you start working towards your new goal. It can help achieve goals faster and essentially helps make your employees and business more agile. Sound like something worth investing some time in?
A new client of mine thinks so. He recently said this to me, “You know, when you first started telling me what you did, I didn’t really get it. ‘Change management’ was just a vague business term, but after we met a few times I realized how important what you were talking about was for my business and the stage we’re in right now.”
The Bottom Line
Businesses experience all sorts of change every year. Some change is by choice, other times it’s out of necessity. Regardless of the reason or scale, know that HOW you change impacts your probability of success. Ignore this and you could find yourself playing a high-risk game of chance when it comes to success.
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