Developing a Change Plan

Following my last blog post on developing a vision and mission, this post will focus on creating a change plan for organizational change. Organizational change has been a focus topic for many years now and knowing how to create a change plan is crucial to your organization's ongoing success. Implementing change in an organization is not an easy task, any change will be met with challenges, such as low support or negativity towards the change. People get comfortable with the way things are and don't see the need for change. This is why a strong change plan is needed. Follow this framework to develop a strong change plan.

Identify Your Change Needs

There are three areas that affect strategy from where you can identify a change need: Management, Organization, or Resources. The way you identify a need for change is to take a look at how each affects your organization's strategy as it compares to the external environment. This will help you to see holes which can be made up with a strategy change. For example, if there is a technological development in the industry your organization's resources and the external environment will no longer match up. Once you identify this imbalance you can change your strategy to ensure they are linked once again. This may be through licensing or buying the new technology or increasing your own R&D to ensure your technology remains competitive.

Identify the Urgency and Organizational Readiness

Once your change has been identified it is crucial to identify the urgency. Continuing with the new technology example, will the new technology in the industry significantly reduce your market share by the end of the next quarter? If it will, the level of urgency is likely crisis. After you have identified the urgency, take a look at your organization. Are they ready to act? Are you ready to act? It is important to know where your company stands to know where it can go.

Establish Action Guidelines

The first thing you will want to do is to identify your priority objectives, things that need to be done right away. If there is new technology in your industry which could seriously affect your market share, the first thing you should do is hold a meeting with the senior executives to ensure that everyone is in the know and options can be drafted. In this meeting (or series of meetings) chose a path of action and develop your steps and targets to deal with the issue. Next you will have to decide how the change will be managed. Will you oversee the change or will you assign a dependent project team? Next, determine the pace of the change. In a crisis situation the pace will likely be much faster, make sure the pace aligns with the urgency.

Create a Plan of Action

Once you get to this step it is imperative that you create a detailed plan. I like to set it out step by step alongside my targets. At each step include an estimated time, cost and employee or manager who will be in charge at that step.

ACT!

Put the plan into action. If you decided you would spearhead the change plan then ensure that each step and target are met on time and cost. If you decided to assign the project to a separate team, don't neglect, check in and ensure they are on target.

Change in an organization is not an easy process. But, if you follow this framework and create a strong detailed plan, the change has a better chance for success.