It is a given that organisations are living in a world full of increasing levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

It is a given that organisations are living in a world full of increasing levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

Not only are they being impacted by a wide array of pressures - from rapidly changing demographics and customer tastes to increasing levels of competition as new entrants and business ideas are spun up overnight – but rapid digital transformation means they are having to reinvent themselves continually and adapt their business processes, effectively on the fly. And all this comes with ever increasing calls to do it in a sustainable way.

In the food and beverage sector for example, big and previously dominant brands like Mondelez, Kraft Heinz and Kellog have lost sales and ground in their sector as packaged foods have become less popular and replaced by more natural products. It is a pattern that has happened across a wide range of sectors and there are two key truths for business leaders who are impacted:

1. organisations cannot risk the negative impacts of not executing their business critical changes as tastes change and new, more nimble competition moves into their space
2. it continues to be difficult for organisations to capture the full value from their Change activities against this backdrop

So why do organisations find it so difficult to deliver on their change agenda? We think there may be a number of causes for that including:

• it could be that these organisations simply are not pursuing the right strategy to ensure their short and long term success
• or it could be that their business is in rapid decline and they are unable to muster sufficient resources and the organisational will to turn things around
• it could even be that they simply lack the ability to harness digital capability and process efficiencies that can drive real business change

Getting employees to embrace change is key

However, we would contend that the core reason for organisations failing to execute, and realise benefits from, their strategies is the difficulty in getting employees to embrace the never-ending list of new Change initiatives that impact them. 

Which is where effective organisational Change Management becomes essential – helping people to adopt new behaviours and accept (and take ownership of) Change. Instead of resisting it.  

The harsh reality is that successful Project implementations rarely come from purely technical Project plans that do not take into account the people related dynamics of Change. And the qualitative impacts of poorly managed Change is likely to be seen and felt by many across the organisation. Effective Change Management not only increases the likelihood of achieving Project objectives but it also feeds through into increased return on investment (ROI), and our own research shows that it can return $6.50 for every $1 spent on large projects.  

The issue for Leaders is how best to set the organisation up to make Change happen and there are 3 key questions they typically need to answer:  

1. How do you develop Change capability that is flexible enough to align with what are increasingly agile approaches inside the organisation? 
2. Should you rely on external consultants and interim managers, or should you seek to build internal capability? 
3. Should you build capability focused on supporting a specific project delivery, or the specific needs of different roles in change? 

  Agility is critical in today’s environment  

Agility is top of the agenda for leaders in organisations right now.  

According to McKinsey, agile transformations can improve employee engagement by as much as 20-30% and that feeds through into improvements in organisational efficiency of 30% - and reductions in time to market of around 40%.  

So the potential business benefits are there. Although, according to research by Cap Gemini, only 20% of organisations have truly established agile ways of working across their organisations.  

Organisations that lack agility, and the ability to adapt to Change, can suffer more than ever before from:  

• more adaptable competitors entering and dominating their market space 

• business performance deteriorating rapidly (and when deterioration occurs recovery is tougher than ever before) 

• the engagement of employees becoming increasingly difficult over time 

•  the term ‘change fatigue’ becoming part of regular dialogue inside the organisation 

As Organisations increasingly adopt agile approaches, Change Management has to follow suit.  

Listen below as Changefirst CEO, Audra Proctor as explains why agile organisations need agile Change Management to help support the delivery of Change at the volume, speed and accuracy required just now.  

Leaders recognise the benefits of building internal Change capability 

It is also clear that Leaders are aware of the value of creating Change Capability internally in their Organisation.  

When we asked more than 2000 Change leaders what they believed was the most effective way to help their organization implement change in the current environment. The vast majority – 86% – said that internal teams were the best way to implement Change. 

This type of in-house approach has a number of benefits including:  

• Leaders are able to assess and manage the overall demand for Change and match that to available capacity 

• Internal change agents harness continuous learning on Change projects to improve future implementations 

• The ability to deliver effective Change becomes a core competency of the organisation – not an outsourced service 

• People at all levels in the business become actively involved in the change process 

• Change Management is built into the culture of the organisation 

It is against this backdrop that Changefirst believes that Organisations should be reassessing their reliance on external consultancies and interims to drive major business Change.

The importance of making Change everyone’s business 

If an organisation is to become truly agile – and able to transform effectively through the organisational lifecycles shown below. Delivering Change at the volume, speed and accuracy required to ensure that it doesn’t go into decline – it is clear that it needs more than a small number of project or OD specialists trained in Change Management.  

For us, the bedrock of this type of agility is about adopting an Enterprise Change Management approach and making Change everyone’s business. It takes the building of Change Management capabilities across the entire organization, ensuring that key processes are effectively applied to all projects and business critical changes.  

This means adopting Change Management throughout the organisation, deploying a single Change Management methodology on major projects, delivering role relevant Change Management training at all levels and giving people the Change Management tools they need to play an active role in the organisational Change process.  

Need to learn more? 

Download a complimentary copy of Chapter 1 of our book Enterprise Change Management – How to prepare your organisation for continuous Change.