Managing Organizational Change

To keep a step ahead of changing market conditions, new technologies and human resources issues, organizational innovation and change is needed. However, managing the change  is difficult.  It requires a very good transformation leadership. According to John Kotter ,some changes fail because of the 8 common errors leaders make in organizational change efforts : 1) allowing too much complacency 2) failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition 3) underestimating the power of vision  4) undercommunicating the vision 5) permitting obstacles to block the vision,6)failing to create short term wins, 7) declaring victory too soon and 8) neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture.

To manage an organizational change a leader may go through the 8 stage change process by John P. Krotter. This is the 8 state change process:

Defrost a hardened status quo:

1.    Establish a sense of urgency

2.    Create the guiding coalition

3.    Develop a vision and strategy

4.    Communicate the change vision

Introduce new practices:

5.    Empower a broad base of people to take action

6.    Generate short term wins

7.    Consolidate gains and producing even more change

Ground the changes in the culture, and making them stick:

8.    Institutionalize new approaches in the corporate culture

However, most people don't like change because they don't like being changed. When change comes into view, fear and resistance to change follow – often despite its obvious benefits.

People fight against change because they fear to lose something they value, or don't understand the change and its implications, or don't think that the change makes sense, or find it difficult to cope with either the level or pace of the change. Resistance emerges when there is a threat to something the individual values. The threat may be real or it may be just  perception. It may arise from a genuine understanding of the change or from misunderstanding, or even almost total ignorance about it.