Given the financial meltdowns and economic slowdowns, many companies the world over have had to adjust to the changes going on around them. The adjustments have included massive layoffs to other organizational changes such as becoming a lean facility.

As with many large-scale changes, business leaders should know why they are implementing a change and the type of change they want to make. According to Facilities Manager, there are two types of sources that pressure organizations to change: external and internal.

External pressures are forces outside the company that it has no control over. Such forces include regulatory, social, technological or political pressures that trigger the organization to respond.

"Whatever the cause, change driven by external forces is generally of a proactive nature," Facilities Manager writes. "Successful organizational change driven by external pressures requires the capacity to effectively receive, filter and accurately interpret inflows of information from various external channels." Once the data is digested, the response must lead to a predetermined and desired organizational position.

Internal pressures, Facilities Manager continues, are often process, procedural or behavioral issues within the business such as high absenteeism, low productivity and frequent conflicts. According the publication:

Most often, internal change is reactive and is driven by pressures which appear with little or no advance warning. ...In such circumstances, organizations must take an approach that will stabilize the internal environment for a period long enough to identify the true causes of the pressure, establish a clear vision of the necessary improvements and initiate the change process toward the desired outcomes.

Once the why has been established, the company must then decide how to go about implementing changes. Management Help says there are six types of organizational changes a company can put into action. They are:

1. Organization-wide Change — Usually done by companies looking to evolve to a different level in their business life cycle and typically requires a culture change to pull off the restructuring.
2. Subsystem Change — Examples include a change in product offerings, a reorganization or implementation of new processes for certain departments only.
3. Transformational Change — This includes changes in structure or a rehashing of major business parts and processes.
4. Incremental Change — This may include the implementation of a continuous improvement system or new technologies to increase efficiencies.
5. Remedial Change — Intended to remedy current situations like poor performance or employee burnout, remedial projects are focused and urgent. This change will either fix the problem or it won't.
6. Developmental Change — This type of project is driven by specific goals like duplicating successful products or expanding the amount of customers served.

Whichever plan of attack the company chooses, the change agents should have a broad understanding of the change effort and the basic systems and structure of the organization in order to lead successfully, Management Help adds. Most important, whoever is managing the change needs to have open communication with all the members of the company.

According to the University of Virginia's Faculty & Employee Assistance Program (FEAP), employees experiencing organizational change can become anxious because they do not know what lies ahead. "Reactions such as 'they can't do this, this can't be happening,' are common. At this stage, most employees will want to know exactly how this change will affect them, their benefits, their work hours, their family and will not "hear" much other information."

Managers must learn to recognize these feelings so that they can intervene and put the employee at ease. "The Manager who moves straight into why the change is best for everyone and how business is going to be conducted disregards the human nature element," FEAP explains. Paying attention to the human element can make the transition period less difficult.

Change efforts fail because businesses become so engrossed in the tangible parts of change such as financial results and performance metrics that they ignore intangible factors such as emotions, passion and value, Dharma Consulting says. "When people are passionate and committed to a result, they make it happen."

To get everyone dedicated to the effort, Facilities Manager advises that "effective, honest and transparent communication with employees will help to build a positive belief about the change leaders and in turn will facilitate dissipation of the related anxiety within the organization."

Lastly, Facilities Manager says to educate and inform employees about the driving forces behind the need for change and instill a sense of ownership. Give employees a chance to participate in the planning, implementation and follow-up phases of the change process.

Resources

From Here to There: Effectively Managing Organizational Change
by Casey J. Wick
Facilities Manager, November/December 2008

Organizational Change and Development
by Carter McNamara
Management Help

Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development
Authenticity Consulting LLC

Managing Organizational Change
University of Virginia Faculty & Employee Assistance Program

Why Change Efforts Fail (And How You Can Succeed with Resistance-Free Change)
by Eric Klein
Dharma Consulting