How can organizations manage constant and rapid change effectively while minimizing risks and achieving business goals across the company? Adapting work practices, transforming processes, and enhancing performance through change management are crucial but also quite challenging. Research indicates that over half of business and technology executives identify change management as the primary obstacle to accomplishing their organization’s objectives.
Despite the difficulties of managing change, the question isn’t whether you require professional change management in today’s ever-changing business environment. However, which method do you use strategically? In the past 20 years, and especially in the last 10 years, there has been a growing interest in change management among C-level executives. For instance, some of my clients have incorporated change management responsibilities into senior and executive positions, such as integrating it into the role of the chief human resources officer or creating new roles like chief transformation officer or chief change officer, thereby establishing change management as a strategic influencer.
Incorporating change management and leveraging it from the beginning of an undertaking, being aware of the human aspect risk, and analyzing the human-centered impact during the strategy development and planning phase can be a game changer for projects and programs, decreasing risks and improving efficiency.
Lack of investment in change management may be costly and contribute to project failure. However, on the positive side, Prosci reports that projects with great change management plans will be six times more successful in meeting the business objectives they are hoping to achieve than projects with inadequate (or no) change management.
The attributes of a people-centric change management
As a result of megatrends and smaller changes, these shifts impact organizations, creating changes in roles, responsibilities, and working habits. According to me, companies face three major issues:
- How can they get their staff’s buy-in, acceptance, and participation?
- How can stakeholders affected be guided throughout the process? and
- How can they adapt their processes and organizational structure and evaluate their effectiveness in implementing change to ensure they deliver value?
Discussion of these questions at a very early stage is essential. If you can address these issues in a meaningful and holistic way, understanding the issue and having a sound method of managing change are essential. From my experience, five main elements are the most important.
- Vision with a purpose: The transformation’s vision is clearly defined and shared openly, clearly, and frequently with all people interested.
- Empathetic leadership in change: Change leaders are driven by empathy and invest in active listening, empowerment, role modeling and influence.
- Sound strategy and alignment An in-depth review of the culture, impact chains, and human-centered risks is the driving force behind the change strategy and assures overall alignment across the enterprise.
- Implementation iterative: The organization acts continuously and adapts its actions and strategies at the highest speed when necessary.
- Qualitative and quantitative metrics: Ensure that change management progress, benefit realization, and adoption are consistently and accurately measured.
Working with clients from different industries and all over the world for several years, I’ve learned that with these pillars, every organization, regardless of industry, can implement a sustainable change management strategy. This approach can increase credibility, ease of access, and aesthetics and will also be incorporated into the DNA of the business. Additionally, this strategy will lead to effective change management regardless of the nature or scale of the initiative, the stakeholder in the process, and even the complexity that must be dealt with. Ultimately, it results in a value-driven and people-centric approach to change management, minimizes risk, provides the expected results, and boosts processes, people, and performance.

Aligning capabilities for change management
The skills required to implement effective strategies are contingent upon the type of transformation your business plans to pursue. Common transformations and the corresponding capabilities include:
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End-to-end transformation: If your organization is undergoing a large or complex transformation involving many employees, multiple countries, departments, cultures, and external stakeholders (such as partners, vendors, customers, and suppliers), choose a change management strategy that can oversee the development of a change strategy, its execution, and adoption from beginning to end.
Culture integration Change management that is strategic offers a comprehensive plan for cultural integration. This action plan allows the company and its stakeholders to change and blend practices, routines, and values without compromising core values or convictions. A well-planned plan and a commitment to be cultivated through appreciation, training, and communication assure an easy integration of cultures (e.g., after merger integrations or during the transition into managed service).
New methods and technologies: Novel or complex transformations require a strategy for managing change specifically designed to handle specific risks and impacts. Examples include the use of artificial intelligence robotic process automation cloud migration, business models driven by data deployment, ESG, and new standards for compliance.
Designing work and managing talent: Every change affects your company’s working methods. This is why it is vital to adopt a change management method that facilitates the creation and implementation of the future of the work plan, fosters a sense of belonging, and improves long-term employee retention.
In any type of transformation you undertake, make sure to invest in an approach to change management that provides various acceleration tools for change. Accelerator examples include formulating a change and culture strategy and developing a culture blueprint, setting up a Change Management Office, and conducting a post-change adoption assessment.
Collaboration to achieve success
Successful change management requires commitment from the organization, effective change leadership, and sustainability of change efforts. While these factors require internal resources, an external partner can provide valuable assistance, especially for special change initiatives such as mergers and acquisitions, reorganizations, or the introduction of new technologies like AI.
When seeking a partner, look for one with extensive change management experience across various industries and locations, strong change management accreditations, a collaborative and accountable partnership approach, and the capability to offer not only consulting insights and strategies, but also supporting frameworks, tools, and technologies.