How can you implement organizational changes in your company?
You know that changes must be in place everyday, if you want to build really successful business, or to sustain one step ahead of your competition.
You know that your customers make a pressure on you and your company to be better today than yesterday, and better tomorrow than today.
The best way to make your company to be a better business is to implement a systematical process in planning and implementing changes.
I will try to help you in building a system for the changes in your small business.
#1 Why You Need to Change
Do you know why you need to change something in your business?
If you don’t know why you need to change, you will probably don’t change anything in your business.
Each organizational change process has some reasons, called as change forces. However, the more important is that you need to build the system which will tell you to make something in your company.
As we talk in 11 warning signs that your business need to make something, each entrepreneur needs to have more signs that will be followed and according to them make something in their business. That something is organizational changes.
The first thing that you need to make is to find all possible change forces with potential to impact on your company.
Dig Deeper: Sources of Organizational Changes
#2 Prioritize Change Forces
Now, when you know what can be change force, you need to start thinking about what’s factors are more important, and what will be the frequency of that factors.
So,you need to choose what type of change forces you will want to follow on everyday level, and what type of change forces you will want to follow on weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual level. This classification will depend on the industry or market where your business operates.
For example, in the high-tech industries, you need to follow more factors more frequently than in the industries that are not so dependent on the change.
#3 Plan the Change Process for the Top Priority Change Forces
So, you know what to follow, and you know what has the most priority for your company.
Now, you need to prepare your business for the implementation of an organizational change process.
#4 Find Possible Sources of Resistance to Change and Try to Eliminate Them
One thing, that presents constant in each change process is resistance to change.
The fact is that you will have people who will resist the change. That’s very dangerous for your company and whole implementation process of organizational changes.
You need known sources of resistance to change, and predict who will resist and who will support the process. When you find possible resistance and define the persons which will probably resist the change process you need to try to eliminate the resistance before you start with the process.
Dig Deeper: Resistance to Organizational Changes
#5 Make Action Steps
You have a plan. You have already eliminated the possibilities of resistance, and you need to make concrete action steps that you must take for the implementation process.
#6 Delegate Tasks and Responsibilities
You can’t implement everything alone. Because of that you need to delegate tasks from the previous steps together with responsibilities for concrete people.
You are entrepreneur, problem solver and dreamer. You need people who can implement what you have imagined. Even so, you need also to help them for better understanding why the changes must be implemented, and what they will receive for them after the implementation process.
#7 Check the Implementation Process
Starting with implementation proces will not guarantee the success of the process. You will still need to check the key performance measures to ensure that everything go as you planned, or simply that the change process goes in the wanted direction.
#8 Improve the Implementation Process
There will be always something that can be improved in the process. If you find something was not the same as planned, or wanted you need to make alignments into the process to ensure that everything is OK.
#9 Celebrate the Success
Each successfully finished project need to be celebrated with all your team members. To make your business different, better and improved is not a small thing. On the other side, this is not the end of changes in the business at all. You need to continue with another change process, and you want to have highly energized team for the next steps.
#10 Continue With the Same Process for the Next Top Priority Change Force
It’s time to start again with the next most important change force and associated changes need for your business.
