Managing Change
Change is the only thing that does not change when everything else changes. Change is a fact of life. It can be predictable or unpredictable, slow or fast, incremental or transformational, planned or unplanned. It is in most cases uncertain. Conditions, situations, and time change. Conditions can never remain the same. Change in an organization can either be due to internal factors or the influence of the external environment – government policy, influence of government relations with other countries, competition, and others.
Drivers of change
- Advances in technology especially ICT – internet, social media (Face book, twitter, LinkedIn)
- Globalization – a company in one country is competing with companies in in the whole world and it is easy to know whether it has quality or not.
- Knowledge explosion and changing consumer tastes
- Changing demographics – with mostly a young ‘global’ population that favours ‘global’ brands and heavily using the internet to reach and communicate with family, friends and their managers.
- Demanding stakeholders – shareholders, staff, customers, financial institutions, government, civil society organizations, and the public in general require ethical entities.
- Chinazation of markets and trade
- Influence of international non-governmental organizations
Managing change
- Continuous professional training for staff and management helps an organization to keep abreast of the changes in the way things and done, and the changing external environment (technology, economy, demography, etc.)
- Constant communications with stakeholders –including staff – helps to reduce possible shocks that changes in both the internal and external environment may cause to people.
- The organization should invest in research to ensure that it keeps innovating and creative to avoid being outcompeted by the others that have invested in research.
- Multi-skilling staff is another way of reducing job losses due to a change in technology, among others.
- Leadership and management approaches should be participative and supportive. Consultation of staff by management is viewed by staff as a sign of respect, trust, and valuing their contribution to the entity.
