Culture and Change Management
Six Key Elements to Successful Change
A successful change management effort coordinates and integrates the following six key elements to lead the organization through the change and transition:
- Sponsorship
- Organizational Alignment
- Transition Leadership
- Performance Management
- Communication
- Training, Coaching, and Mentoring
Culture influences how organizational strategy is executed. As strategies evolve in response to market conditions, organizational cultures must also shift to stay competitive and profitable. Shifting a culture requires a delicate, systematic, and well-planned approach to avoid failure and affect positive change.
Successful introduction of new ways of thinking and of new processes is not insurmountable, but the process can be challenging. Making the change a reality often requires impartial outside expertise. PM Solutions can help guide your organization through the necessary transition, ensuring you are ready for change, are prepared to lead the change, and are able to validate that change has occurred.
- A Change Readiness Assessment documents your organizational climate in terms of its culture, its history with change/transformation initiatives, and its resistance to change. PM Solutions uses a series of diagnostic tools to determine your organization’s readiness for a successful transformation effort. Information on attitudes and behaviors gathered during stakeholder interviews and surveys allows us to collectively identify areas of concern and barriers you are likely to encounter during your change efforts. The data is used to structure a specific Change Management Action Plan that will support your organization’s transformation. It is also used to understand the commitment and ability of the individuals in the change management roles to lead effective change in your organization.
- A Change Management Action Plan defines the transition path from the old way of doing business to the new. For each area of concern identified in the Change Readiness Assessment, PM Solutions works collaboratively with your organization’s change agents to develop specific action steps that will help mitigate the impact of the change management issues. These actions are designed to help overcome resistance, reduce the impact of past history, and convey a shared vision for acceptance into the business culture. Documented communication strategies are essential to ensure that stakeholders are receiving critical pieces of information at the right intervals. An important component of the action plan is the inclusion of performance measurements that will be used to determine the impact the changes are having on the organization’s strategic performance.
- Change Monitoring & Reinforcement activities are essential to validate that the change has been accepted and put into practice. To monitor change progress, PM Solutions can help you perform periodic reviews of the change initiatives identified in the Change Management Action Plan to confirm that the transition is moving along as planned. If these reviews indicate something is going awry, it serves as a trigger to immediately initiate actions required to address the issues so change efforts do not falter. Our change reinforcement services that support cultural acceptance include mentoring and coaching, workshops, and training.
To learn more about ways in which PM Solutions can help mobilize your organization’s change management efforts, contact us today.
