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Managing the inevitable -- changeBy Amanda Kramer
an important aspect of the human resources profession? A. Business consultant Charles Royal said he's never really come across a good definition for managing change within a company, so he created his own. "Change management is the process of successfully going from the known to the unknown with the cooperation and support of the people affected," said Royal, a former employee of CUNA Mutual Group who now works part time as a consultant to businesses on change management. Dealing with change -- which can occur when a company undergoes any kind of action that might be considered new or different, like losing a boss or gaining employees -- within an organization can be the lifeblood of people in the human resources profession, Royal said. There's a failure rate of corporate change initiatives that hovers around 70 percent, he said, and as a response, Royal has worked to create a program he teaches to businesses that helps employees learn how to accept change smoothly. As for what human resources professionals should know about change management, Royal said they should understand the types of change and how to respond appropriately to each type. "Cyclical change is typified by economic fluctuations. Interest rates go up, and come down. And actions can be taken to influence cyclical change as demonstrated by the Federal Reserve," Royal said. "The real problem is structural change, which is change that occurs when something new is introduced into the mix. Examples are medical advances and technology advances. Structural change is permanent and irreversible. The human resources message is that structural change exists whether we like it or not, there is no going back; things will never be like they were prior to the change. New knowledge, once learned, cannot be unlearned. The best thing to do is to accept it, and get busy finding ways to adapt to it, and find opportunities in it. People who fight structural change will lose in the end." "(Human resources professionals) should understand how change affects people and how those people respond," Royal continued. "For example, change is inherently destructive -- it destroys the known and replaces it with the unknown. The product of this process is loss ... change always involves loss. The job of people managing any change is to identify these losses, acknowledge that they exist, and guide staff through them. You have to allow time for this, or you'll never have the support you need to implement the change." Presenting change to employees can be tricky, but Royal said it's important that managers strive to showcase the change as a "long-run" benefit. Also, human resources professionals should understand the importance of managing change right the first time. "Change is unique in that once a hole is dug by mismanaging change, it's almost impossible to recover," he said. "Sometimes mismanaged change is worse than not making any change at all. Productivity and morale fall, especially because people are spending an inordinate amount of time talking about it. If there is one characteristic of change, it's that people will talk about it to each other." Royal said the solution is to build change management into every business plan. Anticipate problems and address them quickly, he said. "It's amazing that if you wait until there is a real problem with an unhappy staff, and then act, you get no credit for it," Royal said. "Employees see the actions as putting things back to where they should have been in the first place. If you take those same actions and build them into the plan from the outset, people will be appreciative and more inclined to support the change." kramer.news@gmail.com madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
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