Change is integral to growth and success, but it isn’t always welcomed with open arms. Staff may be apprehensive about organizational change and unaware of the advantages that come with it. Apprehension and minimal buy-in can result in ineffective change, removing the opportunity to improve an organization and ultimately wasting time and resources.
Effective organizational change management (OCM) works to ease the impact of change and transition, minimizing the impact on employees and quickly achieving the business outcomes your team is setting out to achieve. Along with effective OCM is the power of process management. Business process mapping documents the current and future state of the organization to build comprehensive requirements. These documents hold significant value from a team-building standpoint as they spend time working together. They build and strengthen relationships among staff, who will be key to implementing organizational changes. Intersecting the two generates enthusiasm among stakeholders and subject matter experts (SMEs) to create buy-in.
Understanding Organizational Change Management
Organizational change management builds a plan to address the needs of those impacted by changes. It’s not a top-down process, but one that involves everyone. Truly, it is about addressing the needs of those impacted by the change, smoothing the transition, and removing unwanted chaos and negative impacts that could be associated with change. While your staff may be apprehensive at first, OCM involves every stakeholder. It encourages employee dialogue and open communication, helping to foster acceptance and, ultimately, enthusiasm for new organizational changes.
Organizational change is a multi-step process. OCM helps to ensure the change is addressed and helps transition the organization from its current state to its future one. Through a strong communication strategy and definable steps, OCM encourages feedback and uses tools and resources like business process mapping to streamline business processes and show your team the benefits of the changes, ultimately creating buy-in.
Process Management
The equation to successful buy-in is not complete without process management. Business process mapping sessions are most successful when the team involved includes the ground-level staff who are completing the work. These staff best understand how the process really works, including current issues and opportunities for improvement. It is crucial to include representation from all stakeholder groups involved in the business process.
Session attendees may not regularly work together, and the business process mapping sessions provide a new avenue for communication. They are also educational for staff, as they may not always understand the downstream impacts of workarounds, bad data, etc. It’s during these sessions that people discover a disconnect between policy and operations. Policy staff may not understand the operational challenges to implementing a new policy, and operations staff may not understand the intent of the new policy.
Business process mapping sessions promote communication between different groups of stakeholders, allowing staff at multiple levels to work together and collaboratively identify opportunities for improvement. The ability to provide input into the future state of the organization’s processes generates buy-in, enthusiasm, and momentum. Staff involved in business process mapping sessions often become champions of the project among their coworkers.
Creating buy-in among stakeholders and employees helps ensure a successful organizational change, leading to the achievement of business goals. While buy-in might not happen overnight, implementing practices such as OCM and business process mapping allows your staff to be involved and experience change without disrupting their jobs or productivity.
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