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Managing Change
"There is nothing permanent except change"
- Heraclitus (540-475 B.C.)
"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they
are too strong to be broken" - Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Change
Management is a relatively new concept which has developed to aid
the understanding of an age old problem. Change has always
happened, has invariably been resisted and has not always been
succesful. The aim of change management is to inspire and maintain
a culture which instigates and embraces continuous progressive
change.
In order to promote change, a company must first know what it is
currently doing and why. This is not as simple as it seems and
will be greatly assisted by the use of documented
business processes. Any company with a quality system in
place will already have documented business processes and a system
for identifying the performance of these processes. This is very
often the first indication of the need for change. Having
established a need for change, a company must grant power to
change leaders and change teams which
must be representative of all stakeholders and which should have
challenging, achievable targets. Having granted power to change
teams, they must be supported by the senior management - even when
this means a challenge to the boardroom culture!.
There are two ways to implement change - Big Bang or Progressive
Change. The method chosen will depend on the situation which
exists at the time and the scope of change needed. During the
1980s, many British companies were in need of major overhall and
aggresive surgery. The situation was in some cases so bad that
interruptions to production were acceptable, indeed they may not
have been noticed amidst the mass of strikes occurring at the
time. It is during this period that Business Process Redesign
became fashionable and effective. For some it is still relevant
today and can also be modified to assist in modernised businesses
if used sensibly.
For
those companies that have been through a radical change programme
or are looking to develop rather than be re-born, a less
forhtright system is appropriate and should be implemented via a
quality system using Process Improvement Teams (PITs)
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