From the All Business Website - 10 tips on Managing Change...
Change is a small word that can strike fear in the hearts of many. Yet life is full of change, especially in the business world. While those affected may not always get to decide when change happens, they can learn to manage it.
1. Don't resist
2. Find the positive
3. Create a list
4. Familiarize quickly
5. Consider others
6. Focus on one change at a time
7. Exercise patience with yourself
8. Ask productive questions
9. Take control
10. Don't get too comfortable
Managing change with peace and confidence is entirely possible. Keep these tips in mind, and you'll be well-equipped to work through any change that life may throw at you, in both your professional and personal lives.
http://www.allbusiness.com/management/change-management/11336-1.html
My Thoughts...
Most people don't like change. It threatens their sense of control. It provokes fear of the unknown.
Like death and taxes, change is constant. Since it is inevitable, it is best to learn to accept it. Face these new challenges head-on. Focus on how you can make it work for you. You will feel empowered by your renewed sense of control when you stop allowing change to overcome you, and instead make it work for you.
How does change impact your company?
If your company isn't growing, it is getting smaller. Change is the driver in each direction. If you are growing, you are getting more and more customers. Growth fuels changes in most of your departments - Sales, Marketing, Finance, Customer Support, etc. And, most important is keeping your customers happy.
If you are getting smaller, what are the changes that are allowing that to happen? What can you do to fix the problem? How will you face this new challenge head-on? How can you turn around this change? How can you turn it into a positive?
Your Thoughts...
What has been your experience with managing change?
On change - it seems ironic that most business process analysis applications which are likely to be used in order to model potential changes to the organization, are rather lacking in two essential aspects with regard to change management.
(1) Communicating the change to those affected.
(2) Governing the controlled change of process content.
Take a case in point. A major oil company is rolling out a SAP upgrade across 18 countries, through multiple phased releases. They model business processes in a BPA tool. Then copy the screenshots of the process into PowerPoint in order to overlay additional explanation and deliver in classroom training. Realising that this was useless for on-going self-service delivery, they copied the PowerPoints into an eLearning environment, and added video and audio on top. Ask yourself the question - does this sound like an efficient process in itself? Given that the process content now exists in three or more formats, only one of which is the editable source (the rest are static images) - what has been created is a "knowledge management nightmare" which keeps many expensive consultants engaged in a futile attempt to upkeep the content with respect to rolling-upgrades and country specific localizations. Could this be the ultimate definition of madness? Naturally the consulting company does not think so.
Is this a rare example of a broken process for process improvement?
I don't think so. And the reason for that is that most BPA tools have not been designed with end user adoption of process in mind. BPA tools have been designed with the needs of process analysts and IT analysts in mind, using technical notations which most end users hate and cannot understand. Inadequate attention has been paid to communicating the change. Process content needs to be easy for end users to access and easy to understand – or change will not be efficiently achieved. Not many BPA vendors have understood this.
Secondly, most BPA tools fail to offer adequate content governance. The capability whereby content has clear ownership, approval workflow, change control and version management. Most BPA tools cannot do this, or offer expensive consulting led customization as a work around. Albeit better to have one set of content to maintain than the three or more which the oil company I referred to above now contends with.
I’m note alone in thinking that BPM software vendors have been slow to recognize these requirements. Hammer’s Phoenix Consortium published a report in early 2008 called “Putting the M back in BPM�. Summary – lack of MANAGEMENT (or governance) in so called BPM tools.
If these observations have struck a chord with your experience of trying to drive adoption of change associated with business process improvement – comments welcome.