A Manager's Guide to Managing Change: Step Two: Assessing Impact

Is your project on the path to success or to becoming one of the many that fail to achieve the expected benefits?

Step One, Shared Vision, was the focus of our previous blog.  We will now shift our focus to Step Two: Understanding the Full Change Impact to the Organization:

Have you identified the degree and type of changes required to realize your project’s benefits?

If not, how can people be prepared when you haven’t determine what type of change to prepare them for?

There is no such thing as a “small” change. Change has a ripple effect that is often underestimated. A change in technology will require a change in process that will affect how and where work is done.

Not understanding the full impact of change nor identifying the functions, departments and/or job roles in the orgaization who will experience some degree of change in the way they do their work,  prevents you from adequately preparing people to succeed in the new world, and greatly diminishes the probability of success.

It also makes it more difficult to implement future changes. People will remember the last change experience that didn’t achieve the promised benefits, or caused more disruption than necessary because the full impact wasn’t understood. They will be less likely to support the changes your organization requires to remain competitive in this climate of continual change.  

Recommendation:
Conduct a Change Impact Analysis by asking two critical questions: 

1) What will be different after the change is implemented?  The answer(s) to this question helps you define the type of changes required to realize the expected benefits.  

2) Who will experience this change? The answer to this question tells you who will need to prepared to work and/or behave in a new way for your organization to realize and sustain the desired benefits of change.

Taking the time to accurately access the impact of your change, will greatly increase the probability of success now and in the future.


Copyright © 2019* Rita Burgett-Martell; Organizational Change Consultant, Keynote Speaker, Personal Coach — Strategic Transformations Consulting Inc; — Author of Change Ready!  and Defining Moments — Available at Amazon