Change Management

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The successful introduction of a well-conceived change that brings business results is the pinnacle of management practice and job satisfaction. Introducing a complex change into your organisation carries substantial, avoidable risks of failure (known to humorists everywhere as mangling change). These risks are not just to the organisation, but also to the reputations of managers responsible for delivering the results.

Thriving organisations are dynamic systems, continually shaped by new demands that drive such changes as:

• Fundamental strategic review
• Re-organising: flatter structures, mergers
• Customer focus initiatives
• Introduction of new technology
• Quality initiatives
• Acquisitions
• Diversification of markets or products

Delivering results from a single significant change initiative is never easy - more so, because single initiatives are rarely enough. Complex organisational change typically involves multiple rather than single initiatives. With multiple initiatives, so much is going on that it is often difficult to know which changes are contributing to the success of the organisation, and which may be just wasting time and resources. In this kind of ‘noisy' environment, critical initiatives can end up in competition with less important ones for limited resources. As a result, all initiatives can be compromised: projects not seen through; people reassigned as different initiatives clash; communication lapses as project teams have little progress to report; resistance growing in people who learn to see themselves as the targets or victims of change.

In our change management programmes, we offer an approach to change that has helped organisations to deliver consistently successful organisational change - an approach that works because it addresses directly the issues that cause strategic change initiatives to fail.

Today's change managers need to be skilled in change technology, systems thinking, and leadership skills - it's a tough challenge. At OPDC, collectively we have hundreds of years' experience of designing and delivering change initiatives, captured in our change management programmes. Participants will get the opportunity to plan and prepare for their own specific initiatives, using the principal elements of this approach:

• A structured comprehensive change life cycle process that covers all stages of a change project, from inception through to project closure and review;
• Clear project roles and organisation because clarity and focus breed success;
• Communication methods and structures to secure involvement and buy-in, including whole systems events designed to mobilise an entire organisation;
• Practical methodology for helping individuals and teams to engage in the change and make their personal transition within an optimum time frame.

We work with your change leaders to develop their effectiveness so that they are able to:

• Communicate the change with passion and conviction
• Develop skilled participatory approaches that enable a team to experience ownership of the change so that it moves with speed
• Develop strategies for understanding, minimising and, if the resistance cannot be avoided, skillfully working to minimise or eliminate it
• Work sensitively with people in transition in order to minimise disruption, delay and avoidable resistance

Two brief examples of our work

A facilities management organisation had won an NHS hospital cleaning contract. The previous supplier had not managed to achieve the targets set for cleanliness and our client needed to make significant changes to the existing organisational structures and processes as well as the organisational culture. OPDC provided skills training and development to senior managers in order to deliver the changes needed. A combination of workshop based skills development supported with 1:1 coaching sessions over a number of months proved most successful.

An internationally renowned IT Solutions organisation set up its own consultancy division offering change management consultancy alongside its technical offerings. OPDC was charged with developing a number of senior managers to become fully fledged change management consultants and the company has now established a successful consulting arm. The development format involved a mixture of classroom based workshops and 1:1 follow-up events.