IntroductionLast month we reviewed
Gina Abudi's book Implementing Positive
Organizational Change[1] that focused
on positive communication throughout any serious business remodeling project.
In this book, Mastering Organizational Change Management,[2]
Author Barbara A. Davis takes a rather different perspective. Barbara describes
how to overcome the inevitable challenges involved in organizational change management
(OCM), and includes in-depth descriptions of the available range of techniques
available for doing so.
As Barbara observes:[3] "Many
organizations, and indeed many individuals, still hold the attitude that people
(emloyees and customers alike) should just accept that changes are a part of life
and readily adopt them. Thankfully, attitudes are changing. Perhaps we have
the Millennials to thank for it. As a direct result of how this generation was
raised, we see a massive shift in the way companies operate and manage employees
and customer relationships. It is out of this shift that we are seeing a shift
in emphasis on social currency. In other words, we are beginning to understand
that people don't have to be loyal just because someone gave them a job."
Barbara
continues:[4] "Ultimately,
this means that existing companies must change the way they think and act on engagement
to manage those critical relationships."
And further:[5] "The
most commonplace approach to OCM in the past at many companies was virtually nonexistent.
... This means that there was no planning, or visibility into planning by people
outside the executive suite, no communication until the changes were to be implemented,
no input taken into consideration, and little or no follow up. It was often referred
to as a top-down approach to change management. This isn't an approach;
it's a disaster."
The Key Features of this book include:[6]
- A discussion of the barriers to successful change and how to gain a thorough
understanding of the business ecosystem before planning and executing any change
effort.
- A condensation of the vast number of root causes for change into
a few all-encompassing reasons.
- A description of four proven frameworks
for managing change, which work best given the barriers to change, the business
ecosystem, the reasons for the change, and the project or program objectives and
organizational goals.
- How to develop and execute a winning OCM strategy,
and the key stages, activities, and techniques best suited to a variety of situations.
- How
to measure organizational change, including how to develop and use a change
scorecard for predicting an organization's ability to make a change successfully,
evaluating it throughout the transformation, and after it is completed.
This
book is supported by various assessment tools, that include a functional complexity
matrix, and a change scorecard template. These are designed to assist practitioners
in managing an organizational change project and measuring its success. These
tools and templates are available to purchasers of the book by download on line. About
the authorBarbara A. Davis has a degree in conflict resolution and over
16 years of business experience including project management, community development,
business ownership, change management and conflict resolution. She is also an
international speaker who works with Fortune 500 companies to realign business
analysis services and critical struggling projects in order to ensure successful
outcomes in the face of conflict and challenging circumstances. Barbara has published
numerous articles and authored three more books: Managing Business analysis
Services: A Framework for Sustainable Projects and Corporate Strategy Success;
Going beyond the Waterfall: Managing Scope across the Project Life Cycle;
and Mastering Software Project Requirements.[7]
1.
See http://www.maxwideman.com/papers/implementing/intro.htm
2. Davis, Barbara A., Mastering Organizational Change Management,
J. Ross Publishing, Florida, USA, 2017
3. Ibid, pp1-2.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6.
Observations abstracted from back cover.
7. Abstracted from
pp xiii-xiv
|
