Lamela Blog – Part 8: Understanding the Need for Change

Understanding the Need for Change

by Mark Lamela

Why change? What is the winning formula? While gurus and experts abound, those experienced Change Leadership practitioners agree, when the emergence of a mutual understanding, between Supervisors or Managers as well as employees occurs, incremental or transformational change initiatives not only become realized, but can provide an extra-ordinary opportunity for organizational super performance.

To accomplish this, multiple factors must be in place to achieve this widespread acceptance of change:

First, visualize and explain that the change initiative (RoadMap) will bring about a more effective way of performing work for the employees. This action is instrumental in creating a broadly shared sense of acceptance.

Second, focus on providing sufficient information about the specifics of change and its implementation. This too is critical. Such information flows enable good communication and business process improvements and procedures.

Third, we believe a high degree of organizational readiness for change moderated the need for establishing a sense of urgency, since such a culture is characterized by openness to new ideas.

Fourth, we found that many of the managers utilized theoretical change management concepts such as, for example, the theories of John P. Kotter (1996).

Finally, the implementation of 10 is a continuous change process consisting of multiple episodic change initiatives. This gradual development helps to establish a common understanding of the rationale behind change.