Success Strategies to Manage and Navigate Change

To grow or navigate disruption, companies implement wholesale changes in their organizational structure or practices or both. The CM process often becomes bumpy and expensive as the changes are communicated and implemented. Some employees may not embrace the change fully or at all. Staff resistance to change can overrun timelines and budgets. Resistance may distort crisp implementation strategies into vague practices that leave no clear end in sight. For these reasons, poor employee engagement and communication can lead to employee resistance, representing the most significant challenge to change management. Top reasons employees become resistant to change: • Employees may be comfortable with their current circumstances and not want to change them. • They may be afraid that changes will lead to the loss of their jobs. • They may have experienced failed change management initiatives in the past and are skeptical, thinking current efforts will also end in failure. • Unable to see and celebrate clear milestones along the way, staff become mired in thoughts that the plan isn't working and experience "change fatigue." If management fails to clearly articulate why a company needs to change, employees may think changes are unnecessary. Or they may lose trust in leadership and fear the new plan is merely a way to eliminate their jobs and raise profit. These thoughts and feelings may remain concealed, forming an unseen impediment to the change management rollout. Far from being cheerleaders for change management, people who don't buy in may quietly become influential detractors and spread their convictions to coworkers. Resistance like this will stall the change process, eventually stopping it dead in its tracks. Other issues, such as ill-conceived or poorly executed strategies, could also derail a company's planned evolution. But true employee buy-in is clearly the most critical factor if a change management rollout is to have any hope of success. The Number One Enemy of Change Management