Organizational Change Management (OCM) is a discipline that supports organizations and their employees in smoothly and successfully introducing an intended change into their ways of working. Implementing a change within an organization is often complex and has an impact on people’s everyday work. Therefore, consciously thinking about how to introduce the change and guiding organizations and their employees towards it is very important.
Why is Organizational Change Management important?
Within IT, ‘Organizational Change Management (OCM)’, or ‘Change Management’ for short, refers to the different activities that contribute to a successful implementation of a change within an organization from a people’s perspective. This ‘change’ is generally the introduction of a new (technical) solution, initiative and/or product, which alters both how an organization might function as a whole and how individual employees perform their everyday work. In other words, the organization decides to kick-off a transformation journey towards certain changes in their operations which will affect its employees. And even though the aim of a change is to achieve organizational improvements (for example more efficiency, a more up-to-date IT-landscape or opening new business opportunities), the route towards this change and a full acceptance of it by the employees, is often complex. The desired change will most likely have a large impact on different areas within the organization. Think, for example, of employees having to learn about new systems, tools, structures, roles, and responsibilities and often having to change their mindset or work approach as well. The support of an OCM team is important for all organizations, but especially when implementing a (new) SAP-system. This is because:
- A change in or towards SAP-systems often involves many different groups of employees (teams with different work activities and individuals with different roles/authorizations)
- A change towards an SAP-product often has a long trajectory with many voices. It is therefore essential to consciously involve end-users early on. If they are forgotten their confidence and/or support may be lacking, and the implementation may be unsuccessful.
How to create an ambassadors’ network?
For each organizational change and large business transformation, support from the key stakeholders is essential to accept or reject the change. Getting SAP stakeholders’ commitment and successfully managing resistance to change, are prerequisites for effective change management. Acceptance of change (commitment) and rejection of change (resistance) are typically treated as separate, unrelated phenomena. However, commitment and resistance are closely linked in the sense that they represent a polarity— two sides of the same coin.
Building on this notion, sequential phases of acceptance of and resistance to change are:
Knowing, Feeling, Doing and Promoting.
To engage stakeholders in the change process and deal with these different phases appropriately, it is important to involve them as early as possible. A useful approach for this is the creation of an 'ambassadors' network'. Key stakeholders within the organization undergoing the change (for example, key business users) participate in the change-process from the starting and while doing so, experience the new solution and its positive benefits quickly. Ultimately, they will become 'ambassadors' for the new solution and/or way-of-working and hopefully transfer their positive attitude towards the change to others who will adopt it later. It is important to explain the “why” of the change and support them along the whole business transformation journey.
This table shows how to work with stakeholders in a way that turns them into true ambassadors for the organizational change.
| Commitment | Resistance1) | |
|---|---|---|
| Knowing | Stakeholders are contacted and awareness about the change is created | Stakeholders are unaware and confusion will rise when confronted with the change |
| Feeling | Stakeholders will understand the why of the change and become curious, the necessity is sensed and the desire for this change is created | Stakeholders are not involved and feel a negative perception for the upcoming change. They show inactivity and are against the change |
| Doing | Due to stakeholders’ involvement, they experiment with the new solution, and while doing this, they slowly master the new solution | Because stakeholders are not involved, they reject the change/new solution and might even terminate their labor contract or involvement in the department |
| Promoting | Eventually, the new solution becomes the stakeholders’ new normal which will result in them becoming the ambassadors of the change or transformation | This results in stakeholders’ feeling of isolation |
| 1) Result if change is not well managed. |
Elements of a successful Organizational Change implementation
- People centric view
Change Management teams work towards a successful implementation by creating awareness within the organization of the upcoming change and make sure that end-users and their demands are involved with the change process at an early stage. Also, by working with this employee-centric approach, it is possible to create personas, fictional characters which represent a certain user type and why/how they use a certain product or process. - Shared vision on the change
There are several reasons why an organization decides to invest in, for example, new tooling or restructured ways of working. Organizations have certain “Drivers of Change” which can run from monetary benefits to technological advancements to cultural shifts or customer demands. Clarifying and propagating why a change is needed from an executive level towards the organization will increase the chances of having employees understand the change and eventually accepting it. - Clear communication and training plan
In general, the communication surrounding large organizational changes is driven and managed by a specialist from the OCM-team (so not by Testers, although they are in close contact with the Change Management Team). The communication towards all possible stakeholders and trainings they are eventually provided with, need to be tailored, well-timed and right the first time. A change is more likely to be accepted and well-used when specific and useful information is given to the different roles that are involved. Often, a smaller group of end-users is introduced to the change at an earlier stage which means they will later serve as ambassadors towards the other, larger group of end-users when the change is implemented organization wide.
Organizational Change Management (OCM) is a discipline that supports organizations and their employees in smoothly and successfully introducing an intended change into their ways of working. Implementing a change within an organization is often complex and has an impact on people’s everyday work. Therefore, consciously thinking about how to introduce the change and guiding organizations and their employees towards it is very important.