Change Management
Skills required as Change Manager
• There are several key differences in the skills you require as a
change manager from those in your more operational role:
Skills required as Change Manager
Risk
• In order to achieve the transition, you need to
invite people to take risks. Unfortunately,
people are generally risk-averse. The fact that
the need for a change management programme
has been identified means that the necessary
development cannot take place in safe, small,
discrete steps.
• Although the framework of the transition phase
will have been carefully planned, people are still
being invited to take a step into the unknown.
Skills required as Change Manager
Culture and power
• You will need to be attuned to the culture of your
organisation. You need to recognise what in the culture
gives the organisation strength and what holds it back. You
need to become adept at handling the politics of the
transformation process.
Skills required as Change Manager
Planning versus evolution
• Partly because of the people issues of the transition, it will
not be possible to plan the transition in any neat or tidy
way.
• Where it is essential to involve the workforce in the change
process, the next step in implementation may evolve
according to the result of the preceding step.
• Indeed, it is common for the objectives to be amended
during the change process as people contribute and buy in
to the change.
Skills required as Change Manager
Planning versus evolution
• As a change manager you will need to be comfortable with
this state of flux, encouraging people to play at trying out
possible new solutions.
• To put this another way, you will not start with a map of the
route the organisation must follow but rather take regular
compass readings to check that everyone is moving in the
right direction.
• Any attempt to exercise detailed control over the transition
process may result in it grinding to a halt.
Skills required as Change Manager
Timescales
• Finally, if you are an operational manager, you may feel that
meeting delivery deadlines and other time targets is one of
the essential criteria by which you are judged.
• But focusing too much on meeting deadlines can be
counterproductive in change management situations,
encouraging participants to seek the familiar in delivering
outputs to deadlines.
• Certainly key milestones for the transition and an overall
timetable for the change will need to be established.
Within this framework the workforce and management
should be encouraged to experiment and be creative,
exploring new ways to do things better.
Change Manager as a Leader
• As with any major project, it will be necessary
to put someone in overall charge of the
change management programme. Some of the
writers on change management have
emphasised the leadership qualities needed
as an essential component of successful
change management. Table 1.4 looks at some
differences between managers and leaders.
Change Manager as a Leader
Change Manager as a Leader
• However, the hero figure described under the
Leader heading in Table 1.4 is not the only
way of managing change. Indeed, given a
distinct shortage of heroes in the average
organisation, the usefulness of producing such
lists is open to question.
• More realistic alternatives for appointing
someone to head up a change management
programme are to:
Change Manager as a Leader
Change Manager as a Leader
• The work involved in either leading or
contributing to change management teams
often provides important stages in the
development of future senior managers.
• If you can show comfort with situations of
great uncertainty, be willing to take risks and
show creativity, then you are displaying many
of the most important qualities required in
senior managers.