The Change Management Overview 

As Smith Gruppe has facilitated and led numerous change management engagements over the years, we maintain deep expertise and and extensive knowledge base in educationg our clients on structuring and implementing change management initiatives. 

The first place to start is acknowledging that change management is a comprehensive, cyclical, and structured approach to transforming how individuals, groups, and business units execute from a current state to a future state with intended business results. It is tantamount to the success of a change management initiative to integrate and align people, processes, resources, structures, culture, and your overall business strategy. Successful businesses do not scale exponentially randomly but through intentional and dynamic approaches that forecast, influence, and proactively respond effectively to emergent trends, patterns, and market dynamics. 

To survive market dynamics, and thrive, a disciplined approach must be pursued to project portfolio's, program and project management, along with responsive, fleixible, and effective change management relative to each business unit and its context.

Two significant factors must be taken into consideration when it comes to shortened time horizons for business forecasting and strategic planning due to the volatile state of business ecosystems in today's environment:

1. The business environment is ever-changing, and the rate of change is consistently accelerating. The exponential growth of global economies and access to information, advanced technologies, technology-based infrastructure (your tech stack), AI (Artificial Intelligence), and Machine Learning drive this change. 

2. The approach that accurate and detailed forecasting over extensive time frames is unintelligible and imprractical and, therefore, should not be used to develop competitive advantages and market positions. For your business to succeed in the future, it needs to b e adaptive and maintain a robust change process that continuously adapts new strategies to support the leadership's vision and respond quickly to changes in its business environments. 

Forces For Change Explained 

Survival in today's turbulent business climates is a difficult challenge for all businesses at all levels. The leadership's capabilities earn competiveness and long-term success in the following areas: (a) continually evaluating whether or not your value proposition resonates for the benefit of your customers and (b) responsiveness to abrupt changes driven by your business's environmental factors.

In a significant amount of Smith Gruppe's change management engagements, our clients often feel that they have a pretty good understanding of what change management is and how to implement it; however, like many other business cases, the client felt the same way, we have found over the 30 years we have been in the space, that ethics, environmental impact, and social responsibility are necessary to add to the traditional organizational performance criteria of revenue and profitability.

The rapid increase of digital economies makes customer segments more knowledgeable of shortcomings and less forgiving of those shortcomings. Transparency exposes mistakes. the information-driven era is characterized by quick, rapid, and frequently unpredictable change. All these factors converge and increase the speed of change because change, like the pebble thrown into the lake, causes a ripple effect and can impact and disrupt the very stability of your business.

Smith Gruppe provides a broad range of change management advisory services with practical and pragmatic problem-solving approaches.

We deliver the value that we promise. That means faster time to value, lower operating expenses, improved cash flows, and higher revenue. This helps our clients achieve new goals, penetrate new markets, create successful mergers and simplify legacy systems and emerging technologies alike. 

Change Management that is effective and longlasting requires businesses to enhance their capabilities in portfolio, program, and project management teams. You ur "Capabilities Network" has over 200 years of collective knowldege and expertise that gives us a unique advantage in leading change management initiatives for companies across a broad range in industries and sectors. 

That 200 years of collective expertise has taught us that the ability to change is in direct correlation to the strategic agility or organizational agility. Successful businesses should seek to aggressively reshape their culture and business practices by pursuing the following action items:

* Governance Board: First things first requires the establishment of a governance board in the Organizational Project Management (OPM) areas of the business to provide oversight for your project portfolios, program management, change control boards to mange proecesses, and to set direction by providing leadership. Our experience has shown that this further ensures that the overall change process directly aligns with the organization's strategic vision. 

The governance board should address and deal directly with business issues associated with the project charter, written specifically to guide achieving change outcomes and benefits. 

* Champion/Sponsor: The champion/sponsor provides the resources necessary for change and shoulders the ultimate responsibility for the budget, program, or project, building business unit commitment for the change at the executive and senior management level across all business units affected by the change initiative.

Smith Gruppe starts with the drafting of a pAC (Process Accountability Chart) and fAC (Function Accountability Chart) to assign accountability and responsibility for the change needs, and we recommend the "Best Practice" of creating KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to attach the accountability and responsibility to either the P/L (Profit And Loss) or Balance Sheet. 

Therefore, the champion/sponsor for a change initiative should be at the C-Suite level and have the authority, influence, power, and time to squash conflicts that could be actively involved, accessible, and visible from planning to project close-out.

Internal politics should be avoided at all costs to ensure that ll stakeholders are equally and fairly represented, that alliance for the success of the change initiative are formed; and to mitigate the risk of resistance to the change initiative.   

* Leads: 

Develop and train "change-ready" employees by having the right technology and core processes in place. 

Bear in mind that constant change, whether proactive or reactive, places tremendous stress on the leadership, as well as internal and external stakeholders.

The lead's role and responsibility is to ensure that the change management process addresses the impact of requirements on business processes, workforce, and infrastructure, and monitors implementation while managing risk. The lead further coordinates communications relating to change to all relevant stakeholders through the determined channels of communication. The lead may then escalate all change-related issues through the project manager for discussion and decision to the change management board or project sponsor.

* Integrators:

The integrator's function is the responsibility of preparing and integrating the change into the business processes and workflows and therefore plays a major role in implementation. Integrators further ensure that the key activities of the business are performed at acceptable levels during the change process. Integrators should possess the skills to break down complex and wide-ranging intiatives into groups of activities by business function and/or unit. The primary function of the integrator is to ensure that diverse processes and workflows remain aligned with the "Key Objectives" of the business. The integrator's title and responsibilities may be that of executive, manager, or others depending upon the extensiveness and nature of the change initiative.

* Agents:

Agents are the active drivers and proponents of entire change initiatives. Agents can be early adopters of process excellence, operations excellence, or a technology stack who see the business benefits of making a change and have embraced it. Agents can be from any area, function, or process of the business; and are active at all levels within an organization. Agents are invaluable resources for integrating change in their respective business units, and areas of expertise, thereby driving change throughout the business model. 

* Recipients:

Recipients are generally the people that are directly or indirectly impacted by a change initiative. Recipients should collectively be considered part of the stakeholder groups, and therefore their input into the change initiative and the change process is critical to the success of the change initiative. 

Town Hall meetings (the conversational and social best practices that equip individuals and groups to make sense of what the change will look like andhow it may impact them) are usually directed at the recipient's to help them make the change transition as seamless as possible. A focus on what makes sense creates and builds trust in a deep and committed way, especially when the change initiative flows across more than one area of the business. It is the communication of the information to the recipient's, combined with what individuals, groups, organizations, and cultures bring to the situation, which includes prior experiences and belief systems. Intentional and specific communications are essential elements to engender and secure the recipient's support and trust. In order to avoid mere compliance and secure commitment; recipient's demand attention and monitoring as the change initiative progresses because they may foster or inhibit the integration of the change initiative and its sustainability.   

Our "Capabilities Network" has over 200 years of collective knowldege and expertise that gives us a unique advantage in leading change management initiatives for companies across a broad range in industries and sectors. 

That 200 years of collective expertise has taught us that the ability to change is in direct correlation to the strategic agility or organizational agility. Successful businesses should seek to aggressively reshape their culture and business practices by pursuing the following action items:

* Robust change management to more quickly adapt to frequently shifting market conditions;

* Establish an environment for collaborative and robust risk management, business continuity, and business resuption planning; and

* Increase the ability to standardize portfolio, program, and project management practices. 

Develop and train "change-ready" employees by having the right technology and core processes in place. 

Bear in mind that constant change, whether proactive or reactive, places tremendous stress on the leadership, as well as internal and external stakeholders.