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What is Change Management

Change Management is the profession dedicated to helping people through change within an organization.  “Google that”!  No, seriously, ‘google” the term change management, and depending on if you get a noun, verb or adjective, there are a myriad of entries.  But at the end of the day, change management in the context of the Minnesota Change Management Network (the other great MN get together), is a group of professionals dedicated to helping people across a variety of organizations through a myriad of changes. A collective of our ecosystem supporting people through the challenges of the new OS (operating system), change.

In today’s world, change has become a constant. That being said, individual organizations are all at differing points of change saturation or fatigue.  An increasing component of change management is resistance management- typically accompanying risk mitigation planning. As part of the work of a practitioner, this can be baked into the change plans being developed.  Partnering with other support leaders in an organization going through change- i.e. HR- to ensure all changes impacting any particular individual are being considered.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world” – Gandhi.

Easier said than done? Whether it is Executive leadership/Sponsorship support- typically rooted in the C-Suite- to middle team management alignment on priorities all the way to including the individual contributor line level folks a change professional manages the key stakeholder groups through the change as is determined through assessment, monitoring and measurement.  It is all part of the art of “right things at the right time to the right audience” while striking the balance between “want and need”.

Supporting organizations through change is done by looking through the individual, team and organization lens. Clearly understanding the people (including organization, roles and responsibilities), process and system impacts of the change that enables effective and targeted communication and training are what makes for effective change management.

All of this great work wrapped with the bow of constant and consistent monitoring and measurement.

“We are living in a VUCA world!” infamously quotes one of our founding members Dan Olson, and we have a profession that is awesomely set up to support it!

V=Volatile  U=Uncertain C=Complex  A=Ambiguous