The Practises and Process of Change Management - Essay Example

?Change Management Change Management Introduction Implementing change successfully requires decision making that is based on the hard and soft areas of an organization (SHAPIRO, 2010, p.13). Hard areas are the technical and the technological areas and the soft areas are the people working within the organization. The decisions that need to be made are based on actions that organizations take place to ensure that employees go through a smooth transition when change is being implemented. The decisions that an organization makes regarding the hard areas of the organizations can easily be observed and the effects of these decisions can easily be assessed and altered according to the progress. Due to ease of measurement and adjustment, more concentration is given to the hard side and the soft side is ignored as the impacts on the soft side are hard to measure and due to this difficulty, they are even hard to alter. It is clear that the most challenging part of change management is the soft side or the side that concerns people. Body A huge range of change management models and literature is available to help managers in dealing with changes and implementing changes successfully. Theoretical models have provided tremendous amount of insight about how managers can successfully implement change. But these models are not applicable to every situation and managers need to handle change according to their own situations. The models provided for change by several theorists have been created while keeping in mind that these models are applicable to the general population of the organizations. The first theory proposed regarding change was done by Kurt Lewin in which he stated that there are a number of factors that influence an individual’s perception to change and an individual might go through three stages in order to accept and implement change. According to Kurt Lewin’s theory, change does not occur suddenly; rather individuals and organization go through a process before they finally adopt change. According to him there are three stages that need to be travelled for organization’s to change. The first part of this three staged process is unfreezing in which the state of an organism of not being ready to accept changed is altered to being ready and enthusiastic to take the initial steps to accept change (MAILICK, 1998, p.15). The unfreezing stage is undoubtedly the most important of all stages because in this change an individual has to first be ready to change. To make an individual ready to accept change, the management of an organization has to take several necessary steps. These steps include, informing employees about the necessity of changing and the current comfort boundary is no longer a viable option. The information about necessity to change will motivate individuals and the higher will be the amount of urgency to change, the higher the level of employee motivation towards change will increase (GILLEY, 2005, p.35). Once the management has been successful in unfreezing the people working within the organization, they next move towards solving the issue of how to continue with the change process. Kurt Lewin states that change is not a one time event; it continues to take place in the form of a process and thus has regarded the process of change as a transition (MAILICK, 1998, p.15). Transition here does not signal the changes that can be witnessed; rather these changes include those alterations that take place inside as a reaction of the proposed change. The second stage proposed by Kurt Lewin is the changing stage in which the actual change arises and the changes that are desirable take place. In this stage, the employees working within an organization shift from old ways of doing things to new ways of doing things. The problem with this stage is that it is the most complex stage of the entire change process as this stage gives rises to the fear of unknown within the people (SENGUPTA, 2006, p.3). This change step is even considered difficult as in this step, people are involved in the process of learning and absorbing what they learn. In this step managers have to show and provide tremendous amount of support to the individuals working in the organization. Support can be provided with the assistance of providing training and development sessions, mentoring and coaching. Managers should be very careful in their feedback and they have to accept that employees will make several mistakes during this stage and these mistakes are a part of the entire process as mistakes will help employees learn in a better manner. In this process managers need to lead by example and by being a role model for others and should allow employees to participate in solution finding and implementation process. Throughout this stage, managers need to continuously inform employees about the favorable outcomes of finally implementing the change at the individual and the organizational level. This will keep the employees reminding about the target they need to achieve and they will be motivated through the individual advantages they will obtain by adopting these changes. The last stage in the process of change proposed by Kurt Lewin is the freezing or the refreezing stage, in this stage people move along the paradigm of change from the situation of transition to a situation which is stable and highly productive (MAILICK, 1998, p.15). The main focus of this stage is stabilizing the organization and in this stage, the changes are accepted as a regular and continuous part of the organization and the newly implemented change becomes a part of the norms of the organization. In this stage people accept the new change whole heartedly and accept the new ways of doing their tasks. This thought of Lewin is no longer applicable as organizations and individuals in the 21st century are in the process of changing continuously that might arise within a week or a month (PERSHING, 2006, p.264). So being flexible is important to accept the next upcoming change. Conclusion Kurt Lewin regarded as the founding father of the theory of change management states that change is not a one time step, it is a process which is divided into different stages. In the first stage, members of an organization are informed about the importance of change and are motivated with the assistance of information regarding the urgency of change. In the next step, the change process is carried out in which members learn new things and even participate in the decision making process and solution finding and implementation process. In the last stage, change is adopted and members continue working in accordance to the new routine which becomes a part of the norms of the organization. References GILLEY, A. M. (2005). The manager as change leader. Westport, Conn, Praeger Publishers. MAILICK, S., & STUMPF, S. A. (1998). Learning theory in the practice of management development: evolution and applications. Westport, Conn, Quorum. PERSHING, J. A. (2006). Handbook of human performance technology principles, practices, and potential. San Francisco, CA, Pfeiffer. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10304064. SENGUPTA, N. (2006). Managing change in organizations. [S.l.], Prentice-Hall Of India. SHAPIRO, A., & ZIGARMI, P. (2010). Creating contagious commitment: applying the tipping point to organizational change. 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