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Having recently learnt that an American firm won a huge contract to deliver change management in the Caribbean, Marcia Granger of Megamorphose looks at the key elements of change management  that organisations can implement themselves.

When top management plans extensively for strategic changes in an organisation, the main challenge is how to handle the transition from the old way to the new way. When this happens, the new goal, system, organisation or project is simply presented as a direction or a decision to the working teams or departments. What happens here is that, when a team has not been consulted, this comes as a shock. The change is announced and implementation is then left to the group. When this happens to you as the manager involved, you are put on the spot. You need to produce results but you could only do this when your team is fully behind the changes. One difficulty is of course that top management considers implementation of any change as secondary to the plan, so your work team may consider the same change as a crisis of first magnitude.

Most of the difficulties manifest themselves in the transition period. This is where people get stuck. When this happens, they become confused, angry, anxious and often unproductive. So As a manager, there is a need to move your team through change in the smoothest way possible, regardless of how well or poorly the change was introduced.

Gaining control by giving it up
A major lesson in leadership is that you cannot move through change and keep previous levels of tight control over your staff. The lesson is to gain control over change by giving it up. In effective organisations, people share basis goals and communicate clearly, directly and also regularly about what they are doing. Each person goes about his or her work with greater flexibility than is common in less effective organisations. If you manage an effective organisation, you will benefit during change by exercising a new type of leadership. You will be less of a controller and more of a co-ordinator. Only you and your staff together can make things happen. You must learn how to delegate intelligently some of the control to your team. You have special responsibilities as manager to maintain strong upward lines of communication. If you keep the information you receive from above to yourself or feel you are the only one who knows how to handle change, this will not be helpful in implementing the changes. Your staff will not learn. They will not have the information they need to make change and will not feel they share in the change unless you involve them by giving up some of your control.

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