Welcome to the first segment in our 2021 Thought Leadership Series! For this installment, the focus is on Operational Change Management or OCM. Simply put, Operational Change Management is the process of changing an organization from its current state to a desired future state. Changes can be minimal, or changes can significantly impact the business or technical processes internally, with employees directly. They can also affect your current relationships with your customers. Either way, resistance is almost always a byproduct of integrating changes.
With constant change affecting organizations daily, a large percentage of companies do not have formal Organizational Change Management processes in place. This lack of OCM is primarily due to budgetary constraints, lack of leadership, or simply finding the time in-between normal business operations to start putting change management people AND processes in place.
Different scales of maturity and details within this topic exist across the inter-webs one tool we leverage is IBM’s OCM Maturity Stages as a guideline for best-in-class Organization Change Management evolution. An organization’s processes will grow and become more mature over time. However, it is imperative that companies start small with Emerging Maturity, reduce the number of informal processes, and start the path toward Embedded Maturity.
Using IBM’s OCM diagram above, try to determine where your company ranks on each block’s scale. Start asking yourself questions.
Building the Muscle
- Do we have sufficient organizational change capabilities to manage challenges by tailoring common methods and tools to specific situations?
- To what extent and how capable are we to integrate change?
- Would our changes be described as consolidated and organized centrally?
Making Change Matter
- Do we assign resources to organizational change activities on projects and initiatives?
- Do we measure change adoption?
- How do we communicate and quickly receive successful adoption?
Leading at All Levels
- Do we have change-leadership roles in place?
- Are change-leadership activities included in our employee goals?
- Do sponsors understand the importance of OCM during and after active projects?
- Are there collaboration technologies available to engage in change conversations and documentation across the company?
By answering these questions, you may find that your company has gaps in processes that support fully embedded Operational Change Management. If that is the case, the next step would be developing strategies to adapt, change, and move towards success. OCM is an area where Breakaway Technologies can help with one of our accelerator approaches.
Experts in Change Management have developed methods to support people through the change process by identifying key topics to focus on during each change curve stage. The diagram below represents those topics by stage in an environment that is dealing with changing technologies:
Breakaway Technologies has gone one step further and developed techniques to support OCM within your company. By creating lower-level “Calls-to-Action” customized for your organization, we provide a roadmap across all functional areas affected by change during your project to make your business successful:
As our customers continue to evolve, Breakaway’s Thought Leadership strategies complement the short and long-term goals of companies worldwide. If your organization needs assistance Building the Muscle, Making Change Matter, or providing support to Lead at All Levels. Contact us today to learn more!
About the Author
Phil Dzubinski is a Sr. Manager on our Consulting Services team and has over 20 years of professional experience developing enterprise data warehousing, business intelligence, and analytics solutions. His focus areas include thought-leadership, project management, developing strategic solutions, and compliance.