Introduction
It’s known that context changes generate waste in doing tasks. But this is true if you are planning to go back on those tasks to finish them, unless you never come back to finish the work. In that case, from the unattended task point of view, the waste is infinite assuming not cancellation.
From a general perspective it’s like changing direction each time you go towards a location. Maybe the goal is to get to many places at a time, but advancing to all directions finally will get you to any place first, at the cost of (let’s hope) unconscious waste.
1. Organizational Change Management
Organizational change management it’s all about people in general, but specially in a culture evolution context. This culture is a long-term behavior ingrained into the members of the organization and sometimes in the industry as shared practices. But what happens when organization’s culture must be changed frequently, let’s say, every 3 years?
2. Solution Discovery
A discovery process begin searching for the most adequate culture for the organization. Necessity is clear: organization needs to change old habits for new ones that allow it to be more competitive and adaptive. This process has to be managed in order to control impact and mitigate risks.
3. People
People are the executors of organizational culture. Once they ingrain expected behavior then culture begins its materialization. Every 3 years can be stressful for anyone, but the organization needs to find the right culture at the right time in order to lower change frecuency at least for 5 years if needed.
Conclusions
Maybe the real question is: to what extent an “agile” discovery process can be applied? Involving an entire organization is complex. A possible strategy is to set a ten years goal to change culture, and during the process implement incremental change at the same time that final culture is discovered. Of course this is a project that has to be executed carefully.
Your comments are important so we can share knowledge, ideas and thoughts about organizational change management.